It was the Festival of Lights today morning in India. One of my young colleagues messaged me that she was upset and wanted to share something. She felt guilty that she may spoil my festival day. I encouraged her to share since I as a leader learn more by listening to others.

She then explained how she was upset with some leaders, who behave rudely and treat her very badly. She further enquired if I could write on how to cope with such bully leaders at work. I listened to her patiently and she appeared relieved. I thanked her for giving me yet another idea to write a blog on a subject, which may help youngsters to cope.

I have come across leaders right through my career, who have thrive on bullying others. Their behaviour is atrocious and the less said about it the better. However, the interesting thing is that such leaders do not realise how much their behaviour and language impacts others. They think they can get away with such behaviour right through their career.

Some of them also think that if they are successful in their career or competent in their field of operation, they have the license to behave rudely with others. This is neither true nor desirable. Every leader needs to realise that their rudeness will not get them anywhere. While they can get away with their ill behaviour with their team members, it does catch up with them at some stage of their career.

I have always believed that while we can build competence in people, it is difficult to change behaviours. It is important for all of us to realise that our behaviour defines our personality. People do not remember our functional competence but always remember the way we made them feel. The earlier we realise this, the better it is for us to grow and evolve as a respected leader.

It is important for organisations to focus on leadership behaviours. Many organisations are willing to tolerate bad behaviour of leaders if they are able to deliver on their results. This may harm the organisation more in the long run than they may realise. While nobody would like to work with such leaders, their results are also not sustainable in the long terms since their poor behaviour will come in the way some time or the other in their career.

The damage Bully leaders can cause on their team members is irreparable. While a physical injury can get cured, a mental blot does not go away so easily. Such leaders impact the confidence of their team members. Their behaviour ruins their self esteem and in turn demoralises them. It is for senior leaders and HR in every organisation to keep an eye of such leaders and deal with their behaviour immediately. The earlier we correct their behaviour, the better it is for them and for their team members.

One of the questions asked is – “how to cope with such leaders ?”. While we may not be able to avoid such leaders, since many of us cannot choose our bosses, we can learn to cope with them. It is important to give feedback to such leaders privately and in a polite and firm manner that their behaviour is demoralising. It may be worthwhile to speak to your HR partner so that they can help these leaders by giving feedback on behalf of employees. It may also help to keep a social distance from theses leaders and not participate very actively in their projects. This will be a good sign for such leaders that many team members are not keen to work with them and hopefully this will also be a significant feedback to them.

Another important lesson I have learnt is that it is easier to change our behaviour rather than trying to change others. We need to learn to be courteous to such leaders but at the same time make it clear in a polite way that rude behaviour is not acceptable to us. It may be easier said than done. But, in life, the most difficult challenges are this way. We need to learn to catch the bull by the horns or else the bulls will continue to rampage our lives and we may be the losers.

Lastly, it is important to realise that all of us are also leaders in our own right. We need to learn only the good things from such leaders. After all everyone has some good qualities. If we learn how to bully others, it may harm us more than help us. We need to learn that bullying as a leader is neither an acceptable trait nor a desirable one.

If leaders behave this way, there is no difference between a bullying monkey and the leader’s behaviour. I would rather say that comparing such leaders with the monkey may be an insult to the monkey.

It is time to stand up to such behaviour and have “zero tolerance” just like we would do to company values like ethics, safety and compliance.

Time to start is now, not even today.

S Ramesh Shankar

14th Nov 2020

In my view the one quality, which each one of us have to continually to develop is our ability to listen. We are used to listening to noise all around us. We need to learn to listen to silence. Listening is different from hearing. Most of the time we tend to hear. Active listening means understanding what is said, what is not said but meant and how it is said. This includes the verbal and non verbal behaviour of people.

I was a poor listener in the beginning of my life. As I grew up, I am developing the art of listening. Although it is a continuous journey, I believe it is a useful skill to invest in. One can never believe you have mastered the art of listening. It’s a life long journey to learn this art. But, one can experience the benefits of listening as you learn to develop it. You realise that you learn more as you listen more.

Most of us have a penchant for speaking. We get a kick listening to our own voice. In this process, we do not realise what we miss. Imagine going on a morning walk in a beautiful forest and listening to the birds. If we listen actively, we can smell , hear and feel nature all around us. On the other hand, many of us are busy with our mobile phones messaging others or talking on the phone while we are walking in the forest. This deprives us of a wonderful opportunity to connect with nature and listen to the beautiful melodies of the birds around us.

