13. Does Sincerity Pay? Rajdhani Tyres Ltd (RTL) was a medium-sized tyre company, manufacturing tyres of various types and grades. It had 6000 workers and 400 executives on its rolls. The manufacturing division was headed by Ramlal. Shekhar was the Chief Engineer reporting to Ramlal directly. The division had 400 workers, 20 executives and 40 supervisors. Baluja joined the manufacturing division four years back as a skilled worker. He was technically sound, hardworking and performed his duties sincerely. He was promoted as a supervisor recently. On Monday, Baluja was taking rounds in the department. It was a routine inspection and he spotted Raghu doing nothing. Baluja advised Raghu to concentrate on the job given to him instead of wasting his time. Raghu shot back saying "You mind your business. I am the senior most in this department. Don't think you have become big after your recent promotion." Other workers witnessed the exchange of words with interest and finally burst into laughter when Baluja tried to retort. Encouraged by the favourable response from his team mates, Raghu retaliated by using unparliamentary words. In frustration, Baluja had to report the matter to the Chief Engineer, Shekhar. Shekhar took a serious note of the situation and issued a stern warning to Raghu, ignoring the fact that Raghu was quite notorious for such incidents in the past as well. Baluja was able to get along with others in the departments, despite occasional flare-ups over matters relating to discipline and production targets. After a two-year stint, Baluja was in the midst of a crisis again. A worker named Roberts came to duty in a drunken state and was celebrating his birthday with other colleagues, disrupting work. Even after half an hour the noise did not subside and Baluja had to intervene and check Roberts to go back to work and allow others to resume normal duties. Roberts got wild when he was physically forced to go to his workspot. In a fit of anger, Roberts resorted to physical abuse and slapped Baluja in front of others. Not content with this, Roberts reported the matter to the union, alleging verbal as well as physical abuse from the supervisor, Baluja. Three days afterwards, Baluja got the shock of his life when he came to know about this from another supervisor. After the ugly incident, Baluja had to rush back to his house for admitting his son in the local hospital for viral fever. Since Roberts was drunk and it was his birthday, Baluja never thought of reporting the matter to his boss. The union presented a highly fabricated case to the chief of manufacturing, Ramlal and demanded immediate disciplinary action against Baluja. Ramlal instructed Shekhar to demote Baluja immediately so that he would mend his violent ways of dealing with workers. Shekhar advised restraint since this would send wrong signals to other supervisors and would demoralise them thoroughly. Shekhar however, fearing a revolt from the union, had to demote Baluja.Unable to swallow the insult to his ego, Baluja resigned immediately thereafter, citing personal reasons. Shekhar was quite unhappy with the turn of events and sought advice from the personnel manager, Khurana. Khurana was quick to respond, "Incidents of this nature should help us realise the importance of picking up people with good interpersonal skills as supervisors rather than technical skills. After all, they need to extract work from others, without losing their cool even under provocative situations. You see, we can't put unions in a spot even when they are on the wrong side." Shekhar: 'I know people were after Baluja, since he is sincere and hard-working. He was a race horse. Others were not. With a little bit of tact, Baluja could have managed the situation well." Ramlal: "It's sad to lose people like him. But Shekhar, workers are illiterates and respond negatively when you talk tough language. A supervisor should use his brains rather than hands while dealing with people. This fellow rubbed shoulders with union people on the wrong side previously too. Other supervisors seem to be OK. Be careful in your selections from now on."