Suburb January 2019

From giving clear
and precise
feedback to
providing guidance
on matters of
professional
interest, the list of
things that a leader must do to
earn this trust is rather long.
However, it is often those
leaders who are able to aptly
balance the roles of a friend,
philosopher and guide, are the
ones who find themselves
acquiring this pedestal sooner
than the others.
Finding this balance can prove
tricky for some though. After
all, leaders are also humans,
and come with the same set of
flaws and fallacies, making
them vulnerable to what I call
the Honey Trap. This isn’t the
traditional honey trap, as we
know it, but one that carries the
potential of derailing a
promising leader from his/ her
ordained path of glory.
Jaya is an Accounts Director
with a major advertising agency
and has carved a name for
herself in the industry over a
decade and a half long career.
She is known as much for her
people skills as for her
proficiency at work, so it was
like a dream come true for
Nikhil when he got his offer
letter from the agency to join
Jaya’s team.
In the three years that Nikhil
had spent at another firm, he
had learnt the tricks of the
trade well. He was a sincere
and passionate individual with a
fiery urge to succeed in his
career. Jaya and Nikhil hit it off
instantly, doubling up as bosssubordinate
and friends as per
the demands of the hour.
“He was young, dedicated,
sincere and a fun guy… He
possibly triggered my motherly
instincts and I got attached to
him somewhere along the
way,” Jaya confided, while
sharing her story with me. All
was good until one day Nikhil
left Jaya waiting in the car park
for a long time as they were to
head out for a client meeting.
He had got into a corridor
conversation with one of the
other Account Directors, he
explained. This did not go well
with Jaya, the boss, and she
tried to reason with him, but to
little avail.
“It’s a small thing, you are
reacting too much. If someone
wants to have a word with me, I
can’t just step away, can I?” he
reasoned. This was just the start
of the downfall of their
relationship.
“I started noticing that he was
taking me for granted… He
was a friendly person generally,
but it seemed as though I was a
box he’d already ticked, and he
was now going at lengths to
gain the favour of others
around us. Sometimes even at
my expense,” Jaya explained.
“I confronted him a couple of
times, but he would always
brush the allegations off,
attributing them to my
excessive sensitivity. Perhaps I
was being sensitive, but that
was only because I truly cared
for him and it wasn’t a great
feeling that I was nothing more
to him than a boss he was
supposed to remain at friendly
terms with. And maybe he
might even have taken my care
and concern for something
else, who knows!”
Whether it was Jaya’s loss in
the long run, or Nikhil’s, is
anybody’s guess, but the fact
remains that a case of
mismatched expectations has
turned Jaya into a skeptic when
it comes to the people she’s
working with. This trap of
getting too involved with
people is something that
leaders need to avoid at all
costs. Jaya’s might be an extreme
example, but leadership is as
much about drawing the line
where required as it is about
nurturing a healthy bond with
those we lead. s
Anurag Anand is the
bestselling author of
several notable titles
including The
Legend of Amrapali,
Where the Rainbow
Ends and Love on 3
Wheels. His latest
release, To Hell and
Back, is a fast paces thriller set in
Gurgaon, where he lives and works with a
beverage MNC. You can reach Anurag on
contact@anuraganand.in or
facebook.com/anuraganandauthor
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