I'm THE BOSS.......No Questions & No Arguments

When I started my career in 2004 with a small organization, my thoughts on the subject Boss was pretty different. My Boss at that time was Rahul Bose, he was the Design head……Our department was so cool, although there were two more people who use to work along with me, one of them was textile designer & other was product designer. Being my first company, I was always punctual with my timings whereas my other colleagues including my boss were very casual with their timings. I was working as a packaging designer for their overseas & domestic products.  Rahul was pretty cool as a boss as well as a person. Most of the times we all used to sit together & have our morning coffee with the songs of Bryan Adams, Enrique or Robbie Williams on our Media player play list. I had never expected such a cool environment ever.  We had everything in our desktops whether its yahoo messenger, rediff bol, Gtalk.  

I didn’t knew a,b,c,d of the deigns which I got to know while sitting & sharing the feel with them. I never knew how to operate a digital camera, hereafter I became a professional shooter for their product shoots, Rahul taught me some of the tips of clicking the pictures. I got to learn about coral draw from Aneeta & soumen who were my colleagues. We had been to new stores for display of products, I had always dreamt of being a creative person & I think by chance most of those dreams were filled working with these designers. At time of fair, we use to work till late nights & have our dinner together in the nearby restaurants. Lot of credit goes to these designers due to them I believe in better lifestyle.  Months later Rahul left, Aneeta left, Soumen too left. I got alone in the design team, at that time I handled couple of assignments of deisgns which includes Advertisements in Times of India & a small product catalogue. I felt really lonesome & opted to leave this organization.

I Joined John Deere at Pune, when I joined this company few of my friends told me – boy are you crazy, you are joining a tractor company. Are you going to design & develop packaging for Tractors? But still when I decide something I really don’t bother about people. My boss at JD was Mr. Sampath, a very decent man from Chennai, an absolute teacher, guardian & mentor. It was a new learning phase in this company, I got to know about packaging trends in Auto industry, I got to know about SAP working on MM module, I got to know about warehousing and I got to know about Exports & logistics. My Boss kept me busy with loading more & more responsibilities to which I kept accepting all those roles & responsibilities. Living at Pune brought lot of good habits within me – I started reading books, I started going on tracking & bike trips. Things were really good but for personal reasons I planned to leave John Deere & Pune both.  I never wanted to leave this organizaion, but as somebody said – Keep walking so did I.

Here I Joined Eicher at Gurgaon, I am back in NCR (National Capital Region).  Sailesh Srivastava – my new boss, nice man but little strategic & complicated against my previous bosses, It took me little time to adjust with him. I had good learning on job experience from him on handling the customers this really changed my current profile; I became more of a logistics & customer support personal rather than packaging technologist.   I attain little speed in my working with help of him. He too left the organization for certain reasons after a while & here i am all alone again. Now I become Boss.

Being a Boss today, where two –three people reporting to me, I sometime feel very irritating on resolving their concerns, as at times their concerns are very silly & hard to digest. There had been couple of Instance where I can’t bear it all I lose my patience & start shouting.  I think i need to learn about handling subordinates & qualities that make a good boss.

Today sitting patiently I thought of listing down a checklist of qualities that make a good boss:

·         Provide clear direction. An effective manager needs to establish clear goals and standards for people. He must communicate group goals, not just individual goals. He must involve people in setting these goals, and not simply dictate them himself. He must be clear and thorough in delegating responsibility.

·         Encourage open communication. The manager must be candid in dealing with people. He must be honest, direct and to the point.

·         Be willing to coach and to support people. This means being helpful to others, working constructively to correct performance problems and going to bat for subordinates with superiors.

·         Provide objective recognition. The manager must recognize people for good performance more often than criticizing them for performance problems. Rewards must be related to the excellence of job performance, not to seniority or personal relationships.

·         Encourage innovation and new ideas. Employees rate this quality important in even the most traditional or conservative organizations.

·         Learn to be an effective listener. Your employees deserve to be heard when they have concerns. Allow them to finish talking before you speak; do not assume that you know what they are going to tell you before they finish talking; do not form objections in your mind while they are talking. Instead try to be fully engaged while they are talking without making it about your rebuttal. Acknowledge their points, which does not mean that you agree, but does mean that you understand their concerns. Repeat their points in your own words to confirm, if necessary. You may not need to take any action, but hearing them out is important to their sense of empowerment and significance.

·         Be the boss. All these steps may not prevent from you having to assert your ultimate authority at some point. No matter how well your staff is trained or how good your leadership skills become, there will be times when you will have to remind someone that you are the final word on all matters. Being a good boss and empowering your people to make daily decisions does not mean you've abdicated your authority. If you find that someone on your staff is overstepping or has made a mistake, be decisive and firm, act swiftly and don't waffle. This may result in some deflation of that employee, but assuming you allow it to be done with once you've corrected the situation, it should pass quickly.

I am going to put this checklist on my pin-up board soon, all comments & feedbacks are most welcome.

Luv to all my readers

Devu