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No leader should possess manipulative trait. Here is a story…
SANDEEP received his pink slip today. He is shattered. He has worked very hard for three years. Suddenly the market is on a downward spiral, the company is not doing so well, and he is left without a job. How will he pay his bills now? How will he repay his EMI? What will he do?
He went to his boss. The boss said, “The management said that I don’t need a10-member team; I can do with seven. So I was asked to give pink slips to three.” “Why me?” demanded Sandeep. The boss explained, “We looked at your appraisal from last year and you were the second lowest, so I had to let you go. I am sorry.” Sandeep started raising his voice, “You were the one who said that this appraisal business is all humbug, something you really don’t believe in it. You only said that it was process and as far as you were concerned, it was just a tick mark. I believed you. And now it has cost me my job.” “I am sorry,” said boss, refusing to meet his eye.
There was one thing Sandeep’s boss did not tell him about — the managers meeting where everyone made a list of their favourites and subsequently found reasons to put the rest on the chopping block. The method of elimination — appraisal scores in some cases, insubordination in another — did not matter to the management. What mattered was the reduction in headcount. Costs had to be brought down.
The CFO does not know Sandeep’s name. For him Sandeep is but a statistic. All he told his CEO was, “We cannot pay all of them so let’s reduce headcount from120 to110 or maybe100.” The CEO said, “Maybe there is another option; we can reduce the salaries of the top management.” The CFO glared at the CEO and said, “You can reduce your salary but not mine.” None of the management was willing to cut their salary; so jobs had to go. Reasons were elaborately created to justify the pink slip. Now Sandeep has to fend for himself. He has no one’s patronage. He is no one’s favourite. He is a man without a leader.
I think a good leader shouldn't possess this personality trait.
I agree with the first half of your question and differ with the other half, A leader may have positive and negative traits but what makes him a successful leader is something different.
The story narrated by you is very familiar to me and for few minutes I thought as if you are talking about my situation, when I was working as Group Finance Manager I faced a similar kind of situation where my management decided to leave4 out of18 employees from Sales and Marketing team , you said it like hitting a nail straight into head from top, when the names were proposed it was merely a statistical figure to me and I took it as as head counts with my focus to reduce the fixed overheads without taking into consideration what their contribution was/is towards the bottom line and since I was also in-charge of the administration dept my better sense prevailed when I asked my payroll staff to calculate for me the amount paid and when I matched it with employee's evaluation and yearly recommendation sheets , I was surprised to note that although he was the only hard worker in his dept yet the new boss never liked him and hence recommended his name without giving a single thought. I had one of the most difficult task in hand to put the contribution figure before his name by converting it into monetary terms nevertheless I succeeded in doing so .
I called that employee and asked him to read " Who moved my Cheese" and give his opinion in writing how he felt and with whom his sympathy goes. To cut the long story short I was moved by his reply as he understood the prevailing situation of the company and himself decided to make the move by searching a better job.
