A People Pleaser:

I’ve always been a people pleaser all my life. My family doesn’t agree with it. But true to  my concience peoples perspective of me impacts me a lot I don’t want to be a villan to anybody. As Pam Beasely says, I don’t even want the Alquaida to hate me. But at the same time i defenitely wanted to be a better leader and also climb the corporate ladder as fast as i can. If you ask me why so eager to climb it? I have no idea.

But for whatever reasons , Should i call it the grace of God. Yes, Indeed. I was promotted to become the project manager in my company. Please don’t imagine it to be a big MNC but a relatively smaller one.

But a manager is a manager if in a big Corporate or a smaller one.
The roles and responsibility remain the same.

Hiring a Fresher

I hired a fresher about six months back. It’s company policy for people in probation to take 1 leave a month. The guy i hired though was good in his work. He turned out to be sick quiet often. I tried my best to understand and relate because obviously his opinion about me mattered to me. I approved WFH when it wasn’t allowed for fresheres. Not for a day or two but for 9 consecutive days. Because come on I’m not one of those managers who don’t give people a leash when they are going through a tough time.

Uninformed leaves and a lousy attitude

But as days went on uninformed leaves were taken consecutively. We aren’t talking about a day or two. But 4 or 5 at once. If there was one thing that was ticking my nerve wasn’t the leaves. But his attitude of not informing me that we was talking a leave.

E-mails two hours into the work day stating he’s off. Unresponsive calls. The reason was always i went to the hospital took a medicine and slept off.

I really want to keep my human side intact. I kept trying to wade him off from the upper managements notice. Gave him a good certificate about his work ( for the few he did)

Though it was affecting the projects i did turn a blind eye. Because come on , I’m not like the rest of the PM’s out there.

Grace for granted

I had multiple one on ones with him stating to inform the day before he took leaves. I told him if the pattern keeps going on. I really can’t help but have to let him go.

The patterns repeated. Multiple warnings were given personally. In the mean time, trying my best to keep the HR at bay. One day i had to send an escalation mail to the HR because I’ve had enough.

It wasn’t the leaves. It was the lethargic attitude of taking leaves without any intimidation and not picking calls.

He apolagized again and promised not to repeat and that appealed to my human side again. I let it go again.
Then he took another 12 days unannounced leave.

Now the decision had to be taken, Grace for long can’t be tolerated. The  upper management pressed in and I gave up. And they let him go.

Looking for Hope

Managers are people who fight battles behind the scenes. And sometimes they also have to make decisions that are hard but necessary. Sometimes all we look for sometimes a ray of hope of positive feedback from a subbordinate. When all else fails , IT HAS TO BE DONE.

How does he view me ? Not good for sure. I’d never know. Maybe I don’t want to either.