Sharing Personal Stories and Reflections
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Thoughts, Stories, and Experiences from Everyday Life
Welcome to My Blog, a personal space dedicated to sharing genuine reflections, memorable stories, and meaningful moments that shape everyday life.
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Explore a collection of personal stories, reflections, and experiences designed to engage and motivate readers.
Being Good with People
During my career till now I have been exposed to several kinds of professional cultures and various types of so called “leaders”.
Some were very intelligent and brilliant. They could grasp complex requirements very quickly and could execute a solution equally well, there style was to push for the desired result irrespective of the way they behave with their team and colleagues. Some were not so good but managed to keep the superiors in good humour. They were good at what we call “managing upwards”.
The next category of managers were the ones who were heavily insecure and the only way they wanted to progress their careers was only by putting their peers under the bus and also putting their team members (who they feel threatened by) in a spot during meetings and reviews with senior stakeholders, not realizing that in a way they are hurting their long term prospects.
But I guess in the era of youtube shorts and Instagram reels who cares about long term. It is all about getting the result and getting it now.
The final category of folks I worked with as bosses were the ones who were highly secure about who they were and also took pride in their performance. Along with these traits they also cared about how they treating people. I learn the most working with these kind of folks and also forged relationships which was beyond the next professional task.
After leaving my corporate life I am still in touch with these ex bosses of mine. While I make an effort to keep in touch with them, they are also very gracious with their team even though now they have become very senior professionals and some of them are CXOs in billion dollar companies. It is a separate thing that some of these ex bosses have also been my early customers once I turned entrepreneur and still continue to put in a good word for me wherever they find it relevant.
By now you would have understand what I am talking about. Not many people realize that it is a small world and life, in many ways is long (and even short, quite a paradox huh !). Focusing on pushing the next outcome by hook or by crook ; steam rolling or humiliating your colleagues may not be the best idea if you take a long term view of things. One should think of choices you would make keeping in mind that you might have something to do with the same person for the next 20 years. With that view in mind would you like to send stinking emails to the person copying senior stakeholders or put them in bad light in a review meeting ? Obviously you want to push for the desired outcome, but when you take a long term view the way you would approach the situation is very different.
The mistake that people make is that they view these as “transactional” relationships rather than ones which span over decades. Comparatively, you would not behave in a similar manner with a higher stake relationship like with a sibling or your spouse. Would you call out their shortcomings in public ? Chances are you wont as you know that you got to live with those people all your life.
So being good with people is just not a “good” deed. It is completely logical if you look at it.
This thought of mine got corroborated even more once I became an entrepreneur. People who run successful businesses and have been doing that for more than a decade are generally people who are “available”. You don’t find them overly busy and neither are they snobbish about not giving their time without any financial benefit.
Successful entrepreneurs who have been able to build growing businesses have been able to do it through what we call “serendipitous relationships”. They offer support and contribution without any agenda in mind, they don’t keep scores. When people demonstrate such behaviour over decades they create huge positive perception about themselves.
Now, as you would agree this is not common behaviour and hence such people become your go to people for high stake requirements. People who you can trust with their integrity, credibility and professionalism. So their good and helpful behaviour comes back to them from all directions.
It is very similar to sowing multiple mango seeds and nurturing them over a considerable period of time. Suddenly you see a huge mango orchard full of juicy mangoes which was a barren field.
Irony is that most people just want to get “one” mango and get it quick. If only they knew that patience , persistence and “being good with people” would be rewarded with the whole mango orchard.
