A young aspiring professional called me up early morning today.  He looked very much worked up.  When I asked him for the reasons for his anxiety, he explained how some of his seniors were taking away all the credit for the hard work he puts in at work every day.

This is not an uncommon situation especially for youngsters starting their career in an organisation.  Interestingly, you see and experience this phenomenon in all professions.  Today, it is easy for me to write about it and share my views.  When I went through the same experience, it was one of the biggest challenges at the beginning of my career.

When you experience it as a young professional, you feel betrayed.  You feel frustrated and sometimes feel like bashing up the senior who takes away all the credit for your hard work.  As you grow up in the organisation , you realise that you are not alone to face this type of challenge.  It is faced by many and almost in all professions.  A senior lawyer may win a case based on the arguments and efforts of his junior and take all the credit for the victory.  A senior doctor may do the same while treating a patient.

In organisations, we see senior leaders taking the credit for presentations made to other stakeholders, which were never prepared by them.  Sometimes, they take the credit for articles never written by them.  While it makes you feel bad, it is not uncommon to say the least.

The question is how do you deal with it in your career, when it happens to you.  At the first instance, it may be a good idea to vent out your feelings to someone  near and dear to you.  This may make you feel lighter and better after this bitten experience in your career.

Then you need to settle down and realise that you are not alone.  It is important not to get distracted by such phenomenon.  I remember an incident when a senior of mine tried to present my case in front of the Chief Executive in one of the organisations I worked.  He was trying to take the credit for my work in front of the CEO.  However, when the CEO asked a few clarifications on the case, he had to call me in and he was embarrassed when the CEO asked if I had prepared the case.

We always need to believe that “Excellence” is a journey and never a destination.  The leaders who try to take the credit for the work of their juniors have limitations and they do expose their limitations by such frivolous behaviour.  They get exposed sooner than later when they make this a habit to take credit for others ‘ work.

As  I said earlier, it is not easy to deal with a situation like this especially when you experience this yourself in the beginning of your career.  As you grow up in your career, you realise that people can take credit for your work but can never take away your value to the organisation.  Each individual brings a certain value and this can never be stolen by others.

This nature of some leaders to take credit for others’ work reflects their limitation rather than yours.  They get exposed sooner than later in front of other employees or other stakeholders.  One does not need to put in any extra efforts to expose them since they expose themselves because of the lack of depth in the subject they take credit for others’ work. Of course, the time taken for them to be exposed may vary and this could add to the frustration of employees.  But my experience teaches me that it happens sooner than you believe as long as you are willing to always give your best and let them expose themselves in the process.

As in the photo above, while a captain can take away the credit for his team’s victory, everybody in the team and even the spectators know who deserves the credit for that win.

I would continue to focus on excellence and let these impostors expose themselves rather than waste my energy and time trying to figure out why they do so. I would want to focus on my strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Let us always remember that “Mediocrity will never recognise Excellence”.

S Ramesh Shankar

27th May 2020

“Face is the index of the mind” is an an old saying. It is more than true. There is a lot of research to confirm that more than 70% of human communication happens through non verbal means. This means our expressions speak more than our words.

The best opportunity to learn from expressions is from the kids. They can express the entire spectrum of emotions of the human kind in more ways than one. None of us need to learn to speak to a child to understand their emotions. However, as we grow up we tend to forget to express ourselves

Alternatively, we are conditioned by the environment around us and our own belief systems that expressing oneself is immature or childish. In my view, this may be the beginning of the end of joy in our lives. A child emotes without any reason. Children express in every way they can. Emoting oneself appropriately not only may secrete good hormones in the body but keeps you happy always.

If we look back, our childhood was the best period of our lives, when we unconditionally expressed ourselves. As we grow into an adolescent , we tend to restrain ourselves, which then results in rebellious behaviour. Growing into an adult we stop emoting altogether. We think it is not mature enough to share our emotions with others.

The “adult” in us over rules the child. Every time we feel like laughing, crying or screaming, we regulate our behaviour to try to do the opposite. This may sometimes end up in awkward reactions in different situations. For eg. we may laugh when we are supposed to cry or the other way around. This is because the world around us conditions us on what is right and what is wrong.

The right and wrong emotions are not determined by our heart as it should normally be but how people react around us. If people may laugh at our crying, then we do not. If someone objects to our laughing we tend it to keep it ourselves.

We need to challenge ourselves. We need to live our emotions the way we want to. People who emote unconditionally are the people who have no blood pressure. If we forget to share our emotions, we may forget to cry, laugh or get angry.

If we condition ourselves too much, we may to tend to contradict ourselves. Our emotions will not reflect our true feeling inside. This may be easily be misunderstood and we may end up in conflicts with others around us.

It is time to rekindle the child in us. It is time to express ourselves the way we want to. Let us not be be guided by the reactions of others. Let us be guided by our own gut feelings. We need to learn to be true to ourselves. This may be the best way to live life fully.

Let us interact with children around us and learn from them. It is never too late to learn. Every child can teach us to live life the way we need to live. So what if we have forgotten the basics of life. It is time to look back to move forward sometimes.

Let us learn to express ourselves.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th Oct 2020

One of my seniors taught me early in my career that I should speak in “first person singular” and encourage others to do so. When he first told me so, I was perplexed as to why he was saying this. It took me sometime to digest this simple message and then internalise it.

His advise was that I should take responsibility for what I am saying and doing and hence I should speak in first person singular and never in third person. We generally tend to speak in third person and blame the world for all the wrongs we have done or are experiencing in life.

If we look a bit within, we realise that we need to take responsibility for our lives and cannot blame the world for our state of affairs. While it may be difficult to understand and assimilate this simple axiom in life, it is worth learning it as we go along in our life and career.

Today I strongly believe that my state of affairs are all because of my actions or in-actions as the case may be. If I am successful in life, I can take the credit for my hard work apart from a bit of luck favouring me. If I fail, I equally have to take the blame and not pass it on to anyone else around me.

In organisations, it is quite common to see many leaders taking the credit for their team’s success and blaming their team members for their failure. A true leader will always do the other way around. She or he will take the blame for the team’s failure and credit the success to the team.

Another interesting dimension in the organisational context is to enable employees to speak for themselves. I also learnt this simple truth from one of my seniors. He had told me that we need to encourage employees to speak for themselves. Let them come to us and ask a hundred times -“ Why I cannot be promoted ? “ or “Why my increment is low ?” . This is fine and should be encouraged. However, the moment they ask “Why I cannot be promoted when X has been promoted ?”, they should be reprimanded. We need to tell them that they have every right to speak for themselves and not for others. When they speak for others, it is gossip and that needs to be discouraged. This is the culture building in organisations. It was an invaluable lesson in my career.

This simple truth can be extended to family and life in general. We need to encourage our children to come to us and complain about issues they face themselves and not about others. The moment we are able to establish and internalise this simple truth, our life will be happier and it will be easy to deal with issues both within the family and in society in general.

We can extend this simple principle to states and even nations at large. Every state can ask the centre as to why they have got less allocation of funds or why they have not got more central projects etc ? The moment a state compares itself with another state and then demands more grants etc, it needs to be pulled up.

Life is all about taking responsibility. We need to take full ownership for our lives and be accountable for the efforts and the results will follow. If we blame the world for our failures, nobody is going to listen to us and we will continue to be a failure in life.

As in the photo above, I need to take responsibility for not only how I look but for all my actions.

Let me resolve today that I take responsibility for my life and cannot blame the world or anyone else for my success and failure.

S Ramesh Shankar

29th April 2020