It's the Environment, Stupid

In one of his stupendous pieces of work “The Biology of Belief” one of my favorite author Bruce H. Lipton says that It’s not about the cell itself which is the only cause of its sickness, but its sickness or abnormality is contingent on the environment it is surrounded with. He refers to the campaign manager of Bill Clinton, James Carville, who got famous for his blunt statement “It’s the economy, Stupid”. Bruce is a famous biologist who talks conspicuously on beliefs and their origin and how to modify them. The crux of this very chapter in his book is, he stresses more on the environment a cell survives, if the latter one is conducive to cell’s growth and health, the cell not only survives but also thrives normally. But if the environment is sickening, the cell can not stay healthy despite of its healthy genes and other matters inside. Extrapolate it to the full human beings who are made of trillions of cells, if the surround environment of the body and mind is malicious and malady causing, the human body it invariably affected in all negative ways.

Leadership in any organization is solely responsible for building the environment of the workplace. The atmosphere of any corporate is majorly dependent on the temperament of its leader. If the leader allows the thriving and growing mindset to development and takes appropriate actions to build and grow that atmosphere, the organization witnesses the expected height and success in its lifespan. On the contrary if the leader is obdurate in teasing, shouting and disparaging the teams, despite of having a good mindset the team is destined to mental trauma and disappointment leading to low and negligible productivity. And finally, the exodus of good employees takes place.

Why do some leaders behave inimically to their teams?

In my entire career till now I have worked closely with few leaders whose decision could make or break the organizations. Most of them were really conscious of their teams’ sentiments yet some of them also gave me life lessons on how to not exercise your leadership. It was never the case that all of them were highly qualified as far as their academics were concerned but all of them possessed the traits of leadership in one or the other way.

Since this article is more about environment, let understand why some leaders create the non-friendly or inimical atmosphere around them so as to intimidate their team. What I observed is narrowed down to 3 major points on their very behavior

1.?????How was their first leader and what did they learn from him/her?

2.?????How did they succeed in their career path?

3.?????What helped them to come out from trying situations?

Let's learn this from the real story of two leaders (Mahesh and Suresh)

Mahesh joined the industry (pharmaceuticals sales) when he was studying in the final year of his graduation course. He was picked up by his recruiting manager for his readiness to learn based on his interview. The manager absorbed him and started training him for the job. Mahesh leant the selling skills, meeting customers in a proper and designed way, dealing with distributors and becoming a good team player.

Over a period of time, due to his eagerness to learn more and lead a team he was promoted as a manager and later on to the top in management. This, then young, man learnt empathy, listening skills, assessing the situation from different perspectives and many more managerial temperaments from his helping and accommodating manager and he developed himself just as a replica of his kind, effective yet result oriented professional. He now owns a big team and each member of his team is happily guided time to time to achieve all organizational objective. He created an atmosphere of mutual support and 360-degree cooperation with his team. His team hails him for his approach and seldom people left him during his till now stint.

Now get into the deeply infected behavior of Suresh. Suresh also started his career with one of the leading FMCG company. Suresh is much more at a higher academic achievement than Mahesh. Suresh’s first exposure to his boss started with the frightening reprimands to his team. The very first day Suresh was made to get acquainted with loads of abusive words, various techniques of scolding team mates, inciting the team with creating lower self-respect in them and trading on their insecurity feelings. People continued with Suresh’s manager due to financial, family or age compulsions.

Suresh was resilient enough and within few years of his starting the job, he was promoted to a managerial position. By now Suresh had understood that if he wanted to be successful as a leader he has to abuse people, find faults in them, insult them quite often so that they can not come close to his and he maintained his aggressive image in the teammates’ minds. Today Surest is sitting at top of the management position and his experience witnesses the winning outcomes because he happened to be rude, rustic and abusive to his teams. Now Suresh is continuing his behavior and climbing up the corporate ladder consistently.

Outcome of two types of environment lead by the leaders

The major difference in Mahesh’s and Suresh’s situation is Mahesh does not need to struggle for finding good people in his team. The people who joined him even 10 years ago are still continuing under his leadership. Some of them are now leaders themselves. Very few changed their jobs, but just to become leaders in some other organizations due to immediate paucity of leadership positions at the very time they asked for.

Suresh is monetarily an epic success but he never is able to have a good team under him. He is constantly facing the scarcity of good employees and keeps complaining about this. Suresh has grown querulous about employees’ attitude and lack of effectiveness. He keeps insulting, downsizing and belittling his teammates and their efforts. Very few employees who are emotionally stronger than others and don’t bother about his daunting demeanor, are continuing with him. Rest of the staff keeps getting replaced every now and then.

Mahesh understood that it is invariably important to encourage, motivate and appreciate his team to bring the best within themselves. He has a good rapport in the market and people are always eager to join him whenever there are any relevant openings in his organization. Suresh has a bad image in the market. Only people who do not have any other option with them, join Suresh temporarily and change their job the moment they find the good place to change from the current organization.

What worked for the leader in past has a great impact on his approach

Mahesh learnt various skills from his manager and was absolutely poised to be confident that these skills will work for him too. He learnt many newer skills too in order to embrace latest approaches and kept himself updated. His new approach with empathy and team welfare fetched him enormous benefits. He is fully convinced that his leadership style of making an amicable environment for the team. Mahesh is a great success professionally and more importantly personally too.

Suresh was trained to be tough, unfriendly, put constant pressure on team and at turn down their self-respect in order to establish his commanding position. His team mates constantly leave him and join somewhere else even at lesser packages to repel a toxic work atmosphere at first place. Suresh is equally successful but only professionally. Personally, Suresh is an abject failure to have good rapport with his current and ex-employees. No one talks good of Suresh, they at times hate him for his rude and ill-mannered management.

Choice is of the leaders, at the end

With the real-life example of Mahesh and Suresh, I came to fathom that it boils down to the choice of the leader which way he wants to go and succeed. But the consequences of choices of the leaders are not limited to them only, they holistically affect the entire team and work atmosphere.

How brilliantly Bruce H. Lipton has discovered that the environment of a cell affects the cell drastically, no matter how good or better the internal environment of the cell is. Leaders have the choice to opt for any type of environment for their team. The end result of their choice makes an immense difference in the quality of work life of their team.

Leaders rule the environment of workplace and environment can make you professionally sick or healthy because “It’s the environment, Stupid”.?

Watching you Smiling, Alokk Joshi

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