The Stars

In every field, in a team or in a group of people, there is always a star performer. Well, mostly.

This is the person who has the amazing ability to take the lead, take the initiative and actually do things. This is the person on whom the manager or the boss can depend upon. In fact, this person can take the manager's place in his absence.

These are the stars of the team. People look up to them to show the way. People expect them to have solutions to problems.

One thing that I have noticed is that seniority has nothing to do with it. It could be that senior people are the stars but it is not a rule. Often, some junior individual also takes on this role.

This is true at work but is also true in other spheres of life.

I have seen these 'stars' at work, in sports, at college events and even in a group of sadhus (monks)!

In fact what prompted me to think about this is the group of sadhus that is currently in Secunderabad for the recently concluded 'deeksha' ceremony which I wrote about here.

Now, the Jain monastic order gives a lot of importance to seniority. Every junior monk has to bow before a senior monk. Now, there is a lot of reason there. But, quite often, a junior monk shows a lot of promise and takes on (and is encouraged to take on) additional responsibilities.

This is the case with Muni Veetragyashvijayji. He is one of the junior monks in the group but he is the one who is seen shouldering a lot of responsibilities given by the Acharya (who is the head of the group). In fact, the recently initiated Kandaswamy became a disciple of the 'muni' despite there being other senior monks in the group.

This can sometimes give rise to differences within a group. But, this should be handled very carefully by the manager or the head. He or she should try to minimize the resentment which is bound to be there among the senior members. Often senior members are mature enough to understand this but this is not always the case.

In our company, we had the example of Rajesh Naidu who was quite a junior guy but was extremely capable. We gave him a lot of responsibility. Some seniors in his team were a little unhappy but we handled this and thankfully, did not have too many problems.

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