I’ll Follow My Leader - Knowingly or Unknowingly

One of the private organizations in India allowed its employees to wear casual outfits on Friday but when the dresses of some female employees started getting shorter and more revealing, the Human Resources Department issued a circular stating what they meant by casual outfits. This introduced several restrictions on what employees could wear as casual outfits in their offices throughout India.

No one objected to this and not a single voice was raised on freedom to wear short dresses in office. None of them said that the organization was against women or that it was an orthodox approach. They accepted it saying that it helps maintain decorum in the office. Wearing T-Shirts with whatever script was restricted but none of the employees said that it was against their freedom of expression.

Several websites are restricted to be used at most organizations on office internet which includes most (if not all) social media platforms, websites showing adult content, online shopping sites, entertainment sites etc. Employees would normally not object to this as they understand that the organization is doing this to boost productivity and avoid non-sense however; they still go and waste time on Wikipedia, news channels and any other entertainment sites that might not have come under the notice of IT team.

In one of the offices there was no parking space for two wheeler of the employees; as a result of which the employees parked on public road and the authority would toe their vehicles sometimes. I don’t know if anyone ever spoke to the management about this because they also knew management did not have space to provide inside the building.

In the corporate offices in India, hardly anyone (unless it is the requirement of the organization) works in local language. Almost all the corporate offices operate in English (emails, documentation, meetings and presentations etc.) and no one normally stands up for local language there. Those who do not know English, go on to learn (despite all challenges) in order to get a job but in general public life they feel their language is important and it should get equal value.

When people go to work for some organization they readily accept the policies of that organization. They rarely say that the rules are being imposed on them but when Government decides something it may be severely criticized. Same people behave differently in the corporate world and public life.

Is that because people follow different leaders in Corporate World and Public Life?

Although the employees may criticize some moves of the employers yet they welcome most steps taken by the leadership team for the betterment of the organization. Those who criticize are also not criticizing in the face of the management but they criticize as part of their gossip. The concept of “leader of opposition” is normally unheard of in the corporate world where work is mainly in offices. Such leaders are not generally entertained.

In manufacturing units however; the leader of opposition is the union leader at times and we all know how many challenges are faced by those unit managers where strong unions are present. In the Government sector we have seen some strong unions in the office world as well which show their presence by going on strikes from time to time.

Leaders are about influencing people whether negatively or positively. Most people do not have the ability to judge what is good or bad for them. Many people can’t generate their own thoughts and like to repeat what they read or heard somewhere. You can imagine that from the fact that many people undergo training for the simplest of interview questions (strengths, weaknesses, tell me about yourself etc.).

So, when some public leader says something which is related to public ego, many people start spreading it and if the leader is really impressive, he finds many people spreading his thoughts in public and acting like he suggested but those same people know (somewhere in their subconscious) that they have different leaders in their workplaces to whom they have to listen and follow as well, so they behave differently in his workplace.

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