Once upon a time, in a distant fairytale land, lived a king. He was loved and dreaded by his men alike. The stringent approach of the king towards the governance of his kingdom was a unique thing in itself. He was even-handed; minced no words; called spade a spade and flinched no time in delivering the most ruthless of the judgements for the benefit of his state. He was prudent, wise, judicious and to put all attributes together, he was an extremely capable administrator. The kingdom flourished under the watchful eyes of his sceptre and the countrymen dared not do anything aberrant. One day, the ministers and the emissaries conveyed the warning signs of an imminent war to the king as the news of the neighbouring state hoarding ammunitions become rife. The king, known for being a just man, surprisingly did not pay heed to the counsels of his own men and remained complicit. Flabbergasted as they were, the ministers realise that the success, love and fear that the king had evoked in his years have gone to his head. The king had fallen prey to conceit and his ego had made him insurmountably complacent. As the days rolled on, the neighbouring state, which had been suppressed by the king, kept on going strong by leaps and bounds. The ministers were helpless, they tried blowing whistle but the king, drunk with power failed to see the actuality and could not fathom the loopholes that he himself had created in being unapproachable. By the time the neighbour waged a horrific war on the king, it was all too late. The kingdom as well as its ruler was brought to the knees and the latter was sentenced to be executed. When he was being brought to the gallows before the curious eyes of his subjects who loathed him by then for bringing downfall with his arrogance, the clergy asked him if he harboured any remorse for any sin that he had committed. The king, with tear welling in his eyes, could only say with his voice getting chocked, “I wish I could listen to my own men!”

The king, his kingdom, his ministers and his foes are all a part of an obliterated page of history that nobody cares to turn. But the sin of pride persists and will do so as long as mankind treads the earth. In this modern world of business and finances, where success and money are elusive as well as easy, we don’t have kings and queens but we do have business leaders, the CEOs, the VPs whose sensibility and sensitivity have a bearing on the stability and longevity of their enterprise. A leader must not assume the conventional role of a frightful, omniscient ‘boss’ who is light-years away from the mundane of the ground-level works, sneers at the prospect of interacting with his subordinates, shifting blames for all the foibles running in the veins of the system and creates the halo around him, making him an ivory-tower prince, thrice away from reality. To come out of the cobwebs of ego, to salvage the company in difficult times and to be prepared for the bad weather days, our business leaders must practise one simple task which no business school would perhaps teach them: listening.

To be a good leader, one must be a good listener first. One really cannot qualify to be a good leader if he/she carries the latent agenda of intervening in the midst of conversation, denies the arguments against him and creates a bubble around him with the habit of looking at his company with pink-tinted glasses, not acknowledging any of the faults that may lie in the ambits of his business. A leader must admit that out of the several problems that arise within and without the dynamics of their organisations, some are perilous enough to threaten their existence, howsoever small they may seem to be in germination. A CEO has the onus of steering the company out of these problems and he cannot distance himself from it. More often than not, due to the terror that they impose with their demeanour, the leaders get to see a lopsided view of the companies. The reports and the data that are brought to their table are given positive tweaks, negative news is tamed down. Welled off from the operations of their organisations, such leaders end up becoming intellectually hollow, physically lazy and bring disaster upon their business ventures.  In this blog update, we bring to you some of the usual tips of being a better leader who is not only at the helm of his company like a guide and mentor but is also acutely self-aware and critical of his own self.

Hierarchy is said to be the negative evil in the complex network of businesses. You need them but it is a mistake of humongous proportion if one attributes the best of the ideas only from the higher rung of the ladder. The most groundbreaking ideas may come your way from anywhere, from any distant cue. Thus a leader has to be open to receive ideas from any end and smart enough to ideate the indications. Eventually, intelligence is a merit which is not based on how much of salary one draws from the company or how big one’s office is!

