Culture & Leadership Series · Episode 1 January 2018 4 min read

Three Things I Learnt About Leadership... Episode 1

Three things that I learnt at my very first job and from the same person, which shaped the way I think of leadership.

I was a fresher out of college, and after spending a very brief amount of time in training in the corporate headquarters, we were posted to the Delhi office.

It was one fine evening, when I reached office after a long day of meetings in the sultry Delhi weather. I was a big hungry so I grabbed a patty from a shop just outside our office, and sat on the pavement while eating. Our office building was on the main road, so where I was actually sitting was the edge of a footpath.

The chairman of the company (who used to sit in the corporate headquarters) was visiting Delhi and he came out of the building. I am not sure of the reason why he came out, but we saw each other. I remembered that all the trainees has a brief session with him in our orientation. This is the point from where the surprises started.

😮 He called me by my name and asked what was I doing. This was the first surprise, as the company was more than 5000 people strong and I was a new joiner. The chairman knowing my name was already a big thing for me.

😯 As I was getting up, he asked me to keep sitting. He took off his coat, put it on his arms and came and sat with me (on the broken footpath) and asked for a share of the patty that I was having.

🚶 He kept sitting with me for a while till I finished eating and then together we walked back to the office.

A group of Indian professionals leaning over a table together... everyone pointing at the same documents, no hierarchy visible in their body language... the feeling of a team working with each other rather than for each other — An organisation is a unit working together, with defined responsibilities for everyone and no person's job is less or more critical than other.

I learnt two things that day,

Lesson One

Know who work 'for' you

This instantly builds a rapport. You may not know everything, but may be just the name is enough

Lesson Two

Understand that people work 'with' you and not 'for' you

Make people feel equal. An organisation is a unit working together, with defined responsibilities for everyone and no person's job is less or more critical that other.

How this shaped me

Each day I strive my best to 'know' each of the people who work 'with' me to build a team that works like a 'trust based unit'.

Coming next → Episode 2 How I learn to 'trust' employees and why it benefitted.