Reflections of A Professional

Introduction

This paper describes the issues and challenges I have faced as a leader in my career for the past
twenty years or so. I spent the first ten years of my career (right after graduation as a Bachelor of
Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur) primarily in a technical capacity in
assignments outside India. During this period, most of my leadership experiences were mainly at
a personal level. Subsequently I returned to India and, in the next ten years, transitioned through
several leadership roles moving from a technical leader to a project manager, then a department
manager and very recently as a general manager. These roles provided me with learning
opportunities in inter-personal leadership in the course of my interaction with subordinates peers
and bosses. During the time I worked in India, my departmental and organizational
responsibilities and commitments exposed me to leadership situations in managerial and
organizational settings.

In what follows, I try to capture my leadership experience both at a personal/inter-personal level,

and a managerial/organizational level. In my description, I have focussed on real-life situations of
diverse kinds under specific headings to clarify the main issue or challenge I was grappling with.
While most of the paper deals with my own personal experience, there are limited references to
the leadership challenges experienced by others, especially when they affected me deeply.

I have tried to relate some of my experiences to leadership issues mentioned in the limited
literature that I have read on the subject of leadership. The text of the paper is annotated with
these references, where applicable.

Personal/Inter-personal leadership

In what follows, I describe leadership challenges I faced at a personal level, along with those I
experienced while interacting one-on-one with others.

During my initial years as a software engineer working as a consultant on projects in U.S.A.,

_____________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Piyush Dikshit, a participant in the Postgraduate Programme in Software Management has
prepared this case under the guidance of Professor N.M. Agrawal from Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore.

Copy Right, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, August 2001

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I found most of my colleagues deserting their assignments in the middle in order to take up
lucrative positions in American companies that offered to provide them with green cards. I went
through intense soul-searching during that time, struggling with my deeper convictions, which told
me that was not the direction I wished to take, and the compelling arguments of my friends and
relatives, who claimed that I was just being foolish to ignore the opportunities offered. This was a
very difficult time for me, and the answer came from within me, after a lot of introspection. I
decided that I would go for further studies abroad, with full consent from my Indian Company in
the form of a study leave. I was alone in this decision and had to take full responsibility for its
consequences. However, my introspection gave me a very liberating sense of strength and
conviction in the stand I took. Finally, I managed to not only get admission for a Masters degree
in a reputed University, but also became the first employee in my company to go on a leave of
absence (without pay) for further studies. This experience gave me the insight into leadership
being a lonely business, where one has to think for oneself and not get swayed by the flood of
external pressures to do what seems socially comfortable. It involves not only challenging the
beaten path, but also taking a stand arising from a deep introspection, which leads to strong
conviction in ones choice. I must confess, however, that I went through tremendous struggle in
the process of this learning.

After my Masters degree was over, I went back to India to resume my job with the company that
had given me study leave. There was no compulsion on my part to do so, but I was driven by an
inner sense that told me that was the right thing to do. I got married soon after that and was then
sent for yet another foreign assignment. This was the first time my wife was going out of India. I
had strong conviction about settling down in India, but I felt I had to let my wife make a decision
for herself about whether she would prefer the obviously more (physically) comfortable choice of
settling abroad. This was risky business in a lot of ways, but it was also something I felt strongly
about in my conviction that leadership in the inter-personal context is about trust as well as risk-
taking. I had to trust my wife in letting her decide what the right course of action would be for her,
while taking the risk that her choice may well be contrary to mine. In other words, I had to be sure
she chose to settle in India with me, not just because I told her so. It turned out that her conviction
matched mine, but it could easily have been otherwise. In the first few years after marriage, my
wife and I learnt about the importance of both character and competence [1] in the context of
leadership --- the character that comes out of strong conviction, and the competence to retain
perspective in confusing circumstances.

I finally packed my bags and returned to India along with my wife and our two daughters. I did not
have a job when I returned to India, and I chose not to worry about it for another 3 months or so.
This was not because I was being reckless with my career. I made a conscious decision to live

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with my parents during that period --- to let my children get used to some of the relatively harsh
physical realities in India (water problems, electricity problems) in an environment of the un-
paralleled love and affection that is possible only between grandparents and grandchildren. The
investment made at that time paid off handsomely in helping my family to settle down back
home.

Subsequently, I came to Bangalore with just my bio-data in hand, with negligible references. I
walked into software companies, seeking a job that would do justice to my experience and
background as software professional. This was a big struggle for me personally, since I had no
benchmark for what I was looking for in India. I had no idea what kind of position would be right
for me. I just went by my gut-feel and took risk knowing, as in the past, that I would eventually
figure out a way, even if the rest of the world thought I was crazy. It took me almost 3 months to
get the job that I really wanted. But, then, I realized that there are no short cuts to what I was
looking for. Persistence and patience did pay off eventually, and I got a job that appeared to fit
what I was looking for.