A leader must come out of the bubble of misinformation and half-truth. He must allow his employees a space wherein they do not feel intimidated in sharing a bad news. To handle good and bad news both with equal composure is the sign of a level-headed individual and that bears well for the CEOs also. While communicating with the ones working under the leaders, the vanity of being their employer must not come one’s way. The feeling of compassion and camaraderie wherein the employees are not visualised as slaves and rather co-workers who are all doing their own bits for their institution must be upheld at any cost. And to ensure this, the leaders must contemplate over hauling their image and creating such a business ambience where the employees feel comfortable, heard, included and not neglected or insulted. From the pulpit of deifying, they must humanise themselves and assume the role that they are actually assigned with: mentors, guides, counsellors, stakeholders.

As a leader of the pack, one must work readily and steadily upon the alarms and encourage his employees to go beyond the confines of the corporate offices, expand their visions and identify early signs of problems. It is the task o the leaders to feed the minds of the others with ideas to shake them out of their comfort zones and to change their policies to cope up with an ever-fleeting business world. Regular field-trips to plants, inspection outside the snug chambers and creating a pool of networks should be in the to-do lists of the CEOs. In this way, the leaders don the garb of a motivator who can go to the grimes to detect stumbling blocks or to know how to improve.

The most difficult task that emerges when one becomes high and mighty are accepting criticism, handling failure and knowing that might is not always right. If a leader does not feel challenged, does not feel the hitch and is experiencing a submissive bow from his employees, them something is horribly wrong with the organisation. To overcome this, a leader must reflect upon his own thoughts and actions. He must be kept on loop regarding his individual decisions and policies through questionnaires and continual prodding.

English philosopher John Locke had propounded the ‘Tabula Rasa’ theory wherein the human mind is compared with a blank slate, ready for new impressions to be written. A CEO must carry this blank slate aura with himself to become non-judgemental, bereft of any prior insinuation. Having certain fixed images and agendas in mind while listening to a person clouds the good discernment of the former and the leader must come out of this trap. It is only when a leader creates a business ecosystem where not only he but others listen and feels listened that a company would stay afloat, earn loyalty of its people and stay strong together even under leaky roofs.

Stories are meant to teach, preach and change. The fictional king of the distant land may have died long ago but his fool-hardiness will forever teach the onlookers of his story what not to do and what not to assume. And if there is an aberration, reality is cruel enough to weave a similar tale around a leader and would make him a protagonist of a lore where everything tasted the dust due to the latter’s vanity and self-absorption.

The dictionary meaning of the oft-repeated, much-known French word ‘Renaissance’ is re-birth. Philosophically it alludes to the cultural re-awakening in Europe after the dark spell of the medieval deadlocks. It was a time when the thinkers, authors, painters, scientists alike advocated the significance of human beings as the centre of the cosmic dimensions. Why should we even remotely allude to such metaphysical theorising in the banal world of logistics? The answer is simple. It is time to re-do the framework in the otherwise vapid world of supply chain and go humanistic in hauling the pivot.

It is a matter of genuine relief that the modern world has shrugged off its slumber to a heightened consciousness regarding the decency in work environment in the recent times. The issue of safe workspace has been brought to the fore emphatically by the 8^th goal of sustainable development that has been proscribed by the United Nations. Decent workspace entails various facets and demands to it and they are not only restricted to fair flow of money earned by the worker, in exchange of their labour. A humanised workspace corroborates safety and security of the workers in the workplace, social security of their families, consistent opportunities of personal and professional development and equitable treatment to workers irrespective of their caste, class, gender, sexual orientation and other socio-economic factors. It is exactly because of this reason that the contemporary research on supply chain management not only lays stress on the conventionality of environmental sustainability, but also the discourses on social sustainability, i.e. humanised workforce has taken the centre stage. And it has been proven that thee leadership that cares for even the lower rung of employees, hears them and includes them in the policy making of the institutions earn the respect and good-will in the market.

