Leadership Dip or Trip

It was a Monday morning at 10 AM in an office in New York. Like all over the world, people had the same groggy look on their faces. To their surprise, when they entered, they saw a big poster on the door of the building. It said

“The person who wanted to stop your growth has passed away. Please join us at 11 AM in the cafeteria to pay respect to the deceased”.

It came as a shocker to everyone. Not only they felt bad that someone had passed away, but they also had the curiosity to know that who was the person who was stopping their growth.

When they reached the cafeteria, they saw a coffin lying in the middle. On top of it, there was a placard which said,

“The person who wants to stop your growth lies here.”

When they opened the coffin, there was nobody. There was just a mirror, showing the reflection of the person who opened the coffin.

Well, the moral of the story is simple: The only one person who can make or break us is we ourselves. It is up to only us, to get ourselves out of the problems we might face.

The person most easily to blame is someone superior to you. Most of us are engineers here and when asked why did they do engineering, their replies are mostly because their parents pushed them to it. True, isn’t it!

And when it comes to their jobs, most of the blame goes towards the managers. Am I wrong? We all know whom to blame for our bad days at the office.

Personally, I got the chance to actually start to lead and manage a team officially only in the last couple of years. Not only I was made the team lead at the office but I also became a Club Officer in my TM club. I always thought that I can contribute my best to the team when I will actually get a chance to lead it. Being a team member, I had my limitations, obviously. But to lead others and take decision for others is more difficult than any team member can think.

How many of you think that you will never be at a position where you have to make decisions for others? The leader is someone who leads and shows the way. You will be a leader at multiple points in life. Even when talking about non-professionally, you will become a parent someday and you will have to take decisions, sometimes tough, for your family.

So, with my experience, I learned a few things. The most important thing is that when you are the leader, you have nobody else to blame. If you cannot make others work for you, you have to try harder. So, how can we be the leader we all want to have? How can we take decisions for others? How can we behave as a leader? What all it takes to be a leader?

With those thoughts in mind, today, I will share some skills with you, which I found in a book I read called ‘Secrets of Leadership’ by Prakash Iyer. These few points really had a huge impact on me and helped me to understand the role of the leader in a much better way. I hope they have some impact on you too.

Analogy is that a leader is like a tea bag.

The real flavor comes through only when the teabag gets into hot water.
The real flavor comes through only when the teabag gets into hot water.
A teabag must be porous. They never mind where they are in the cup.
A teabag must be porous. They never mind where they are in the cup.
Sometimes, one teabag is just not enough. You need to add some sugar and milk.
Sometimes, one teabag is just not enough. You need to add some sugar and milk.
Someone else holds the string. Always. It’s all about how good the tea is. Not the teabag!
Someone else holds the string. Always. It’s all about how good the tea is. Not the teabag!
Eventually, teabags need to make way and get out.
Eventually, teabags need to make way and get out.

Just as the true flavor of a teabag comes through only when it is dipped in hot water, sometimes it needs pressure and adversity to bring out the leader in you.


The above was my speech for Toastmasters Pathways Level 2 Speech 1 for Visionary Communication about Leadership Styles. Obviously, I spoke more than the text above. I have deliberately not written much here as I tried to do this speech on the go, as in I didn’t prepare what I was going to speak. I just relied on the analogies and proceeded.

It went fine.

All the pics used above were courtesy Unsplash.com and Freepik.com.

 

So I recently read: Deep Work by Cal Newport

Imagine you’re working in your office cubicle. There is a looming deadline at hand and whenever you are trying to concentrate, someone laughs hysterically loud from a distant corner. You mutter some abuses under your breath and try to concentrate harder. You try to mentally block the unnecessary noises along with stuffing your fingers into your ears, to added effect. Even now you can hear the printer, someone walking behind, and generally distracting lights but you tell yourself, it is okay and that you can still read the very important document without which finishing work would be difficult. As soon as you reach the second paragraph, a pop-up window shows up and the right-hand corner of the desktop. That can be ignored, for now, you assure yourself. You reach the third paragraph and then your phone lightens up. There is another joke on your family WhatsApp group which is there just for ruining whatever concentration you had built till now. You move on but before you reach the next chapter, notifications galore. Someone visited someplace on the company’s money and want you to see their airport check-ins on Facebook. Or some political upheaval has happened in the capital, your news alert shouts. Or twitter has just lost it’s, what do they say, collective shit, for the 109th time today. And there goes your concentration out of the window and gives up on you.

