A Beautiful Fearless Mind

If you are able to relate to anything in this post, well that's good. Nothing is very surprising here however I will try to keep this interesting.

In last many months, I have had those moments where I felt like a leader and then there were instances when I felt like manager. I am able to distinguish more easily between what it means to be a leader and a manager; more like the clarity which Buddha perhaps experienced when he was enlightened or when Archimedes had that eureka moment running naked on the streets of Greece.

When Buddha lived in around 600 BC, world population was around 100 Million. Today’s world population is around 7000 Million (~ 7 Billion). This is a useless fact from Google in context of this post however just something that may keep you interested or will as well distract you from context.

So I was a natural manager. You will have more insight in few moments (a moment BTW is around 120 seconds – I read somewhere recently). So like a good Indian - not in a patriotic sense though – I started as a developer in Microsoft Technologies, had few years of stint in Java using Struts MVC framework leading a small team, moved onto doing Data Migration for couple of years again leading few people, did Production Support and Environment Support and landed up being a Platform Manager.

I felt good leading a team; Felt like an important person reporting the stuff to the line above, had so called important meetings on the stuff with the team and gave my agreements and sometimes did not agree on how the team will do the stuff as expected by the management and so on.  I felt like an achiever. I felt like a commander in charge serving the company and the group. Being there for the team and group was like something very natural of me and my mindset.

Months and years passed and the key thing which I paid attention was whether I am having my right share of managing teams and work. After all I am working hard for the management. I must have my mojo and juice of being a project or team leader or being a project manager. There were few disappointments on the way however things turned out alright as I did my best to meet expectations of my bosses and expected the same from my team members.

However something changed in last 2 – 3 years or so. It’s not Agile way of working in current project, it’s not the current project. And still over time, things become clearer, like the fog moving away slowly. The direction and inspiration was there as if a Guru should guide though I must give credit to my efforts too working against risks, my fears, trying out options and still trying to improve based on the feedback – sometimes captured on my own and other times from external situations and people around.

Basic element which helped was to get better understanding of controlling my own fears – fear of management, fear of a senior person around, fear of not able to find right set of words when speaking, fear of mumbling, fear of what others may think of my idea or suggestion, fear of what if the senior person is not happy etc. and so on. Not yet a champion who have mastered my fears (and became a Batman J) but the first step of realization is good and the journey continues to improve myself as a team member and as leader.

Now fear is very good when you are afraid because it can help you run faster and it can help react faster to an unsafe situation. Fear in workplace is not good. Usually, few of us moves up and become managers managing work and people and we still fear people above us and we also keep people reporting to us in fear. Fear of how things are expected around, how the delivery should be done, how I am in control of those reporting to myself who is in fact in charge and if I am not pleased for the sake of delivery or my role or group, than the results may not be quite as expected.

But then life always finds its own way. Because of fear, people around us who do the real hands on and work (be it development, testing etc.) lack confidence in what they can do and what how they should think or interact or organize. We recruit right set of people by rigorous recruitment steps and after hiring them, most and most of them end up like zombies having brain controlled and action controlled by managers.

I am not generalizing Managers here. Some managers cross over to the other side and become Leaders. They believe in the strengths, they see the positive opportunities in negative situations, they strive for process improvements and they feed on continuous feedback which helps them improvise. Some of these trials and actions become inspirations and right direction for people whose actions like development and testing results in quality delivery. Teams with such people who fear less and who are given help to bring out the confidence by Leaders have better chance of self organizing regardless of the work methodology or framework we follow.

Please feedback on the above so that I can improve my way of writing and also feedback if possible on the content, thought process etc.

Thank you very much for your time.
(I published the original article in LinkedIn on 12-Dec-2015)