It must be brought to focus that supply chain industry not only includes the white collared employees or the drivers, pickers, shippers. In the burgeoning and multi-tiered domain of supply chain, even the procurers of resources, workers who manufacture, intermediary sources of labour are also embedded in the entire gigantic, living organism. And it is the responsibility of the c-level of the companies to sufficiently humanise the entire process. They must act as the incubator to nurture and help the whole ecosystem flourish. While the environmental footprints of the companies have yardsticks to measure them, the human rights metrics are complex and difficult to yoke with the main fold of the system. Therefore, thrust should be given on the changing nomenclatures of the social aspects that need humanised focus through constant and rigorous research that is commensurate with the paradigmatic shift of the society.

And to understand this shift, we must acknowledge the very nature of the supply chain industry. Traditionally, the industry has been a buyer-focused one with the maximum importance granted to the consumer satisfaction. Everything that goes around within its fold has the ultimate motive of earning reputation before the buyers. While happy customer with increased product traffic is indeed of foremost importance, it is also disheartening if we see that the companies completely disregard the entity and the participation of the other stakeholders in the ambit of the industry, namely its workers. It is extremely precarious for a company in the longer run to consider workers as just a factor in completing the life cycle of the products. It is crucial for the companies to understand the cycle of employment also. To know the socio-economic-ethnic-racial dynamics of the workforce and the stages that the workers had to traverse through in order to be employable creates the foregrounds of a decent and safe workplace and top executives must ensure that. The knowledge also incorporates the cognizance of the dialectics of the employees and employers, the degree of freedom that workers enjoy in terms of speech, action and conducive approach. It is exactly these aspects that make sole focus on environmental sustainability and cost optimisation redundant.

Therefore, we can see how it is of optimum interest in the merits of the individual business organisations and the leaders to bring the arch light back on the humans and the humane approach. As mentioned earlier, the entire modus operandi of supply chain involving workers, demands and contexts must be conferred the due humanistic outlook that it has long deserved. Cognizance pertaining to the behavioural response of the workers and the change in it, the emotional quotient in addition to the intelligent quotient must be sought and brought to the highest decision-making tables of the companies. It is time to set the moral compunction and legal compass elsewhere. It is time to go anthropocentric. It is time to beget new-found faith on humanity.

While this article is being written, India is going through a horrific wave of a fatal pandemic, killing thousands of people, infecting millions and affecting the whole nation, leaving people from each strata of the society in a quagmire of uncertainty. Fear looms large on all; fear that is unprecedented; fear that knows no limit; fear that leaves all in cold shudders. Loss of lives, loss of health, and loss of livelihood have pushed an entire nation in the jaws of all-permeating depression. More than ever, the people are feeling the need and importance of a guardian figure that they would look up to, who would extend a helping hand and would lend a shoulder to cry on. And it is exactly in these times of abysmal hopelessness, the business leaders are assuming the role of the messiah and are emerging to be the guarding angels one would fall back upon. It is through their unwavering support, astute decision-making skills to adapt themselves and the companies to the changed scenario and staunch leadership qualities, they are proving themselves to be strong buttresses who can egg on others to hold each other tight in the raging storm and rendering them hope that there will be an end to a nightmare and we all will wake up in a new dawn, crooning to the tunes of positivity on the other side of the rainbow.

In this article we would try to recount a few lines of work that the company leaders are doing and must do to keep the businesses adrift at a time when they have to deal with a financial slowdown, changed customer behaviour and employees who are weary of the dance of death are cooped up in homes, helpless and bereft of the warmth that any social animals need. It is a time full of twofold challenges; personal and professional. To deal with one’s own distresses while thousand others are looking up to you with waning morale is a daunting task. On top of that, apart from preserving, protecting and upholding the rights of all the stakeholders, one needs to consistently learn and un-learn so as to evolve, for the benefit of the individual, for the benefit of the institution. Hence, it can be securely said that these are times when the true worth of a business leader will go through an arduous litmus test.

