It is a debatable discussion of governance or delivery centric model of working environment and what actually makes a good leader into a great one.

Once a leader said, we trust our team to work without supervision. Do you resonate with a phrase when your manager says “trust me”. What life taught me over the past couple of years that never trust a person who literally asks you to trust him/her. I have hardly heard any leader saying - go on take up this - I trust you with this new thing. I think it’s high time for the tables to be turned around, team needs to have more trust in the leader than leader demanding that trust verbally.

When a project fails, leader has a moral duty to take the fall for it, then why the juniors are thrown under the bus in the discussions. The learning curve comes from the mistakes and experiences we carry in the path of our careers, they are as important milestones as success stories. How governance plays a role in delivery? Just seeing who comes when and takes the breaks. How many work from home per week - but isn’t the question be - was there any escalations, issues, risks with the unavailable team member. Are there any red flags from the client. If no, why governance is given so much importance in corporate culture in India.

And it is a usual expectation to work after office hours or to extend in office, else the employee is not flexible. Is it the fact or baseless accusations on the people who are productive and efficient with in their office hours. Let’s take an example - Shyam comes to office in the morning, chats around, sits with his peers for some irrelevant discussions and starts his actual work by mid day. He is unable to finish his work by the log out time because he wasted half of his day, then to deliver his work he stretches in office and finishes off the job after staying back for 2-3 hours after everyone is gone. Now the leader observes that Shyam came on time and has not left yet so he drops by his desk and asks, if everything is okay or if he needs any help. That’s a good part of a leader, because sometimes people are stuck on something and struggling with it. However, case with Shyam was different, he said that he had a busy day and he is packed with work without mentioning when he started it.

This makes a perception in the mind of the leader that Shyam is hard working and flexible and very focused towards work deliverable. But was Shyam all of this? Did he displayed all these qualities, when he could have easily finished it within time.

On the other hand there is Naresh, who is on the similar project, starts off his day immediately after his breakfast break in the morning, send his deliverable and leaves for home. Now the perception Naresh gives is, why is he going early, he is judged for not extending in office. Why should he extend when he did what was supposed to be done - just to show and pretend that he is flexible. Is this a fair judgement of employee flexibility? Aren’t employees punished on the name of flexibility instead of being rewarded for efficiency.

Most voice of employee surveys have shown that working environment focused on delivery model succeeds than governance model. Who likes restrictions in their lives. Literally marking attendance on a spreadsheet, calling the team members on the work from home or random skype message just to check people are not faking to be online while working from home. Where is the trust - the leader once talked about - we trust in our people that their work in BAU (Business as usual) mode, whether the leadership is there or not. And by the way it is the same person who talks about the trust and then acts in a different way - Action speaks louder than words!