GROUP DYNAMICS
... -Michael Jordan Teamwork time! Ravi’s rise through the ranks had not gone unnoticed by the other members of his department. There were those in his department who saw him as deserving a candidate as any. There were also those who felt that he was young, inexperienced, a relative newbie. This latter bunch felt that with years gone by comes wisdom, and that Ravi was not senior to be taking on the bigger assignments. Ravi’s detractors were, surprise surprise, relatively senior incumbents. They viewed Ravi as an upstart who had got too much too soon. Envious of his mercurial rise, they were dead against the idea of him rising to the top ahead of them. Ravi’s boss though had other ideas. Ravi’s boss had no idea of some of the rumblings going on in the office. He genuinely believed that Ravi was a lad with a lot of potential. It was in that belief that he involved Ravi in a plum project along with some others from Ravi’s department. In this group were the aforementioned seniors who didn’t quite like Ravi. There was no leader of the group per se, the only constraint being put was that the group had to report back to Ravi’s (and their) immediate boss at fixed intervals. Ravi was never an individual with a need for power, but he was somebody who liked to take the initiative and lead the line. In his team’s eyes though, Ravi was the enemy. Ravi’s co-members weren’t the vicious, vitriolic sort either but jealousy does end up getting the worst out of the very best of us. “How could they allow someone to leapfrog the pecking order at such a young age?” asked Anil Nigam. “For sure. He is a greenhorn, a babe in the woods. He won’t know how to handle adverse situations,” chirped Usha Kotwal. “This isn’t the first time top management has erred, and it surely won’t be the last. But this really is pushing it too far,” added Chiranjeev Singh. “With time, they will come to realize their folly,” boomed Sunil Ambani with the authority that comes with seniority. Say whatever they would individually, collectively they had a cause, a raison d’ etre. And that was to block out everything and anything that Ravi could do or try to do. What this band of five had endeavored was teamwork of a very different sort. Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -Friedrich Nietzsche Divided we stand, united we fall. Ravi was working in a group of five. Lets take a look at Ravi’s team members. Anil Nigam has been working for Air India for the last 10 years. At that point in time, he had left a cushy job in an MNC for a job that he thought would be more stimulating and challenging. Usha Kotwal had been re-deployed from the HR department of Air India to the Marketing department. Though some believed she might end up being a misfit, Usha was doing quite well for herself. Chiranjeev Singh was an MBA from a premier institute of India who had been working with Air India ever since he passed out. He believed that he really was going places until he saw Ravi’s meteoric rise in stature. Sunil Ambani was the “almost there” of the department. Having been passed up for the top job, Sunil viewed Ravi as a major threat to him. Needless to say, he was dead against the idea of working with Ravi. Ravi hadn’t worked with any of these people earlier, so he had no idea of their ideologies or their way of working either. At first when he worked with them, Ravi made nothing of the minor skirmishes he had with his group. After all, each of us have our own thoughts and ways of getting things done. This too, would pass. But whenever any matter of importance came up for discussion within the group, it seemed as if the rest of the group agreed to disagree with Ravi. No matter what the suggestion, no matter how good its value, Ravi was gunned down each and every occasion. To Ravi, this seemed like some sort of plot on the part of his team members. Lets take a look at one of the instances in the beginning which would give a fair idea of the way things were going. “You know, we’ve always don’t things this way. How about if we look at things from a different angle?” pondered Ravi. “I don’t think that would quite be the way to go,” answered Chiranjeev, unsure of himself. “But think about it people,” Ravi went on. “We have absolutely nothing to lose. We can’t do any worse than we are, and we stand to gain a lot if we succeed.” The silence was deafening. And then Sunil spoke up. “My man, you have no idea of the way things are done here. Your idea, though fundamentally sound and essentially brilliant, would never live to see the light of day.” “And why is that, Sunil?” questioned Ravi. This probably angered Sunil, for he took Ravi’s innate curiosity to be arrogant defiance. “Young man, you are naive. Temper you ideas with pragmatism and you’ll be able to answer your question yourself.” Such flare-ups weren’t few and far between: they were the norm. And so it went on… As time dragged on by, the project group wasn’t getting things done. One thing lead to another and soon the group found itself at sixes and sevens. Before no time Ravi found himself feeling totally alienated and he wondered what he had done to bring this upon himself. Little wonder then that he started taking no interest in the affairs of the group since they would obviously not listen to whatever he would have to propose. With the passage of time, the purpose of the group was accomplished and it...