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Sandhya was a fresher who had joined in an IT firm. After a merciful life at college, she was scared of the disciplined corporate world (life which she was not used to). After the first few days in the organization, she found that it wasn't all that bad. She had got a real cool boss
(according to her), who didn't put much restriction on office in/out timings, and had very friendly approach towards his subordinates.

Sandhya was very happy on finding the right boss (her kind of boss) in her first job itself. The boss was friendly with everyone in his team with special inclination towards few, and Sandhya was one of them.

Things were going fine, andfinally "The Time" came when the boss had to appraise his team, and considering their good terms with the boss, everyone had very high expectations regarding their appraisal. Some were expecting good pay hike, others expected promotion. The boss had a tough decision to make and had lots of pressure from the top to maintain the normal curve (one method of appraisal). He had to choose few of his team members as high performers.

Finally, the whole process got over and final ratings were out. There was a hue and cry in the whole team, only 1-2 members' expectations were met, the rest were extremely frustrated with the results of appraisals, and were cursing "THE FRIENDLY BOSS" for the same. Most of them were feeling cheated. Sandhya was one among the frustrated lot.

But why???

Usually, people like Sandhya expect the friendly nature of their bosses to get reflected in performance reviews also, and usually forget to make a demarcation between the two.

This is the usual scenario many a friendly bosses must have faced in last appraisal season.

The next question that comes to our mind is, "Is it wrong to be a friendly boss?"

The answer is an obvious no. But then, what went wrong?

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* Contributed by: -
Richa Jain is currently working in IT industry as an HR professional. She has done her Engineering in Industrial Production from Jabalpur Engineering College, followed by MBA in HR from ICFAI, Hyderabad.