Managerial leadership

I had reached the beginning of a career that would take me from technical leadership for a team
of software professionals to managerial leadership for an organization.

While the personal and inter-personal aspects continued to manifest themselves in my newer
roles, I began to see the need for some more aspects required as the leader of a team. The first
task, of course, was to build the team from scratch, using the personal and inter-personal
leadership skills I had acquired.

I realized the importance of selection and deployment of the right people for the right job. While I
continued to value human potential, I began to realize that the key to success in leading a team
was to select and deploy software engineers wisely, based on their strengths. A natural architect
can fail miserably as a designer or programmer. The key is to spot the talent when it presents
itself, and exploit its potential. I had to go through a lot of resumes, looking for the right people in
the selection process. This, again, was a lonely task, and I had to often trust my intuition beyond
what seemed right during the selection process.

I made a serious error in hiring a software engineer at the time, which led to a lot of learning for
me. I realized my mistake when she started delaying her deliverables clearly beyond what was
reasonable. It was a case of mis-judged competence. I became painfully aware of my mistake in
about 3 months --- her answers during the interview had fooled me into believing all that she said.

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I trusted my judgment and did not conduct a reference check for her --- one of the critical
elements of the hiring process. It required tremendous courage to confront this costly error at a
personal level. With the help of my boss, I realized that the only solution was surgery --- I had to
fire her. This was no easy task for me. I went through an extremely anguishing period of about 10
days, taking the blow to my ego, trying to somehow salvage the case. That probably did more
harms than good, and the problem became more acute. Her incompetence started seriously
impacting the whole project and the team along with it. I acted swiftly after that, and could
successfully convince her to leave the organization in about 3 weeks. It taught me the importance
of acknowledging a mistake and responding swiftly to correct it. The cost of mistake made in a
leadership role is many times that in an individual capacity, and it is disastrous to try and
compromise with an obvious mistake and try to salvage it. It is critical to acknowledge the
problem, admit once mistake, and act on it as fast as possible to control the damage. Personal
ego can act as a hidden enemy in that situation and one needs to watch for it.

Retaining software professionals is a very challenging task in todays software industry. While my
experience as a team leader helped me understand the damage caused by hiring and deploying
wrong talent, I soon learnt about the problem of losing good talent. One of the initial engineers I
hired into my team (let us call him Prashant --- not his real name) turned out to be brilliant. His
technical knowledge was excellent, and he was good at working in a team. I think I lost him
because of my desire to be democratic during the annual performance appraisal process. It was
the first time I was trying to do performance appraisal for my team members and a harrowing time
for me. I yielded to the temptation of basically rewarding everybody more or less equally, ignoring
the clearly outstanding contributions of Prashant. He got disgusted with the lack of recognition,
and resigned. It was a terrible loss for me. I had basically de-motivated him to the point of no
return. It made me learn the importance of keeping a valued team members motivated to
continue his outstanding performance. I had begun to take Prashant for granted, and was not
making any explicit efforts of recognizing his talent appropriately.

I learnt about the value of empowerment and delegation in a leadership role a little later than I
should have. I had been an excellent performer in the technical sense, and I had the tendency to
get personally involved in every little detail of any software problem that came up in the projects I
was responsible for. This was partly to satisfy my ego, and partly due to a lack of understanding.
In a team leadership situation, one has to draw upon the skills of every individual in the team.
While it is good to have a doer mentality, a leader fails miserably if he/she tries to do everything
that is remotely challenging. In an introspective dialogue with my manager, I realized my problem
--- I not only told engineers what to do; I was not content until they also followed how I did it. As a
result, I soon became so over-worked that I began to falter technically. I had a capable team that

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was under-performing due to my lack of delegation. I had to learn to let go a bit and acquire the
courage to own full accountability for actions of others, which I do not have full control over. It was
the beginning of my becoming aware of what it meant to be truly responsible for a team. To get
the true synergy out of a team, a leader has to practice the art of empowerment, and define goals
and provide resources, without being prescriptive.

There was another significant learning I got during my struggle with team leadership. I was a very
reasonable person in my previous experiences, and thought that it was always the right thing to
do. In an organization, especially a big one, being reasonable does not always pay. In fact, it may
be disastrous at times. There was a procurement need in one of my projects, where some
hardware equipment needed to be bought. The procurement department was delaying the
procurement for a very long time due to some paper work with customs, and it began impacting
the project after the delay stretched to 6 weeks. All the delays, however, were justifiable and I
went along with my reasonableness theory. The project soon reached a dangerous situation,
where we were about to face a penalty clause. At that point, I became upset, and let loose my
wrath on the procurement manager. The procurement was accomplished in a weeks time. I was
surprised with the result of my so-called unreasonable outburst. It enabled me to learn that
certain situations required being unreasonable at times. While I did this in a reactive mode, it
seems advisable to choose to be unreasonable in a proactive sense in certain situations,
especially in a large organization. If I had done that earlier, the project would not have come to
such a high-risk situation.

