Memoirs of an Air Veteran
Coimbatore – April 2006
For twenty years, the Indian Air Force had prepared me for almost everything. I could read a situation in seconds. I could make a decision under pressure and stand by it. I knew how to follow an order, and when the time came, how to give one.
Then I walked into my first civilian job as a Team Lead on an aerospace database project, and I discovered there was one thing the Uniform had never taught me.
How to listen.
In the Forces, communication flows like a well-drilled formation. Orders come down the chain of command, crisp and clear. You acknowledge, you execute, you report back. There is a beautiful efficiency to it, and in an operational area it saves lives. Nobody stops on a perimeter at night to ask how you feel about your post. You hold it. That is the job.
So, when I took charge of my first team of young civilians, I did what I knew best. I assessed, I decided, I instructed. I expected the same quiet “Yes, Sir” and the same precision I had seen in the men I served with.
What I got instead was silence. Not the disciplined silence of soldiers, but the uneasy silence of people who had stopped telling me things.
Deadlines slipped and I did not know why. Good people looked restless and I did not know why. Problems reached me only when they had already become crises. I was making decisions quickly, as I always had, but I was making them with half the picture.
The turning point came in an ordinary moment. A young member of my team, one of the quietest, finally said what the others had been thinking. Our targets were unrealistic because of a problem in the process that none of us at the top could see from where we sat. It had been visible to everyone on the floor for weeks. Nobody had told me because nobody believed I would hear it.
That stayed with me. I had faced danger without flinching, yet a team of twenty-somethings had been afraid to speak to me.
I realised that in civilian life, people do not follow your military credentials/rank. They follow your respect. And respect begins with listening.
So, I began to unlearn, and then to learn again.
I learned to ask before I told. “What do you think is going wrong?” turned out to be a more powerful sentence than any instruction I could give.
I learned to stay quiet a little longer than felt comfortable. Often the most important thing a person had to say came only after the first pause, once they were sure I really wanted to know.
I learned to listen for what went unspoken. I began to catch the micro-hesitation right before a compliance “yes,” notice the sharp contrast of a colleague who had quietly stopped contributing to meetings, and understand that when people quit over “money,” they were often actually leaving their managers.
And I learned that listening is not the opposite of decisiveness. It is what makes decisiveness worth something. The Air Force taught me to make clear, uncompromising decisions. Listening taught me to make the right ones.
That lesson became the foundation of everything that followed. Over the next twenty years in Human Resources, from my first HR role to leading global HR teams, I have seen the same pattern again and again. Attrition rarely begins with a resignation letter. It begins months earlier, with a conversation that nobody had. Most conflicts are not about the issue on the table. They are about someone who felt unheard. And many good managers struggle not because they lack skill or intelligence, but because no one ever taught them this one quiet discipline.
We train new managers in budgets, targets, reviews and software. We rarely train them to listen. We assume it comes naturally. It does not. It certainly did not come naturally to a soldier who had spent two decades in a world where questions were a luxury.
If you are stepping into your first leadership role, here is what I wish someone had told me:
- Your team already knows most of the answers. Your job is to create a space where they feel safe enough to tell you.
- Listen first, then decide. Not instead of deciding, but before it.
- Thank the person who speaks up. When someone finally says something uncomfortable, they have just given you the most valuable thing a manager can receive: the truth.
The Uniform gave me courage, discipline and the ability to decide under fire. Civilian life gave me the missing piece. Together, they made me the person I am today.
I still make decisions quickly. But first, I listen.
Patiently…… Attentively…… Humbly…… and with an open mind.