The Hindu Business Line : When a colleague becomes the boss

With the phenomenal secular growth of the Indian economy today, the need for qualified human resources has never been greater. Often, the availability of employable resources is quoted as a constraint to growth. In such a supply-constrained economy, companies usually prefer to elevate existing employees to higher levels instead of hiring from the market. Typically, when the right resources are scarce, there is upward wage pressure, providing a disincentive for employers to hire from the market. It also helps morale in the company if deserving candidates from existing teams are identified objectively and promoted to more responsible positions. This is a trend that needs to be understood and carefully managed so as to not be counter-productive. Let’s take a closer look at some of the dimensions of elevating a person who has hitherto been part of a team to being the supervisor of the very same team.

Dimensions of change

Let us first look at three dimensions of this change in the Indian context and then highlight some of the contrasts with other cultures.

Physical and monetary: Usually, when a person from a team is elevated to a supervisory level, an enhancement in remuneration usually comes with better perquisites in keeping with the accepted Indian corporate culture of differentiating employees according to their level in the organisational hierarchy. This is meant to maintain a correlation between rewards and responsibilities. Typical examples are reserved parking, a private office, club memberships, and so on. This tangible change usually contributes to the other dimensions we shall examine below.

Mental and emotional: The distinct increase in monetary and material comforts associated with the higher level is usually meant to satisfy the social and recognition needs (in Maslow’s hierarchy) of the person. In India’s status-conscious society, this is a crucial factor that communicates the company’s appreciation for the employee.

Intellectual and psychological: This is the subtlest of the dimensions and therefore the least tangible. A promotion gives the person an opportunity to exhibit his/her innate strengths in the areas of innovation, leadership, initiative and creativity as are applicable to the context of the workplace.

The external manifestation of these dimensions of change depends partly on the cultural context as well. We shall consider two sharply contrasting cultures to illustrate this aspect, as we often do in Global Adjustments’ cross-cultural sensitisation programmes that address Indian professionals:

In the US — a low-context, direct, low power-distance culture — an elevation of a team member to a higher level of the same team as its supervisor may not adversely affect the working relationship. On the contrary, the existing camaraderie between the supervisor and the team may actually benefit team cohesion and productivity.

In a high-context, indirect, high power-distance culture like in West Asia, for example, a lot rides on one’s position in the organisation.

The lines dividing a business and personal relationship are less distinct. Consequently, feelings of resentment and a tendency to distance oneself from an ex-peer who has now become a superior tend to be more evident. The privileges that the supervisor may now enjoy actually contribute to defining and fostering this social divide between the leader and the team.

Leadership principles

In order to ensure that the newly promoted supervisor has the continued cooperation of his/her erstwhile peers and is not perceived as having crossed over to the “other side” as it were, a few simple principles of leadership may be practised explicitly.

Collaborative decision-making: Having worked as a team member in the past and being aware of its strengths and weaknesses, the supervisor should use this expertise to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals, with the team’s buy-in, instead of distancing himself from them.

Transparent communication: The supervisor should not succumb to the temptation to hold on to information under the fallacy that “knowledge is power”.

This triggers off a corresponding negative reaction from the team which will start withholding information from the supervisor as well, thus adversely affecting the business.

Personal integrity: The leader is an implicit role model for the team in terms of work ethics, integrity, punctuality, commitment to company goals and so on — values that are expected of any good leader. The supervisor being in a position to demonstrate these values by living by them should be consistent in following them, thus qualifying to expect these standards of the team as well.

Objectivity: Another fundamental leadership quality is to be able to weigh both sides of a problem before arriving at a considered judgement/way forward, instead of being coloured by personal prejudices or biases from the earlier role as a team member.

Cultural sensitivity: This is relevant especially in multi-cultural and multinational teams, where a behaviour that is acceptable in one culture may be considered odd, if not offensive, in another. For example, a sequence of embraces that is common before a business meeting in West Asia or a deep bow that is expected in Japan is in sharp contrast to the formal handshake or the friendly nod/smile with eye contact in the US or the UK. As a team member, awareness about these issues may not have been so important. However, the tolerance of cultural faux pas diminishes rapidly as one rises in the company.

A word of caution

Finally, as a prerequisite in such situations, companies need to exercise necessary caution to ensure that the person being elevated to a supervisory level is actually ready for these enhanced responsibilities by virtue of demonstrated performance and maturity. This is vital to guard against the risk of a solution actually creating more issues to resolve.

(The writer is Chief Operating Officer of Global Adjustments, a company that offers integrated India destination services and cross-cultural education delivered through the portal www.globalindian.com. He can be reached at globalindian@globaladjustments.com)

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