Beyond Transactional

Leadership is simple it’s us who make it complex.

Beyond providing direction, leading change & dozens of other stuffs that leadership theories define, I would rather boil down leadership to basically caring for your team.

A good leader is someone who clears the hurdles so that the team can go about doing their job to the best of their abilities.

Let me illustrate with 2 random incidents that I encountered in my professional life that taught me:

‘To grow as a leader, management skills alone not sufficient and there must be something beyond’.

Let’s peekaboo. 

Understanding the team outside the scope of work:

Sometime back in 2012 when I joined a small Indian IT firm as a project manager, I started with a one on one to get to know the team members. After a few uneventful discussions, I was suddenly perturbed by a response of one of the team members when I casually asked him “how are you doing?” He responded “you were the first one in this office to ask me how I am doing, the usual question is what you’re doing?” That day I learnt leadership cannot be just transactional. It is leader’s responsibility and team’s expectation that a leader has to understand the team member as a person, outside of his/her scope of work. 

Being empathetic earns team loyalty:

This was some 8 years ago when I just transitioned from Individual contributor to leading a team. It was around 9 pm when I was done with the work & about to leave for the day. I noticed one of my team members was still in office fighting to solve some bugs. Since there was no one around in the team, I went up to him for a small chat and eventually stayed back till he was done with the work. I also extended the courtesy by dropping him near to his place on my way. To my pleasant surprise, his attitude had changed positively towards the work and me after this incident. This event has etched in my mind, because I learnt that day as a leader it’s my responsibility to care for my team. 

In summary,

1. As a leader, I can earn the respect that is deserved by caring for my team

a. by treating the team members as humans and not just as hardware/software resources

2. To earn the loyalty of a team member, as a leader, I’ve to be more than just transactional

a. The team crave that their leader understands them as a person outside of work and interact with them accordingly

To sum it up in Grace Hopper’s words…

“Leadership is a two-way street. Respect for one’s superiors; care for one’s crew.”