The pandemic has pushed the business leaders in an arch light where they are not seen as other-worldly entities with halos emitting from them, but usual human beings who have their own set of fears, vulnerabilities, responsibilities and foibles. Remote form of work is the norm and office space has intruded into the homespun life of all and sundry. We all have ended up becoming tiny figures on the screen of the conference calls. Therefore, it is time to be humane. Let the officious formality take a small detour for a while. The very first thing that the business leaders are doing is showing the other side of their faces; the less-formal, more-relatable family persons who too are fighters and survivors in the catastrophe. Taking out time to ask the well-being of the employees, their family members and setting up a crises management team to look after the aids that the employees may need not only solidifies the trust that employees have for their employers but also earns the leaders respect by bringing them a few steps closer. Thus, the long-forgotten, oft-ignored values of empathy and commiseration have made a welcome inroad in the tightly clasped world of professionalism.

The pace and degree in which the corporate world has changed is baffling even for the most progressive minds. Office spaces are mostly deserted and the way service sector used to function has undergone such a seismic change that it is practically unimaginable to think of a business life beyond this. Companies too had to adapt themselves to these changes, train their stuff to embrace a world that never was and transform themselves in all forms of policy, goals and operation and that too in an unthinkably swift way. The magnanimous aspect of leadership comes into being in this very case that while employees are constantly working under grueling circumstances, without a handy help, trying to strike a balance amongst work, health and life and walking the line of fire daily, it is imperative that the leaders are allowing them to take time off, reflect, rejuvenate, sort the thorns of life out and be instrumental in collaborating and bringing about positive changes while situations pull them back.

A good leader always challenges and motivates his subordinates to learn and grow while he himself leads and paves the way. What sets a great leader apart from the other run-of-the-mill executives is his inherent capacity in taking risks. Business, which always sits of the tenterhooks of risk, can only augment if risks are taken at the level of goal setting. We all have seen that all of the giants who stride and bolster in the firmament of finances took baby steps because somebody crazed with the idea of change and novelty had dared to dream and had gambled with life to make the change happen. They stood firm even when the ship had hit rocky terrains, withstood all that came with boldness of mind and steadiness of heart and finally fortune beamed upon them, rewarding them for their resilience. Covid, despite its all-pervading negativity has unleashed an array of possibilities for the businesses. In order to resist redundancy in the current volatile and changed business world, one has to take risks, have a solid vision for a long-term and encourage others to follow suit. Otherwise, success will stay elusive and stagnation will lead to obsolescence. Hence, the leaders must contemplate over the issue of their contribution to the world in the midst of a dreaded pandemic. They must muse and let others muse over the changes companies must make in order to stay adrift. They must learn and let others learn ways in which their dreams may come to fruition.

Pandemic has taught us the importance of having human-like traits more than ever. It has made us comprehend that neither can we live in our imaginary ivory towers nor can we stay in silos. In this world where we are engaged in a collective strife to stay alive, inter-connectedness is the key to survival. Hence, the business leaders have shown the need of having a platform wherein they would share their learning, their plights and would help each other by challenging and motivating each other to learn and grow together. It is only through a curetted repertoire of shared knowledge that leaders can keep abreast with the best practices doing rounds. Furthermore, the need for sparing thoughts for leaving ecological footprints, being conducive to the society beyond the organisational corpus and managing the conflicting demands and dimensions of the multiple stakeholders of a business tests the acumen of the leaders. This has been felt practically in these days when the frontline workers, employees whose functionality has been affected due to the pandemic had to be kept secured. Lay off is not an option. It propels individuals and families into bottomless pits of adversity. It is those leaders who tend to care for the footprints, who secure that the hearth of their employees never get frozen, who are adroit and thoughtful, whose companies are trusted widely across the myriad lines of collaborators.

The roles of the business leaders are complex and variegated even in the regular milieu. And with the sweeping bout of change that is there in the air, the leaders have now donned additional garbs of guardians and change-makers apart from being mentors, policy-makers, decision-makers and employers. Therefore, the seminal place that they have in the pandemic-stricken financial sphere is undeniable and is ever-burgeoning. Their impact is to be felt not only in the power corridors of corporate but also in the homespun life, giving them a tinge of human-like colours.