Has it ever happened to you?

Or as they show in ads, are you fully frustrated with distractions, notifications, social media nonsense, and inability to concentrate for the attention span now almost nonexistent?

If yes, this book is the perfect antidote you need for your addiction to social media, the poison of modern-day life.

Does your office appear like a fair to you where people are just moving incessantly for no reason whatsoever?
Does your office appear like a fair to you where people are just moving incessantly for no reason whatsoever?

Deep Work by Cal Newport tries to do only one thing. It tries to reassure and encourage you that if you really want to do some productive work, which he calls ‘Deep Work’, you have to really boycott everything you think isn’t relevant to the work. The book has several examples of people who really mastered the art of Deep Work and produced astonishing work of literature, science, art, and so on. All they did was to cut themselves off from the material world and concentrate. They trusted their brain to do the knowledge work, they had set out to do and when their brain got free from all the mess around, it produced the desired results and the satisfaction which is often missing from the work. For example,

“Mark Twain wrote much of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a shed on the property of the Quarry Farm in New York, where he was spending the summer. Twain’s study was so isolated from the main house that his family took to blowing a horn to attract his attention for meals.”

The book repeats several times, that social networking (and mobile phone), is nothing but a poison which is damaging our culture and innate mindset of humans that we are getting consumed by it and not the other way around. It mostly takes the example of modern knowledge workers, say, people who code, write, think, and create.

It also tries to propagate a beautiful fact which is totally unlike what you have been told till now. We are told to be approachable and we are expected to reply to every message, email, text immediately. Deep Work suggests becoming hard to reach. Not only it would make you better at what you’re currently doing instead of wasting time replying to things which can easily be dealt with later. But it also makes others understand that you treasure your time as equally as money.

Reading this book coincided with my getting fed up with social media and I feel no remorse whatsoever not being a regular on Facebook and Twitter.

You can buy it from here: https://amzn.to/2zs9nRL

Landing at Mars soon

NASA mailed me this a week ago:


On Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, just before noon PT (3 p.m. ET; 2000 UTC/GMT), NASA’s InSight mission will land on Mars! The spacecraft will plunge through the thin Martian atmosphere, heatshield first, and use a parachute to slow down. Then, it will fire its retro rockets to slowly descend to the surface.

Yours is among 2.4 million names that will be on Mars when InSight touches down. Once on the surface, InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to advance our understanding of the early history of all rocky planets, including Earth.

NASA

Actually, some time back, I saw a post from NASA on my Instagram feed. It said that the Insight Mission which is going to land on Mars in November 2018 will carry names of people who sign up via a form. Just the names, no DNA or anything. They don’t want to contaminate Mars (further). I had signed up without giving another thought. And the day is here!

Today (tonight), hopefully, my name, along with 2.4 million others will land on Mars. To put in percentage, out of 7 odd billion people, only 
0.03% of people would have their names landing on Mars tonight. I am not joking. Can you imagine how exciting this actually is? Although the mission is not about that. But having your name on a different planet is a feat in itself, right?

Boarding Pass

But on a serious note, after Curiosity this would be the first mission which actually lands on the Martian surface.

Check out a very detailed and entertaining post by Oatmeal about the Insight mission here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/insight

Read about the complete mission here: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8384/nasa-brings-mars-landing-to-viewers-everywhere/?site=insight&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nasa-mars-outreach&utm_content=mars20181119

Auto!!