I had my first serious brush with a conflict management situation as a team leader soon after I
had been in that role. A couple of members in my team developed serious inter-personal conflicts
and would argue with each other in public, and complain about each other in private at every
possible opportunity. After seeing this behaviour for a while, I asked them to sit down with each
other and try to discuss and resolve their inter-personal issues as mature adults. The mistake I
made was to sit with them during their discussion as an observer. I found myself taking sides
during their discussion, eventually degenerating the whole process into me becoming a judge and
arbitrator of their inter-personal issues. This exacerbated the conflict, instead of reducing it. In
hindsight, I feel I should have trusted them to first try and resolve their issues themselves, and
offered to intervene only if the mutual discussions proved ineffective in that step. Essentially, my
action displayed a lack of trust in their ability to act as mature adults in resolving their conflict, and
it ended up in a disaster.

Performance management is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. I had initial
difficulty with this aspect of my leadership role soon after I took over. I was not able to give

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negative feedback to my team members in a straightforward manner. It was not my lack of
awareness about their weaknesses, but my personal discomfort in telling somebody that he or
she had not performed well. Eventually, I did get over this problem --- but that led to another
problem. I became obsessed with building elaborate development plans for people, and became
very focussed on their weaknesses. In the process, I began ignoring their strengths, almost taking
them for granted. This over-focus on weakness swung the pendulum to the other extreme. I
realized the problem only after a few team members were kind enough to let me know what was
happening to me. That helped me to retain some balance in the process. In hindsight, I feel that
one ought to focus on strengths much more than on weaknesses in managing a persons
performance. Gallops book on this subject [3] illustrates the validity of this approach based on
research data.

It is not very easy for a leader to get feedback from the people who work for him/her. I never
thought about the need to do so, frankly, until the day I participated in a 360-degree feedback
session with my team with the help of an external facilitator. That was an eye-opener for me. My
performance discussions with my supervisor did not provide me with the kind of detailed
information I got from my subordinates. Since that time, I make special efforts to get feedback
from my subordinates during any performance discussion. It must be emphasized, however, that
external facilitation adds a lot of value in making this process effective.

Organizational leadership

During my tenure as a team leader, I could use some of what I learnt about managing inter-
personal relationships to be effective. In an organizational leadership role, however, whole new
sets of skills are required. One has to look far beyond the daily compulsions of managing the
tactical, and worry about strategic issues for long-term survival needs of the organization. One
has also to broaden once horizons considerably and develop the skill of identifying the deep-
rooted underlying patterns in a seemingly confusing array of daily routine.

As a department manager, I have had to bring all my personal and inter-personal learning to the
fore, but it has also required me to go much beyond. I have slowly begun to realize the power and
importance of vision in a sense far deeper than what is needed in a team situation. As part of the
senior management team in an organization, a leader has to be extremely broad in his/her vision,
and provide a high level of energy and passion about critical organizational issues. Without this
passion, it becomes very hard to motivate and inspire people.

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Organization building is a fundamental responsibility of any senior leader. In the dynamic
technology world of today, processes, technologies and teams change at a dizzying pace. A
leader has to continue plugging away, adapting to change in the task of building new processes,
technologies and teams in order to stay competitive. In some cases, the change is external. In
others, it is incumbent to bring about the change by challenging the status quo and acting as a
change-agent. All successful leaders I have come across appear to display a high degree of
discomfort with the existing state of affairs and a very strong urge to influence change that will
move the organization forward. Managed properly, this discomfort provides the right level of
energy and passion to carry out the change.

There is no greater truth than the old maxim about leading by example. This is especially true in
organizational roles, where a thousand eyes watch every public action and gesture of a leader. I
have seen leaders in my own organization who do not walk the talk and that erodes the
confidence people have in them in a very damaging way. I had a supervisor who did a poor job of
conducting regular dialogues with his own subordinates, but talked very passionately about the
importance of doing so. There were a lot of corridor talks where I found people ridiculing him in a
very cynical manner. Leadership is tough business and one has to be very careful about not
preaching what one cannot practice.

