||om tat sat !!

Be kind and supportive. 

She just peeped in. I said come in with usual half smile of welcome.

She was an excellent floor manager. She is not the one who would come to me. In my morning rounds, I would go through her area, talking to the concerned engineers checking for any technical issues bothering them. Since I would come across her in the rounds I would ask her how she is getting along and how are things, always expecting nominal replies.  She was an excellent floor manager.

I asked her to sit down. I could see she was under stress. Stress related to floor management, interpersonal issues and an unhappy boss suddenly questioning her integrity. She went to her boss needing help. But what she got was heck of brush back. She broke down , as it happens when you have a shoulder to cry. While she was relating what happened, I could see where she went wrong. First impulse was to tell her so, but better was to let her tell her sorrow so that she calms down. She did. I promised to talk to the concerned.

It happens to all managers. One of their assistants is in a tough spot. Probably he is in a tough spot because of his own making. There are tough managers who made the junior pay for it in the hope, that he will learn.  Some would have learnt it too, though many might have failed. There are wonderful managers who did not let the moment pass. Got the junior out of the tough spot and then sat him down and told him how he could have anticipated the events and avoided the tough situation, making it a learning moment. Considering the enormous effort that goes into recruiting competent ones, assuming that the raw material (assistants ) one has is good, it would be good to use such moments as moments of learning. The junior too is forever grateful, because he too knows that boss need not have been kind.

Basic thought here is that when an young one is in a difficult situation, that could be a moment of learning. The job of the senior person managing that young one, who is in a soup, is to help that one to get out of the soup, and then use that moment of difficulty, turning it  into a moment of learning.

Many a time such moments, which can be used as moments for learning, get used for bashing. Bashing, for not having learnt from an earlier occasion. The bashing hero  may feel that he has given a good lesson to the young one, whereas in fact such bashing may mostly go well over the head of the young one who was lost, stuck in that tough spot, much like a misdirected bouncer sailing over the head of the batsman !

This is not a story of things that happens only in an office.

Even close at home, our own children may have landed themselves into a tough spot. At that moment , when the child is in that tough spot , or  physical pain or any other tough mental condition, or if the child comes to us for help , do not tell them go find their solution. We ought to have the patience to hear them out or help them out and later use that moment into moment of learning.

That is being Kind

||om tat sat||