On one fine Saturday morning, I was waiting at BTM Bus Stop. With only 30 minutes for the movie to start, I was in a rush to reach PVR at Forum Mall in Koramangala, which was just 2 KM from there. If I had taken a bus, it would surely have taken me more than 30 minutes or so, thanks to the place where time just slows down. Yes, the Silk Board. I had no other option but to take an Autorickshaw which could zigzag its way from the lanes and take me to my destination in time. After waiting for some time, I found one empty Autorickshaw coming my way. I waved my hand to make him stop. Despite being vacant, the driver just glanced at me but didn’t stop. Maybe he was in a hurry himself, maybe I wasn’t enough good looking, maybe I didn’t have Maybelline. Another Autorickshaw was passing by. I shouted “Auto!”, he stopped. When I asked him, he just said “Neh!” and moved along, still vacant on the same road where it could have taken me easily and earned money. In a minute another one came. I asked him whether he will take me or not. Nonchalantly, he said, “Oh Forum aa? 200 Rupees!” without any shame or regret on his face. He demanded 200 Rupees as if I had asked him to drop me at the Airport. I said, “It is just 2 KM”. He got disappointed to see that I knew how far it was. He said nope and went away. I decided to walk towards my destination find an auto on the way. There was supposed to be an auto-stand half a kilometer away as well. When I reached there, I found 3-4 autos standing there. I went to one and asked “Sir, Forum?” The driver who was reading a newspaper gave me looks as if I had asked his daughter’s hand for marriage. I said sorry for disturbing him and chugged along. I asked another one, he said “Ok, 20 rupees extra. Lot of traffic there!”. I was getting impatient now. I sighed “Let’s go.”. Finally, I reached in 20 minutes.

I’m sure this must have happened to you as well? Right? When you were just refused or were asked
for an exorbitant amount or had to shelve 20-30 Rupees extra?

Fortunately or unfortunately, Auto Rickshaws in India are the most common mode of transport, aren’t they? From small towns to big cities, you can find them everywhere. In fact, if you want to draw a picture of a market Scene in India, your picture will be incomplete unless you show a small yellow black toy looking 3-wheeler adorning the side of the road. I happened to read a blog post by a journalist Anand Ramachandran on Yahoo sometime ago. He, originally from Chennai, had just moved from Mumbai to Bangalore and he had an acute observation about Auto Rickshaws of all these cities. He said that while auto drivers of Mumbai are businessmen and part-time tourist guides, auto drivers of Chennai are basically gangsters. In Bangalore, they are hobbyists Autorickshaw drivers. He said that unlike other cities, Auto Rickshaws in Bangalore are just for aesthetic reasons and decorative purposes and serve no actual function. Maybe they are already very rich real estate owners themselves so they just don’t really care. To top all that, they live under a huge misconception that IT guys are rich people. IT guys and rich? Autorickshaws are going to take you for a ride, when they take you for a ride. Auto Rickshaws Drivers have personality of Dhanush but they carry the Attitude of Rajinikanth.

Love it or hate it, auto rickshaws are something which actually works in a place like India. They are small enough to get into any lane, no matter how narrow it could be and big enough to carry 3-4 people and even more if the driver decides to allow. He himself will sit in the smallest area possible to fit a human backside but if there is shared auto possible, he will easily fit 5-6 people without breaking much sweat. And the way they drive? They don’t really care how narrow or busy the street is. They still drive like James Bond and as a passenger, you have to hold whatever is available possible to save yourself. I had thought that after the inception of more buses, or cab services or even Metro, the attitude of Auto Rickshaws will improve but all in vain.

Did you think that through my speech I was going to present a solution to the menace of Autorickshaw Drivers? Nope. When we cannot improve after so many years, how will they? I guess, Autos in India suit our sensibilities as a nation. I just think when I will get fed up with my life as an IT engineer, I would become an Autorickshaw driver myself. And when some will call me to take them to any destination, I will demand at least 100 Rupees extra, just to see how it feels.

Continue reading “Auto!!”