Boss,a protective shield !

Dr HB Joshi

Leadership always plays a pivotal role in the progress and development organisations. Leadership covers all dimensions of organizational culture, especially skillful handling of Human Resources and helping employees realise their potential strength in order to apply at the right place and time for meeting organisational goals. Leaders always standby like a rock providing solid support to their team members at testing times.

I would love to share and depict one example of the supportive leadership that I experienced during my working tenure at National Dairy Development Board , Anand during 1985 to 88 as an Executive (Manpower Development ).

My work assignment was usually coordinating and conducting various training programs.

There was this national workshop being organised by NDDB at Anand on cattle feed. The participants were technical staff working with cattle feed factories and farmers from across the country. We were expecting a large number some 600 participants from various state dairy cooperatives unions and federations.

At the helm in MPD section was Dr.SP Mittal ,Manager (MPD) who was my immediate boss and Dr.MPGKurup was the Executive Director who summoned me in consultation with Dr. Mittal and assigned me the responsibility to coordinate the workshop.

A number of journalists were also invited so that we get press coverage of the event.

As the number of participants was rather large, Dr.Kurup instructed me to arrange for the reception and refreshments for journalists at hotel Savshanti, Anand.

Everything was well arranged as per the instruction given to me for logistics etc.

Journalists were brought directly at NDDB conference venue and taken to Hotel Savsanthi for lunch after morning session.

During the tea break of the workshop, Dr.Buch came to know that arrangements for journalists was done separately at hotel and called me and asked me who did it and why you have isolated the journalists from rest of the participants and added that the Chairman may not like this !

I tried to convince him logically but he was in an angry mood fired {Many Boss have this quality ! } me which really scared me and made me dejected being a junior person co-ordinating such a program first time in my working life!

I immediately brought this development to the notice of Dr. Kurup as at that moment I was worried that this small incident may pose a serious problem.

Dr. Kurup in turned patted me and quietly said, “Do not worry. Tell him that I am behind this decision. I was immediately relieved. The churning pain in my abdomen immediately subsided.

I was flabbergasted. It was such a pleasant experience and lesson for my life.

What an instant protective umbrella and courageous support Dr. Kurup provided me at that critical moment.

He showed his magnanimity injecting a renewed confidence in me.

Thus at that moment was revealed to me one definition of an ideal boss !

“When you hand over responsibility to someone you should always be helping and supportive !”