The task for week #1 in course Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence was analyzing best and worst ever boss in my life. Wrote a few lines (100 words were needed as an assignment) as a personal reflection on Leadership.

The two leaders differ a lot:

  1. Areas – work as PM in NGOs (Olexa) and IT (Pavel). It didn’t matter where are u from and current employment area, I believe (both leaders worked in IT)
  2. The behavior differed totally: who was speaking/listening most of time, who asked questions and answered,
  3. How good micromanagement was felt, Does office really needs a cleaning manager???
  4. The donors were from EU or Russia, That matters, u encapsulate basic methods of treating personnal.
  5. Percentage of people with experience in the team, I appriciate emotional experience first of all, not (only) professional skills. To find motivation for your bro is hard if u’re the only one who’s doing that in the team 😉
  6. Allowing (or disallowing) to study something new (outside of professional area). For instance, I had to hide the fact I’m MOOCoholic.
  7. If initiatives were allowed and not ignored. That’s really funny if u can share your ideas and plans only in the kitchen (canteen) in late evening with others, who loves to work till midnight like I do =)
  8. The desire to control even personal life. No comments, each of us understands.

As a result I felt like a part of the team in one case and felt like a resource in another. No good to feel like a resource, no motivation, especially when boss wants u to concentrate on tasks, switching them and testing u all the time. My opinion, the worst ever boss treated everyone like that, because he had clients in Russia, where people know about nothing how to manage their lives, the only method they use is command and conquer (the hand wrote “devide and conquer algorithm”, I’m IT nerd, what do u want, fixed). As a result, there’s no place for hope and compassion – self centered managers just can’t produce nothing like that. Being a part of such team – I mean the feeling – is impossible, as a result u come to work for money only, no emotions, no hope, just fear of unemployment. That’s how it was. I do remember the times when most of my collegues felt and lived that way. I do hope it’s not gonna be that way any more.

Inspired by events outside of the office I Ieft, started to produce emotions and share hope with people in the streets, inspiring them to go on no matter how hard it feels. Not sure I did that fine, but the campaign inspired me to change myself and the way I live.

Shoud I mention that events which inspired me to change my life were Euromaydan, Ukrainian revolution which took place this winter? =)

Provided  journal  for this course see here, the form to collect all insights and reflections on your experiences