Manager’s

Behavior plays
vital role in a team
member’s role &
growth.

Organizational
Behavior Assignment
Trisemester I

Rik Chakraborty(011)
Chitra S(012)
Anurag Chordia(013)
Sankalp Chugh(014)
Devanshi Dhruva(015)
Manager’s Behaviour plays vital role in a team member’s role & growth.

ABC is a software services consulting company headquartered in Mumbai, India. ABC is the
largest provider of information technology and business process outsourcing services in
Asia. ABC has offices in 42 countries with more than 142 branches across the globe. The
company is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange of India.
ABC is a major Information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, Computer
consultancy, Computing consultancy, technology consulting or business and technology
services) is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information
technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT
consultancies often implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf.

ABC is a flagship subsidiary of one of India's largest and oldest conglomerate company,
the SEVA Group, which has interests in areas such as energy, telecommunications, financial
services, manufacturing, chemicals, engineering, materials, government and healthcare. ABC
is one of the largest private sector employers in India with core strength in excess of 165,000
individuals. ABC has one of the lowest attrition rates in the Indian IT industry.

The work environment at ABC is built around the belief of growth beyond boundaries. Some
of the critical elements that define the work culture are global exposure, cross-domain
experience, and work-life balance. Each of these elements goes much deeper than what it
ostensibly conveys.

At ABC, the company has established an environment that focuses on individual aptitude,
talent, and interests. As a proven practice, they promote cross-domain experience that
provides the employees with opportunities to function across different industry verticals,
service practices, and functional domains as well as varied technology platforms. While all
these factors help hone the employee skills across platforms, they also offer customers a
talent pool with expertise that exceeds their industry benchmarks; at the same time, they
continuously present the employee with the opportunity to explore the domain where they
believe they would fit the best.

It was the mark of a new beginning for Mr Edward Collins. With smiling face and full energy
Edward steps into floor two zone four project cubicles of ABC Limited . This expression is
expected out of any fresher right after the training when he is selected for a project in the
Banking & Finance domain the most wanted one in the company and Ed was no exception.
After the initial talks with the Group leader Ed was introduced to the Manager, whose project
he was mapped to. The manager gave a grin and greeted the new employee into the project.
After a very brief description about the project and the role for the sake of formality Ed was
introduced to a colleague to guide him through the rest of the formalities. This indifferent
nature of the Manager was unusual and also unexpected for Ed but then he felt this is how
probably a work culture would be. There are more of realisation & learning that happen in
work life especially for a fresher which Ed will soon realise. Now, this colleague a senior
member of the team elaborated about the project, the hierarchy structure, also his role and the
kind of work he was expected to perform. With this introduction Ed was bombarded with
whole set of documents to read through by the end of that week as officially he will be on
boarded on to the project from the next Monday. With the training acquired in graduation Ed
could comfortably finish reading all the documents with little understanding and more of
uncertainty. Ed did try to approach his manager to put across the point that the documents
provided to him was not easily comprehensible. All he heard as a reply is “Just get
familiarised with the terms and process. Proper understanding happens on the job. I have an
important work now. Catch you some time later.” So, the week passed by with just reading
all the documents with minimal knowledge gain of the project and no interaction with his
team members.

Monday blues was a common phenomenon for everybody in the project except one. Yes the
exception was Ed, he was full of enthusiasm and carried his usual smile and was set to work
on the job. But to Ed’s disappointment he was not allocated any work and everybody were
busy doing their job. So, Ed approached his senior team colleague about allocation of work
for which the member responded saying it is under the purview of the manager who was off
from work the whole week. After a day or two of sitting idle at work, Ed with hesitation
approached a team member and requested him to give him some knowledge and hands on the
application. Ed also put forth the idea of sitting along with the person and learning from what
he is doing currently. The team member agreed and did impart some information to Ed.
However all of it couldn’t be explained as the member had time constrain for meeting his
own deadlines and also because Ed was a fresher with limited scope of learning. With little
sense of happiness the week passed with some learning with the help of the team member.

The week next when Ed opened his mail on Monday morning he was shocked and surprised
to see there was an EOD task to be completed sent by the manager. Clueless of what is to be
done he approached the team member regarding some overview on the nature of work. The
team member did his best to give some guidelines and based on that and with extensive
efforts from his side he was finally able to finish the work assigned at around 8p.m. The
manager seeing his response mail just had only one thing to say “Try to improve your speed
& efficiency. This work takes hardly few hours even for someone new to the project”. Weeks
passed by like this. Every day he had lots of challenges at work. With little support from a
team member and his tremendous efforts he was talented enough to learn lots of things. Ed
improved his skills & learning all by himself and was adherent to his deadlines and
accomplished the tasks effectively.

The manager knowing well that Ed does his task efficiently started giving more and more
work to him. He always made him stay back after office hours for extra work and many times
delegated even his own work to him. Ed was totally pressurised with work and to meet all the
deadlines. He even tried to confront his manager about the extra load that was given to him
due to which his health started suffering. But the manager turned a deaf ear to his request and
told Ed that he was an employee and it was his duty to do all this work. Even after Ed did so
much work, the manager failed to recognise all his efforts that he had put in his work.

Then was the time of evaluation and Ed expected that he would be promoted as he had
worked too hard and he deserved to be promoted. But due to internal politics and favouritism
his manager promoted some other colleague who was not as efficient and hardworking as
him. Ed was totally shocked. He did not understand as to what went wrong that he was not
promoted and someone who didn’t work that much was promoted instead of him. At the same
time, there was some personal problem at his home for which he wanted leave. But his
manager bluntly turned his leave application down saying there was a lot of pending work
that Ed needs to finish in one week’s time. Ed was confused whether to do the work or
whether to go to his home town. He was in a dilemma whether he should leave his job as he
was neither satisfied with his manager nor with the quality of work that he was getting.

Ed grudgingly returned to his cubicle. But he could not focus on his work and became very
fidgety. He decided to escalate this to the HR. The HR was a very effective and pleasing lady.
She gave a patient hearing to Ed. She assured Ed of a solution soon and asked him to
continue working diligently. The HR then had an offline talk with the boss of the manager. In
fact similar problems regarding the manger of Ed have come to HR previously. That
prompted her to have a talk with the boss of the manager.
After the talk the manager was summoned and was apprised of the findings. At first he was
defensive and tried to justify his stand. But on elaborate explanation he agreed and decided to
have a talk with Ed. Eventually Ed was nominated for an Excellence award and he also won
the same. The leave was sanctioned and the distribution of work became even. Also the
manager became very supportive of the team. Ed became quite contended with the team.

Is it enough if just a team member has all the traits to be successful and bring about growth to
the team its more about how his manager is. It is not just important to be at the right place at
the right time in the right job it is more important to be under the right boss. The scenario we
encountered is commonplace the outcome depends on the maturity of the organization in
dealing with the same. Here we see that Ed was experiencing a conflict, less motivation was
a victim of office politics. Further the manager of Ed’s manager had a rigid perception and
stereotyped his employees. The manager was not a good leader and set a poor example for
the team. The role played by the HR was very crucial. She initiated the negotiation & dealt
with the conflict in an effective manner. The boss of Ed’s manager played the most important
role. Like a mature leader he gauged the problem. He urged Ed’s manager to change his
attitude and lead the team in an effective manner. The timely intervention by the authorities
prevented further decrease of Ed and bolstered the morale of his team as well. It is not that
Ed’s manager was bad but his perceptions were not correct. A little guidance made him look
in the right direction. The many organizational problems is similar to this. Right decision at
the right moment saves the day.