Being a Yes Man !

Dr A S Bhatia
It has been more than thirty five years for me in public life and I have noticed that there exists different types of persons in all offices, may it be a Government office or a corporate office, one category of employees always enjoyed the privilege of their bosses, and that is the category of “Yes Man Group!”. The members of these groups are very possessive about their bosses till the boss occupies the chair and will not let anyone outside the group to come close to the boss! These ‘Yes man groups’ have a full fledged organization type set up, with patron, president, vice president, think tank members! Another important thing to note is that whenever there is change in the chair, the strategy to capture the new boss keeps on changing. The Yes Man group will analyse the whole service record of the new boss, will work out his liking and disliking and will formulate a strategy to retain the virtual power in the office.
Sycophancy and ingratiating behavior is on the rise in the work place. Some people call it buttering up the Boss, brown-nosing or sucking up or managing up. These people make sure that their boss’s personal agenda is high up on their list of priorities. In my opinion the increasing number of sycophants at work place is mainly because of presence of insecure bosses. These are the bosses who fail to recognise the sincere, honest and truly hard working people but feel gratified by the false praises showered on them by these groups of sycophants.Such environment at a work place is dangerous for the society and the system as it creates a sense of insecurity among the sincere and honest workers who feel deceived at times, thereby lowering their morale of working leading to fear based workplaces rather than creative, warm and trust based environment! The people with ingratiating behaviour are of very complex human psyche and play their game with the bosses like a perfect Grandmaster where every move is calculated and targeted to achieve something.
I had many opportunities to work with a large number of officers in different capacity and to much of my amusement the Top chair has always been surrounded by a group of flatters and yes man! This group of flatters knows that your direct controlling officer sets the tone for your relationship with your job. If your immediate Boss is cool and under your control, it could be a great job opportunity for you even if you are not worth of it! This is the most dysfunctional aspect of traditional employment which has unequal distribution of power relationship between the Boss and their subordinate and where one man is made the deciding force. It is not a healthy situation where new persons are promoted with little thoughts, given little or no training and then put in charge of other people. It is also not healthy for the working intelligent group to need one person to approve of their every step, but this is the unequal distribution of power, where Yes Man group thrives! So flattering or buttering up the Boss or other such ingratiating behavior are on the rise in the work place.
A University of Texas study found that “Challenging a chief executive less, complimenting the CEO more and doing the CEO a personal favor increased the likelihood of being appointed to a corporate board by 64 percent.” “Yes man group ensures that their Boss’s personal agenda is high up in their priorities list, they have trained themselves to laugh extra loud at His Jokes, showers all praises on all his deeds, agree with and support everything that comes out of the boss’s mouth!” But this type of work culture creates a level of fear which makes creative, sincere and hard working employees to sulk around and to stay out of trouble rather than to try to solve the problems! Then there is another group of people surrounding the Bosses, They have acquired additional features and qualities along with being sycophants, the additional added features is to speak ill about the other employees, telling false stories to the Boss about ill word being used against him by someone! This type of group is more dangerous as compared to yes man group, as they are not only trying to be in good books of Boss but at the same time , are trying to bring other sincere workers down and in bad presentation and are damaging their image in front of superiors!
As I am penning down these lines based on my vast working experience after holding many positions at all levels from being a junior most subordinate employee in 1990s to the top position of being a principal of a Government Medical college, my advice to all young Bosses, “Not to fall prey to these two dangerous type of people. Try to adjudge the subordinate by critically data based analysis of their performances and not to depend on the hearsay, not to judge the performance of an employee by calculation how many times he has visited You, Not adjudging his performance how many times he has laughed at your not so funny jokes or how many times he has done a personal favour to you! Remember sycophancy is not good for any system, it is for losers. Believe in your potential and your wisdom, your abilities to excel by your sheer hard work and not by buttering or flattering! You may win temporarily but you cannot be a true leader. True success depends upon character and spine. Also young bosses should understand that the person doing flattering has an ulterior motive and an excessive and insincere form of praise and is being used as a manipulative tool with the intention to deceive and manipulate. Flattery is also dangerous for bosses as it can lead to get themselves manipulated and controlled by flatters and sycophants and can influence boss’s decision and actions to serve their personal agenda leading to toxic work culture where performance and merit gets ignored. In all offices where the flatters are successful truth can be distorted leading to spread of false and manipulated information proving to be very serious in professional settings where wrong information can be detrimental in critical decision making.
Otherwise as is said,
Ithihaas Gwaah hai,
Jab kisi ki barabari nahi ki ja sakti,
Tab uski Badnaami shuruu kar di jaati hai !!
(The author is Principal, Government Medical College Rajouri.)