It is incredible how layers in an organization prevent sharing and communication. The importance
of so-called flat organizations, especially in the knowledge industry, cannot be over-
emphasized. Despite formal communication meetings that are held regularly in my organization,
there is a lot that does not get shared. The lack of communication --- both horizontal and vertical
--- shows up in various ways, leading to duplicated efforts and lack of synchronization. This leads
to a lot of frustration among people. A recent example of this was a change initiative that was
started in my organization (seeking technology proposals for new opportunities), which was
communicated through a mail, sent to all employees. It was amazing to discover how few people
knew about the initiative, when, even after 2 months of its initiation did not yield enough result.
The only lesson I have learnt in this context is that over-communication is better than insufficient
communication. Besides, some people may be able to pick up information through email, but
many more prefer spoken or more informal methods of sharing. A leader has to look out for ways
and means to ensure that adequate communication is happening in the organization, through
formal, informal and semi-formal forums.

The senior management team in any organization wields a lot of influence over its strategies and
growth. The team does consist of people, however, and people do not always agree. I discovered
the principle of 60% consensus but 100% buy-in through the following situation --- the Managing

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Director of our organization looked at the financial health of the company and decided to
postpone the annual salary increase by a couple of months. It was a tough measure that was not
going to be popular with employees. There were a few people in the senior management team
who were not supportive of this view. We had long and serious arguments about it in staff
meetings. Finally, it was decided to go ahead with the cost-cutting measure, and all of us were
asked to communicate this to our respective teams. A standard communication package was also
provided for this purpose, and we were given two weeks to complete the communication. There
was a town-hall meeting held by the Managing Director after two weeks of making this decision in
the senior management meeting, to address any concerns that still remained in the minds of
employees. In that town-hall meeting, there was a whole barrage of questions and the MD ended
up repeating most of what was already in the communication package. This was most frustrating
for him, as well as to a few of the senior managers. A subsequent discussion revealed that the
problem stemmed from the lack of conviction with which some of the managers had
communicated the decision. It was amazing how much that mattered to the effectiveness of the
communication. All managers used the same presentation. The only difference was that some
believed in what they were presenting, while others did not. This was a very significant learning
for all of us and displayed the importance of putting a single face to the organization and giving
full-hearted support to a decision (despite strong personal disagreement with it) once it was
made.

I have been responsible for a whole variety of businesses and initiatives in my organization
through the years. I have had varying degrees of success in each of the roles I have played. I
also found it hard to deal with the uncertainty and doubt that prevailed in my mind at every
change of responsibility. The hardest part, in each case, was to detach myself from an initiative or
cause I had championed, and move on to the next one. I am also certain that some of the more
successful initiatives would not have gone anywhere if I had not spent so much time and energy
into making them succeed. This attach-detach phenomenon is something any leader needs to
get used to. While one is responsible for an activity, one needs to put heart and soul into it, but
once somebody else takes over, one has to have the ability to quickly detach oneself from it. In
cases where I was not able to detach myself, it was counter-productive, and led to confusion and
lack of direction in the teams. The only way to make an impact and leave a legacy (an important
measure of leadership success) is to practice the attachment-detachment doctrine (which is, in
fact, taught by Geetha).

The other significant aspect of growth and movement across roles is the need for a leader to
grow other leaders. This is needed both for building a successful organization, and for personal
growth of a leader. The strong attachment to an existing job gives a leader a sense of discomfort

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and insecurity in growing successors who can do the job as well as him. Ironically, however, this
same factor comes in the way of his own personal growth out of that role. I can say with pride that
I have been able to grow a few leaders in my own organization. It required several characteristics
to make it happen --- a lot of trust in others, tolerance of their mistakes, unselfishness in giving up
what I felt strongly was only mine, and a strong ability to empower others. No organization growth
and long-term survival is possible, however, without a strong focus on growing the future leaders
of the organization.

Finally, I would like to bring home the importance of balance in a leaders life. After joining the
management course at IIM Bangalore, I have to balance home, work and study related
responsibilities like never before. The only way to do this, I believe, is to be in constant touch with
the highest priorities in each role and manage ones time to deliver those. It requires a great
degree of planning and execution maturity to ensure that the right level of balance is maintained
in ones life. I have been guilty of ignoring my home, work and study at different times in the past
couple of years. There is no silver bullet here, I find, and the struggle gets very tough at times. I
do not have any magic formula or maxim to help me, apart from emphasizing the need to writing
down my commitments and reviewing them regularly, keeping track of dynamic changes as best I
can. My work-home-study balance got worse every time I stopped tracking them formally.

Conclusion

This paper dealt with some of the leadership issues and challenges I have faced in the course of
my personal and professional life. I cannot say I have always managed all the leadership
opportunities I got in the best possible way. The focus, I believe, needs to be more on learning
from those opportunities, and that, I believe is the true mark of a great leader --- the ability to
extract learning from the myriad of situations offered in daily life and share it with others --- thus
benefiting not just oneself, but also society at large, especially its future leaders.

References
1. Principle centered leadership by Stephen Covey, Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1992
2. Leadership secrets of Attila the Hun by Wess Roberts, Bantom Books, 1989
3. First break all the rules by Gallop, 2000