Establishing Identity

Its a fine morning. Working day. Last one of the week.

Vikram is ready to take up any challenge thrown to him from Betaal, just before the week ends.

Any puzzle, any riddle !

"Here is the story for today Vikram !" Betaal starts !

"This young and intelligent engineer is trusted by her managers. Trusted that she will deliver the goods in time. She has proven herself again and again. She works in a team, where there are already other senior members, who are probably not functioning at the same level. She knows that. She has been asked to lead them. She has been asked to lead the people who are senior to herself. That's a definite sign of growth and success. However, here is the problem.

The senior members, who are not functioning at her level, think she is a "kiddo". Who's she to lead us ? Who's she to tell us what to do ? At the same time, 10 times a day, the same members come back to her to be spoon fed on how to do things that they should do.

Its becoming, extremely time consuming for her. And it also bothers her, that even after guiding them on all their work, apart from doing her own work, she gets the look.

The "you are a kid" look.

The "who you to lead us?" look.

And she absolutely detests that.

She is torn between ideas on how to tackle this. And seriously contemplating to do all the work herself. Thats going to be easier than spoon feeding people who are "so called" senior to her and then getting the look.

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Betaal stops and asks the questions to Vikram. "Do you think she is taking the right decision ?"

Vikram takes a moment. The story sounds familiar. And answers "NO".

If she wants to be a leader, she will have to ignore the Look. Life can not be answered by clicking check boxes to granular questions. Its a drama. It needs to be well orchestrated. It needs to be designed.

She needs to involve a few other people, neutral and authoritative in a tactful manner. In the name of providing project update, she needs to publicly share responsibilities. And ask for each ones comfort level carrying out those responsibilities. She needs to move to a non-threatening media of communication (e-mail) where the emotions (pissed-ness) is not out on the face.

She needs to interact in bigger forums over non-personal media where people stay well behaved and self-moderated, until the other members accepts her as a leader. Not as a kid. Until the wider audience who would silently keep looking, would know who are the kids.

While doing all this she can not afford to look "pissed". If she looks pissed, she will lose trust (how much ever of that is there). If she looks pissed, she can not inculcate the right behavior.

She has to prove the wider audience that she is the driver. The target audience is a subset. They will accept it.

Deciding to do it all herself is not going to scale for long. Being pissed is not going to help at all.

Vikram and Betaal nodded at each other in agreement. And went apart until next time ......