Here we would like to discuss about Mr. Gagan Malhotra and his leadership style.

Mr.Gagan Malhotra holds the position of a Manager in a reputed automobile company and one of our

EPGP students holds the position of an Assistant Manager under him.

To develop an OB model on him, first of all, we need to analyse him at 2 different levels:

a) Individual level

b) Group level

Irrespective of the above levels, he carries a very grave personality.

He always keeps others at the edge of a knife where no one can predict when his mood will swing.

Let’s first analyze him on an individual level.

Following are the points we have observed about Mr.Gagan as an individual:

1)He is a completely task oriented and self-motivated maverick.

2)He never tends to settle for anything less than his satisfaction level at work which is next to 100%.

3)He understands his job and the company’s expectation from him very clearly.

4)Loosing sense of time and being careless towards his health are common when he strives for
perfection.

5)As far as work is concerned, he is the most sincere and honest person I have ever come across in my
life.

6)But he loses his cool within no time when things don’t work out as per plan at crucial stages.

He seriously needs to work on the above aspect.

7)He expects everybody around him to be completely honest to his/her tasks.

8)Above description holds good till he stays at office.

Outside the company’s boundaries, he is a different person all together.

He plays cricket every Saturday and Sunday, may it be corporate cricket or gully cricket.

9)He holds a good number of well-wishers and ill-wishers.

Now, lets talk about the group level.

Here I would focus mainly on his management of sub-ordinates.

He leads an interesting team of 8 members.

I referred our team as an interesting one because apart from Mr.Gagan, who holds an experience of 12
years , no one out of the rest 7 members has an experience of more than 4 years.

We have been working together as a team for the last 2 years.

Followings are the points that I have observed about his management style both personally and

professionally during our association:

1) Even though our goal was aligned with the organizational goal, every member had his/her own way of

planning and executing his/her individual plans.

Mr. Gagan had his moments of frustration but he respected each person’s way of executing plans with

utmost patience and perseverance.

2) There were moments when we committed mistakes that were pretty big but we were supported by

Mr. Gagan every time.

We also made sure that none of the mistakes were repeated.

3) He gives credit to the whole team when our team performs well and he takes complete responsibility

In case our team doesn’t match the expectations.

4) He always backs his decisions.

As per him, if we look for advice from people around you, then you can’t be 100% confident while taking

a decision.

5) He gives space to every member of our team if that member is in a state of turmoil.

He even offers help and support if any member is in a state of need.

6) He motivates others to be good listeners and wise thinkers.

He has been working on his cognition aspect since the recent past and still needs to work more on it.

He needs to be better at handling pressure and should give up his habit of reacting rather than

responding in tensed situations.

7)The best quality he possesses is that he blindly trusts each and every member of our group.

He never re-verifies any data provided by us.

This motivates us to be honest to our work and trust each other.

8)At times, Mr.Gagan organizes small get-togethers of our team after office hours or on holidays to

interact with each member on a personal level.

We share our concerns in our work life and Mr.Gagan connects with us by sharing his valuable
experience and similar incidents which he had faced in the past.

We too interact with each other and have light talks which relieves our work stress and cohesiveness of

of our team increases.

9)Out of the seven members of our team, designation of 2 members is Assistant Manager and those of

other 5 members are either Junior Engineer or Engineer, who are junior to Assistant Managers.

But Mr.Gagan is impartial to everyone.

Hierarchical position of a member doesn’t matter to him but the attitude of the member and his passion

towards his work matter to him.

10)Mr.Gagan doesn’t possess any in-group or out-group.

He leads only one group that is our group.

He trusts everyone in the team and all team members trust him completely.

11)Honesty of Mr.Gagan towards his job motivates us to do our work effectively and honestly.

That’s why there is no place for deviant workplace activities in our team.

12)Mr.Gagan attends various technical and management conferences and training sessions and shares

his learnings with all of us.

He also nominates us for various learning sessions that are held at corporate level.

This helps us to learn different valuable things apart from our regular work.

13)Mr.Gagan strongly follows Path Goal theory.

At the beginning of a project, he provides complete information about each member’s role in a team

and his expectations.

14)On the basis of his experience in past projects, he shares the major hurdles that could be faced

during the project but he never shares the ways to tackle them.

He keeps it open for us to think and come up with new possible ways to tackle the real life issues.

This in return improves our problem solving skills and makes us feel independent and confident about

our job.

15)Mr.Gagan seldom asks for our feedback about him.

He is open to any level of criticism.

He considers himself a student whose job is to learn throughout his life.

We as his team members, share the same trait.

This motivates us all to strive for perfection in whatever we do.

16)One of the best characteristic that Mr.Gagan possesses is ethics.

Nothing is above ethics, be it personal life or professional life.

As per him, success can be achieved even without ethics but not satisfaction.

So, in order to be successful and satisfied in our job, we need to imbibe ethics within ourselves.

On the Blake and Mouton’s Leadership grid, I would grade him (8,9).

I have maintained the difference of 1 point because at the end of the day he needs to get the work

done.

On developing a conceptual framework on the leadership skills of Mr.Gagan, I would say that,

Mr. Gagan is typically a Development-Oriented and transformational leader who emphasizes on

creating a vision, brainstorming, coming up with new ideas and their implementation keeping in mind

the confidence and acumen to tackle real life issues.

Role of manager

INPUT: OUTPUT:
Self management
Young joinees without Responsible and
any past experience Team management
ethical team players