Ethical Leadership in Business (Shivang, Ex-Core Team Member)

Shivang was part of the first team of Youth Alliance. He played a pivotal role in managing and executing the first Lead The Change-Spring 2012. With the experiences he had from Youth Alliance, he went on to join his family business in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. When Shivang took that decision we knew with all the faith, that he is going to employ all his learning from Youth Alliance in whatever space he goes into. In the ensuing paragraphs, he beautifully shares his journey in the last one year with Grover Motors, and how in such an ecosystem he could imbibe certain  crucial values that in his words, healed the environment.

One year before...

One year back on 1st of July 2012 I joined Grover Motors, as what, I still don't know. I reached before time. Abhishek Bhaia (my brother), who looks after the place, was out of town, so I was just wandering around , observing things. At around 10 a.m. in the morning, I got a call from bhaia saying "Ask Lalla ji how much did he sell the material for?"

I was excited and happy because I got some work to do on the very first day and in the very first hour. May be, that one question sound so meaningless to you, but for me, it carried a deep meaning inside. Bhaia could have asked Lalla ji directly himself, but no, he didn't. He called me up to ask him, which showed he respected my presence over there.

I really appreciate his such munificent act, as it gave answer to all my insecurities that I had before joining the office.

                 

The next few days passed by in understanding the environment I was going to work in. Since, earlier I had worked in Social sector, so jumping from social sector to corporate made things both easy and difficult for me. The first and the foremost thing that I realized was that people here lacked the sense of ownership.

As soon as Bhaia returned, he gave me claims data of FY 11-12, which were around 2200 claims, and I was asked to reconcile and to update the status of the same. I was not able to understand, why was Bhaia giving me such an unproductive task, but I had faith in his decision and started working on the claims. For the next 20 days, I didn't get up from my chair as all the time flew by in reconciling the claims. Definitely sometimes I felt frustrated, but somewhere deep inside I knew, it was for my own good.

While reconciling, I realized there were so many questions that I wanted to ask, like what is the procedure of raising a claim, what are the norms, how and when will we receive the payment of the claim, what about claims that have been rejected and so on and on.

At that point I realized you have to start from the bottom to be on the top.

After the claims were reconciled, I was left alone to observe again for about a month. As mentioned earlier, the first and the foremost problem was that the employees lacked the sense of ownership towards the organisation and towards the duties assigned to them. Second, they lacked unity. Third, they were spreading the negativity around and had made the work environment so negative. As I was new, and they didn't respect me, so I could not do anything to heal the environment.

In September, one fine day, Bhaia called me up in his cabin and asked me to look after the spare parts division as it is the backbone of any dealership and he was getting many complaints regarding non availability of spares. I agreed. As this was a big responsibility on my shoulders, so I had to be very particular regarding everything in spare parts division. To make sure no ill thing should happen, I shifted all my files & documents to spare parts division and devoted my whole day to spare parts. I changed the whole team. Chucked out the old employees as they were good for nothing and picked up some employees from within the dealership. I chose the most honest employee from the most low profile job. Now, I had a team of 4 people to run the spare parts department, 2 out of which had no knowledge about spares, 1 had little and 1 was an expert.

I took it as a challenge and as an opportunity to re-create things and to do things in a prescribed way. I used the only asset I had to train the team. While training I was very particular about the sense of ownership factor & Unity factor. I read in dominos, "How can we keep our customers happy if we can not keep our employees happy so every month I tried different activities with them, like one month I tried the secret angel activity, I introduced the champ of the month activity to boost up their motivation, I even tried to be familiar with them by talking about their families, about their problems, giving them advice and I realized it was working."

As days passed we grew, and the growth pattern was very high. From No. 21 in the north region we jumped to No. 6 in just three months. My team started believing in me and respecting me.

"You have to earn respect of your subordinates, co-worker's, employees."

Time passed, we slipped from No. 6 to No. 9 in the region. I was worried and the reason behind the downfall was abstruse.

As the team was new, they definitely made mistakes, but committing the same mistake again and again was the reason. I asked myself what could be done. They were not taking the complete ownership of their work. Something was missing and suddenly I realized we are in the world of financial dealing and there should be a financial obligation on the person who is committing the same mistake again and again. I just penalized the team an amount of Rs. 20 thrice and they were back to No. 5 with a bang. They realized the worth of a single rupee when they lost it.

The big question in front of me is "Everything is done but how much sustainable can my policies be?" Lord Ram had himself said that "Any philosophy, no matter how perfect, works only for a finite period. That is law of nature and cannot be avoided." But now, I am much more confident that next time I will pass out from this phase very easily.

Recently, from March, I have been looking after the workshop department and I am trying to convert the negative environment into positive environment. I am very much careful, as I do not want to disturb the satisfaction level of low income level group. I hope to see us in the top 5 dealers in the region and I am very confident that with the support of my team, we will do it.

I am patiently waiting and will wait in future as well. I have learned the key mantra - to be on top, start from bottom, keep your employees happy and earn their respect.

Today I ask myself  "One year before, where was I and today where am I?"

A big thanks to Abhishek Bhaia for always supporting me and for creating a comfortable space in the organisation for me to work in.

Also a big thanks to Youth Alliance for the take aways which are helping me today.

Shivang did his graduation in commerce from Delhi University. He nurtures a passion for photography. Now he has taken upon himself to contribute meaningfully to his family business.