“Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained and Loyalty is returned.”

We do get a lot of whatsapp messages every day wishing us good morning and also sharing with us some interesting quotes or videos. Many of the these quotes give me ideas to write blogs. Someone asked me as to how I get ideas every week. Apart from my own reflection and insights, I get a lot of ideas from such sources and also from my interactions with people at all levels.

As a HR professional for life, I have had the privilege of interacting and learning from all levels of employees. These interactions were also a great source of ideas. The above quote on respect, honesty, trust and loyalty helped me to distinguish the four concepts.

Let us first understand “Respect”. In the early stage of our lives, we may respect our parents, elders and teachers out of fear or due to consequences associated with non adherence. But, as we grow up in life, we respect people, who earn their respect.

We may not necessarily respect a senior at work. A senior colleague earns respects through his actions and not his words. When leaders walk their talk, they earn respect. When there is no gap between what they say and what they do, they earn respect. We may wish a senior colleague in a formal way ,but that may not necessarily mean, we respect them.

As kids, we are taught in school and college to be honest in all dealings. Our parents and teachers almost spend their lifetime, trying to inculcate this value of honesty in us. We do appreciate the value of honesty but sometimes, when we see successful people around us, who are dishonest, we start questioning if this value of honesty is worth living.

After we go through the ups and downs in life and if we have pursued a path of honesty ,we realise that we are always appreciated for our honesty. I have never missed a good sleep at night ,since I have been honest in my profession ,right through my life. Further, union leaders always appreciated honest officers and I experienced this right from the beginning of my career. when, even senior corrupt officers were being gheraoed on an issue, the union leaders always appreciated us for our honesty and hence always kept us away from gheraos and other forms of coercive protests.

The most expensive thing in the world is Trust. It can take years to earn and a matter of seconds to lose it. Trust is gained through our, day to day actions. Parents, teachers or elders gain trust of the youngsters, when they see them practising ,before they preach. Trust is never gained through words or speeches. It is always gained through our explicit actions. It takes years to earn trust ,but may be seconds to lose it. A politician may have earned the trust of his voters and won multiple elections but when he is convicted in a corruption scandal, the years of trust is lost in minutes.

Lastly, loyalty is always returned. An employee, who is well taken care by any organisation, never wants to leave because of loyalty and wants to return the good will, through her service to the organisation. A player never leaves a team, if taken care of , during good and bad times and continues to be loyal to the team.

Let us learn to distinguish respect, honesty, trust and loyalty from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

1st July 2025

I have always believed that our reputation travels ,before we arrive at any place. Once, while I was changing jobs, I had to move from one city to another. As I arrived at the new city, I was invited by our Union for an introduction meeting. The Union President informed me that we are aware of your personality before you have physically joined us.

I was surprised. They told me that my reputation of being an employee champion and stickler for fairness, in all my decisions, had reached their organisation ,before I had joined them. I promised them that I will try my best ,to live up to that reputation.

It is a fact that our reputation travels by air ,while we may most likely travel by train or by road. The fact is that our actions speak louder than our words. This directly implies ,that our actions have carried our reputation before we have physically arrived ,in any situation.

In today’s world of social media, our reputation travels at supersonic speed. Just as organisations may track our social media profile to check on our credentials, our team members may track us too, to understand how good a leader we are.

Today the world is fully connected. We are connected by social media and all our business needs also happen through the net. This makes our credentials more transparent than ever before. Even a bank looks at our CIBIL ( Credit Information Bureau Limited) score ,before approving any of our banking requirements ,since all our financial transactions are online and are measured in the form of a CIBIL score, which is transparent.

Life is no different. Even in the past, our reputation always travelled before we arrived. A simple experience would be, in social circles, children would flock with adults, who were fun to spend time with. If they found you to be grumpy or short tempered and have heard stories about you that way, they would avoid you ,rather than spend their valuable time with you.

I am passionate about driving ,since my early adulthood. So my friends’ children always preferred to sit in my car, whenever we went for a picnic together. The reason was simple. My reputation of being a fast and safe driver had reached them before they entered my car or even decided that they wanted to travel with me.

It is equally applicable in organisations. If team members were given a choice to choose their leader, they would all have some people in their mind ,as their reputation of being inspirational ,would have reached even before they joined that organisation. On the other hand, if we are known to be demotivating leaders, most team members may be reluctant to join us ,unless they have no alternatives.

The realisation that our reputation always travels faster than us ,has to be sooner than later in life. If we are conscious of this basic tenet in life, our actions will build our reputation and we have nothing to worry. On the contrary, if we think our position can help build our reputation, we may be mistaken. People respect great people and not the positions they hold.

Let us build our reputation through our actions from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

1st April 2025

In India and especially in the middle class, there is a lot of emphasis on academic accomplishments. Most parents want their children to study in the best schools and academic institutions and evolve as a professional. Till sometime back, many parents wanted their children to become doctors or engineers, as they could not imagine any other profession, which could make their kids successful.

I would like to dwell on how educational qualifications impact our careers. Having worked in the corporate sector in reputed organisations, I can state with experience ,that our educational qualifications ,can only take us to the gates of an organisation.

Once you enter the precincts of any organisation, nobody remembers where you studied from and what your qualifications are. We are assessed and recognised ,for the value we bring to the table, in whatever function we work.

The best of academic institutions can enable you to be shortlisted and interviewed in an organisation and you may be even get selected. But if we do not add value and behave well, we may not perform, commensurate to the qualifications we hold ,from the best institutions.

I am not stating here ,that one need not pursue their academic qualifications from the best academic institutions in India or abroad. What I am saying is that just acquiring a qualification ,is not good enough for us to be successful in our careers or even in our lives.

Having worked in the Human Resources function and been part of thousands of performance appraisals in my career ,I can authentically state ,that the best academic qualifications, may not take us far ,unless we display exemplary behaviour, are willing to be a learner for life and grounded in all our actions.

The best professionals I have met in my life ,have these in common. They may or may not have passed out from the most reputed academic institutions ,but they are life long learners, great team players and humility personified.

I used to jokingly state to my employees ,that we all need to leave our academic qualifications ,at the entry gate of the organisation, we work for. What we need to focus while we are at work ,is our performance, value addition and most importantly our behaviour towards colleagues, customers and suppliers cutting across hierarchies.

Most employees love to work with inspiring leaders and not necessarily with those, who have graduated from top notch universities. This is because ,they may not even know where their leaders have studied from. What they experience everyday in their work life ,is the interactions of their leaders with them and how they treat them.

Let me reiterate ,what I said earlier. Kindly do not get me wrong. All of us need to try our best ,to get into the most prestigious academic institutions ,in our country. But what I am stating is that the best educational qualifications are not enough ,to be highly successful in our careers. Our behaviour on and off the workplace ,makes all the difference.

Let us grow in our careers through our behaviour rather than depend on our qualifications alone.

S Ramesh Shankar

5th Feb 2025