A Wonderful Boss is a compendium of reminiscences by people who have spent many years in the corner office, and none of them preaches riding roughshod over others. This is not a guide or a ‘how-to’ book. It is a conversation between the writers, who speak through their articles, and the reader, who engages with them through the thought processes they stimulate.
Is it a book for bosses? (the contributors don’t make ‘boss’ sound like a bad word. At the outset, Kapoor makes it clear that ‘boss’ is one of the hats a leader wears) Definitely, for those who don’t believe they are doing everything right. There’s a lot to learn here from other people’s mistakes and the long-term views of seasoned professionals.
It is also a good read for people who haven’t risen to a supervisory role yet but are on their way up. Equally, it will entertain those who are at the receiving end of a bad boss as they find out that they are not alone in disliking and disapproving of some types of supervisory behaviour.
Kapoor, who is the founder director and president of MILE—Management Institute for Leadership and Excellence, Pune, declares in his preface that bosses, largely, aren’t bad. “From my own experience of around forty years, I would say there would be more good guys in organizational corridors of power than bad ones”.
And even of the bad ones he says they are people who haven’t been able to strike the right balance “between how good or how bad he can be”. Perfection, he rules out, but assures that with effort “these relations can become cordial”.
The book makes a case for proper grooming of bosses within organizations as “bad bosses negate other organizational investments”. It cites studies that show that 70 per cent of people dread dealing with their bosses, and that the “happiness, commitment and health of workers depends on their immediate superior or boss.”
There’s another important reason that translates into costs for an organization: workers are the most important resource it has, and they quit most often because of bad bosses. Therefore, to retain talent, boss management is a must.
And it is not difficult, argues Kapoor, because “majority of the employees have realistic expectations from their bosses. In most cases, they want to work with just a decent guy”.
So, where should a boss start turning over a new leaf? At the heart, says Kapoor. “People first expect basic morals to be in place.” Professional knowledge and disposition come later. Then there is the matter of involving people in decision making, allowing them their space, playing fair, and also allowing room for mistakes.
Surprising in a book by industry veterans, all of them say that the “zero-error syndrome” is a bad thing. “Taking failure in one’s stride is an important quality which a manager must have. During work, things cannot be going right all the time.”
Raju Bhatnagar, partner at ITI Consultants, says a boss should remain grounded, remembering that the respect he gets is due to his position: “One should introspect whether the respect being shown is because of the position occupied, or because of the individual and the position occupied is secondary. If it is the latter, this is what one should strive for”.
There are 15 contributors to the book, with expertise in fields ranging from HR to publishing and business strategy, and they cover subjects ranging from interpersonal relations to hiring and appraisal. Each one also discusses the professional influences that shaped them and enabled their rise instead of talking about how they have moulded others. Thus, they avoid the common pitfall of self-aggrandizement that a collection of this nature is prone to.