Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Why relationships matter in corporate?

Eshwar and Raj are two engineers working in the same team in a company. Although both of them have similar qualification, the personalities are completely different.Eshwar is a merry go loving friendly guy with an open mindset. He works smart at his job , has his share of fun with his set of gang at work. Raj is a conservative, shy person. Although he is good at work, he finds opportunities to put down others and boost his self image with the higher management.
    During recession, as projects were being cancelled and people were laid off in the company, Eshwar and Raj look for opportunities outside their organization.
  
     Raj finds a prospective job, resigns the current organization and joins the new one. Eshwar also eventually finds a promising offer and lands in a new company after a short span of time. To their surprise , Eshwar and Raj ends up being in the same team in their new organization. With background familiarity and being strangers in new office, both exchange greetings and hangs up with one another during breaks and share the work details often.

    As Raj joined the new organization quite ahead of Eshwar , He was bit more familiar with the new set up and people. To his favor, the  team leader resigns due to personal reasons and as there were no one other candidate other than him with similar experience Raj now gets the opportunity to lead a new team. Raj was always waiting for such a moment and makes use of this opportunity completely. He puts in  more  effort at work, projects his work to his manager and establishes his control in the new setup.

   Eshwar ends up in a project activity that is quite stable with good learning and not very high on visibility.He starts his work with his own style and delivers what ever is required for the job.

   Raj feels accomplished as he is in a better position compared to Eshwar. He gradually adapts to bossing instincts, works less and concentrate on monitoring people and spying about his team to his manager. His attitude towards Eshwar also changes and both of them turn hostile.

    Though initially new members of the team are unaware of his nature, they gradually understand the kind of person he is and limit their talks with him. Over a period of time, the project activity which Raj was responsible for is delivered. Raj's team is split due to completion of activity and now Raj has no team member to monitor for.

   Because of his untrustworthy nature, not many colleagues exchange friendly greetings with him on a day today basis. Also, Feedback of unsupportive leader is provided about him by one of his team member.

His manager who had promised him a promotion and a rosy picture of the organization now is unsupportive of him. He encourages another new member who has just joined the team and openly criticizes Raj to contribute more for the team. Raj now has all his hopes of being a manager doomed.

Meanwhile Eshwar takes a up new activity and establishes himself as a go to person in his team. He slowly builds the team, develops good rapport with his seniors and brings more work to his manager both in terms of quality and quantity.

Being good natured, he develops a cordial relationship with all team members and he solves issues quickly when ever support was required. He also receives good feedback as a trust worthy person among his team members. Now Eshwar is a prospective candidate for the next promotion.

This situation strongly send out a lesson

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team

Hence

Relationships matter to your career no matter the organization or level of seniority because every job boils down to interacting with people

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