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	Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Leadership Responsibilities - Making People Feel Good or Bad?    Book after management book, we have been told that as a leader, we need to make people feel good about themselves as a way to exhort people to achieve greater heights.  According to many advice, a great leader is there when upon accomplishing the task, the people will pat themselves in the back and said that they did it themselves.   I totally agree with that, and believes totally Charles Schwab when he said, “ I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”   This sounds great on paper and on theory, but as usual, it is well to be aware that this should be taken with a grain of salt, and should be studied in context rather than applied in all situations.”  As any manager who have put in a few years into the complicated art of managing people, one of the biggest headaches in any group is when managing people with oversized egos, and inflated assessment of themselves.   Looking at any organization, it is fair enough to say that at least half of the people must have performance that would be considered as below average, yet many studies have shown that upto 75% of the people will tend to believe that they are on the above average level.  Pulling this even higher is certainly a surefire way to introduce complications.  ( Read here how the US basketball dream team of super heroes and egos is losing their second game in the Athens Olympics).  The essential question then lies whether an inflated  assessment of themselves will make people complacent, or work even harder?    I have no doubt that organizations have won by making people feel that they are in cloud 9, but it is the unpleasant task of a manager and leader sometimes to bring them down to earth.  Again, as with many management principles, it is not as simple as thought, and we should be careful in adopting theories blindly without considering context. 1:08:21 PM     comment []   trackback []