Thursday 26 July 2012

So they fired one of my favourite bosses last week.  He was widely known as one of the nicest people in the bank, whose style of working was so relaxed that there would be a queque of people ready to work with him. Largely pain-free and never the one to create additional work, it was mostly a stress-free experience to work for him.

So clearly, the process of being and staying as MD is quite self-selecting - the nicer you are, the less likely you are to survive. What about the plethora of political a$%holes posing as " senior management" OR the paranoid and pyschotic micro-managers who if they could would track with you a GPS and plant a camera in your ass for good measure - When are they ever asked to leave?

The bank's excuse is if you are not bringing in money, we are not doing charity. Fair enough - when these MD's are being paid the equivalent of a small fortune, you better be milking some gullible fool who is commonly called as a " client".

However, how about giving equal weightage in performance evaluation to leadership, team management and mentoring skills? Surely, to be a senior executive, people skills are as relevant, where employee engagement and motivation should be as important as retaining your clients.

In an environment where we work as hard as we do, it is almost shocking but I have not had even one conversation with any of my line managers about my " career path" or " goal -setting" or " developmental plan".  Whatever limited conversations you do have are fleeting, cursory and a mere formality. Consequently, when you see the few role models that you could try and emulate get fired, your motivation to stick around is severely reduced.

As one MD rightly hung a poster on his wall saying " I work for money, if you want loyalty - get a dog." 

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