It is equally true in an organisational context. We as leaders have a tendency to express ourselves and want our teams to listen to us always. We are reluctant to listen to our colleagues and happily interrupt conversations to make our point. We get irritated when interrupted by our team members but feel it as a matter of right to do so ourselves. This way we do not realise how much we miss out on the invaluable views of our team members on different issues.

I was recently on a vacation. The silence of the forest in front of me taught me more than the noise of the cities. It taught me lessons on listening more than any course I could have attended. We get a lot of valuable inputs everyday from people around us. But we lose out most of it due to our poor listening skills. We either do not listen to them or cut them off just to make our own points.

Even if we reflect in our family environment, the scenario is not very different. We as parents want our children to listen to us all the time. I should admit as mothers are better listeners than most fathers. This may be more true especially when mothers spend time with their children. Children are inquisitive and have more questions than answers. Most of the time we tend to shut them up since we do not have the patience to listen to their curiosity.

It is time challenge ourselves. It is time to learn to listen to the silence around us. A morning walk in the woods or the garden. A quiet time listening to your favourite music. A digital detox of keeping away from our mobile phones may help us to listen better. Learning from the active listening in our family, friends or office colleagues may also be a good exercise to undertake.

While admiring the sunset over the ocean, while you can listen to the waves, you can also listen the silence of nature as in the picture above.

Listening is an art or a science ? Either way, we need to learn and practise it every day. We should not spend time debating whether it is an art or a science. We should spend time learning to listen from all the people around us who are better than us in this skill.

Let us start today.

S Ramesh Shankar

Love is the blood of life. It is to be experienced to be understood. One cannot express love in words easily. One can share feelings of love or experiences of love with others. Love has many forms as experienced by all of us. Let us examine love from various experiences in our cycle of life.

A child experiences love of the mother without even an exchange of a word. It could be sign or even touch, which makes the child feel love. The mother knows when a child is happy or sad. She can feel the emotions of her kid like no other human being can in her life.

As the child grows up as a kid, she is loved by everyone in the family. The young child loves her parents for some things and her siblings for other things. These expressions of love can be in the form of comforts in life or even a small help or favour. A pat on the back could be considered as an expression of love for the child.

Now the child grows up into an adolescent and love has a different meaning to him. He is attracted to the opposite sex and relates more to physical touch and feel. He lives in a world of fantasy and dreams of love in various forms in his life. He takes the love of parents and siblings for granted and is willing to sacrifice everything to win over the girl in his life.

As you grow into a young adult, this romanticised form of love grows more realistic. You start your work life and look at colleagues at work as partners to success. You do not live in a dream world. Your feet settles on the ground and want to make a mark in life and work and love is secondary at this stage of life.

Once settled at work, you plan to settle in life. Now one looks for a partner in life. The criteria for an ideal partner goes beyond physical looks and transcends to emotional and compatibility needs. You are willing to take your time to search for your ideal partner and are not in a great hurry. Love is a journey and not a destination in life.

Now you are married and consider your spouse as your equal. Each of us want to be an ideal partner and expect the same from the other. We try to put our best foot forward and live in a honey moon period till love lasts. As the feelings of love fades, we start finding fault with each other and do everything possible to find fault in our partner. It takes courage and humility of either of us to admit our mistakes and move on in life.

We then have kids and settle down in life. Our children bridge the ever growing gap of love between us and we get closer to each other – thanks to the bonding with our children. We realise our mistakes as we grow older and are willing to compromise and support each other at this stage of life. Love seems to connect us all over again as partners.

Our children finish their education and move on to their independent lives. The empty nest syndrome sets in and we realise that we need each other more than ever before. Love gets redefined at this stage of life. It is much more than physical. It is emotional, social and psychological bonding between us. We learn to support each other to experience love.

Love is cyclic. We almost become kids again as our grand children arrive in our lives. It is to be experienced to be believed. These tiny tots light up our emotions all over again. The child in us is re kindled as it had got buried deep inside us as adults.

It is time to experience love in every phase of life. Live and enjoy love as it evolves.

Love happens, it is never planned.

S Ramesh Shankar

25th June 2018