Walking down the corporate memory lane-is it important to nurture and develop team members?

In one of my earliest stints in the career, I was fortunate to have a boss and that too in the early 1980's that believed that the manager's most important role is to develop his team. He was a qualified CA from the UK and walked the talk and always lead by example. Somewhere, it became a part of me , (without ever-realizing) as I started climbing the corporate leader.  I did not realize that till recently, when some of the people I worked with have achieved very high levels in the Corporate world both in India and overseas and got connected with me over the linked in and expressed their gratitude and good feelings.

It has been a big learning for me for over the past 30 years, across various industrial sectors and thought that  I  could share the same and see that if others have had similar experiences and also to give a perspective to the new budding managers.

For simplicity,  I break the employees that I have dealt with in three categories.

1. Exceptionally brilliant self-motivated employees with a clear focus on their career. 

Spend little time and share the guru mantras, vision and let them loose (empowered) to do their best. These are the pillars of your success and do share the credit with them.  You can learn from them, something, while you are also developing them. They learn more from observation, grasp and experimenting and take initiative and challenges. At the end, believe it or not,  you have made the least impact on their lives and they would have got to those high positions, sooner or later, anyway. They had shown abundant promise, in their early days.

2. The slightly above average and average employees.

While HR practices, talk of the below average and exit employees, I do not succumb to this view, as I feel it is only a way of rationalizing costs. Each human resource, by and large is capable of development, if motivated properly.  In case of this second category, the more time you spend with them the greater is your contribution to their life and growth. Be tough with them but with compassion and be truthful about their strengths and weaknesses but in a positive and constructive manner. Some of them, would not have made it to where they finally reached, if it was not your nurturing and mentoring to them. 

These are the ones who have gratitude to you and when you sit back and look at their success, you feel that your life has been meaningful and that maybe your biggest contribution is this; at times even bigger than the substantial improvements that you have brought to the companies where you worked and which are sooner or later forgotten. Contribution to employees is long remembered, because you have closely touched the lives of these people and later on indirectly their families and their own subordinates.

3. The third category, unfortunately are highly political and unethical.

I differentiate between political and highly political as some politics is necessary for survival and growth and for getting into positions of power and this is acceptable; and the highly political are detrimental to the organization, to the colleagues and is generally coupled with ethics issues (as they have to get to higher positions and more and more money, and can go to any lengths to achieve that). Fortunately, though these are far and few, but they are the ones that may have harmed your career for their gains, without you being fully aware of this.

Certain coaching techniques may help but, as their cups are full of themselves only and opportunistic, not much headway can be made. Distancing yourself from them and protecting yourself against harm is the only way out. Later on after many years, I have seen, some of them being found out for their incompetence, or lack of delivery or certain fudging and using power for acts of financial frauds, and eventually loosing their jobs and prestige. 

I welcome comments, thoughts and experiences.