A marriage of equals
A month ago I was told that I am going to work on a new brand.
That meant a new boss.
I have always felt happy and fortunate to have bosses who were way too senior to me. I never wanted a boss who was just a few years senior to me.
My previous boss was 20 years senior to me. My new boss is a young lady, only about 7 years older to me.
The first thing that my new boss told me was, “I am not your boss. We are co-workers and we shall work together to achieve this”.
None of my ex-bosses had ever told me something like that.
My old boss always conducted workshops himself and made presentations himself. His philosophy was to be at the forefront everytime, not realizing that he needs to create soldiers who can lead when the time comes.
My new boss asked me to conduct a workshop in the first week of me joining her. She felt I had better experience than her in doing that. She diligently sat through it like a pupil.
Within a week I opened up to my boss and told her something that’s been playing on my mind since two years. I could never say that to my ex-boss inspite of us being very friendly.
My fixation for senior bosses immediately took a U-turn.
I always felt a senior boss would teach me many more things than a not so senior boss.
But my stints with senior bosses were unequal marriages. None of them made me feel like an equal.
A boss is a partner in many ways.
And when your partner doesn’t make you feel like an equal the marriage doesn’t last long.
Or else, there can be only one happy person in that marriage.
I think its a difference between man and women and not age
I fell its more to do with attitude, rather than age or gender, which is more important.
I have been fortunate enough to work with people who were younger in age- more years in than me, but worked with an attitude of mutual learning.
In my previous workplaces, there have been people who took charge of situations in business but also gave me the change to grow to their level.At times, they decided to take a back seat in places I had an upper hand as well. It has come as a surprise when I was asked to present to clients while the seniors took charge of value addition or experience sharing.
A quote from our colleague Deepak Srivastava from Perspectrum- “Apart from business, our team KRA is getting our team members to rise a level higher, we have to make an effort towards it and as a team to learn from each other; business figures we close every quarter- this we will build and take away as our personal asset on the day we part…”
Of course…age is not really the criterion. My larger point was not just about the work front but about any kind of partnerships.
Ninad I think, we should live with perspectives and not opinions, the moment i form an opinion about something and set up a definition of that in our mind, we are losers.
Old and young can be a good perspective but an bad opinion!