The meeting was to start exactly at 9 am and except Pravesh, everyone else was present and that included our main boss, Ravendra.

Though by age he was almost the same age as us he was our boss due to his excellent experience and expertise.

Of course it was also true that he was just recently promoted by the senior management!

Ravendra looked quite upset because of the delay and in that same moment the door of the conference room opened and we all saw our colleague enter nervously.

He looked around and the moment he noticed our boss, Ravendra, he sincerely apologized for his delay.

“I am really sorry for the delay. Actually what happened was…?” Just as he was trying to explain the reason for his late arrival our boss interrupted him.

This is total indiscipline!

It has been more than fifteen minutes I have been waiting for the meeting to start and here you are walking in as though nothing has happened.

I will not tolerate this kind of indiscipline from you or from anyone in the future. Do you get that?”

He almost screamed aggressively at Pravesh. “Yes Sir” he responded and walked to his chair.

He looked completely demoralized and was feeling deeply humiliated. Through the entire duration of the meeting he sat there almost completely silent.

He had to make a presentation about his clients and targets and that too was done in a very de-motivated manner by him.

I could not bear to see him that way. For most of us in the team Pravesh was one of the nicest people and more than that he was actually a very punctual and disciplined employee in our department.

Yes, it is true that Pravesh had turned up late for that meeting but was it right for our boss to ‘fire’ and scold him in front of everyone! I do not think so at all.

Honesty

To be very honest, from that day onward my own respect for my boss began to steadily come down and I was not the only one.

A few weeks later I saw three of my colleagues tendering their resignations to the boss. It was during the exit interview with the manager of Human Resources (HR) when they opened up.

They told the HR Manager the reason for tendering their resignations.

“Sir, we want to leave this organization not because of the unhappiness with our respective jobs but because we are unhappy with the aggressive and arrogant style of leadership of our boss.

Even for a small mistake rather than correcting and guiding us on ways to avoid the mistake in the future, our boss would yell and at times even shout Cuss words at us, that too, in front of other people.

We could not take this humiliation anymore and have therefore decided to quit this organization” As the HR Manager heard all this he was at a loss for words.

He knew that the organization was losing three extremely able and competent executives just because of a leader’s arrogant and aggressive attitude!

My dear readers, through this real-life story I have shared I wish to highlight the importance of Control.

The way in which we must be able to control our aggression and convert that into Assertiveness is important.

Aggressive behaviour

It can ruin relationships, professionally as well as personally. The first thing is learn to control our aggressive and anger-filled emotions, to not REACT but RESPOND to situations where you typically may lose your temper.

In that first example about Pravesh reaching the meeting late, I believe the better thing would have been for our boss to not show any anger initially at least.

However, after that meeting he could have had a one-on-one talk with Pravesh to understand the reasons for the delay.

By shouting at him in the beginning itself the boss completely demoralized and demotivated Pravesh and thereby punctured his positive and proactive attitude with which he had planned to participate in that meeting.

Ravendra, our main boss did not change his attitude at least till the time I was in that organization.

Fortunately I had somehow managed to request for a change in location and the only reason for that being that I did not want to work under the leadership of Ravendra.

As I got promoted and became a team leader there were many instances where some of my team members and juniors would make errors and mistakes or would be non-punctual but I knew for sure that I would control my emotions and not get aggressive and angry with them.

I had learnt to be calm and composed and controlled while dealing with my team members and it really helped in generating a very positive Team Bond between us!

At the conclusion I only wish to say that leaders must rise with the three C’s ( Calmness, Composure and Control) and not fall down with the three A’s ( Aggression, Arrogance & Anger)