Leadership in Everyday Life..

...is often hardly about strategy or vision. Rather, it is about being able to effectively solve the minor irritants of day to day life...Last week, I recieved a call in the middle of a meeting from a very junior team member claiming that there were 'no rest rooms available' in the client location. This surprised me as it is a universal need and a basic requirement and it was unlikely that a place with nearly ten staff will not have such arrangements. A little bit of prodding revealed that the loos were indeed present and but were not upto her standard. This irked me no end due to multiple reasons. It was too trivial a reason to bother me with, and she could have either chosen to be resilient and face it chin up or be resourceful and find an answer to her problem herself...Finally, I digged into my reservoir of management intelligence and convinced her to continue with the work.

I face such situations almost on a regular basis. Being a lady means that I am inundated with such requests more often than my male counterparts...Some of the other problems that I effectively solved last week include the absence of a curtain in a guest house, absence of vegetarian food, absence of non-vegetarian food, absence of snacks, absence of tissues to wipe hands and so on...I also end up being a listening board to more serious personal concerns of staff and that atleast is a role that I enjoy...

I am never able to understand why a person would want a disproportionately high salary (compared to other industries), a work profile with high CV value etc, but then goes ahead and complains about the travel involved and other minor irritants...

There is always a plethora of jobs available in the market place...every job has its share of positives and negatives...But, no one will pay you a salary if you are not willing to earn it...that is the first lesson of the job market !