How to Deal With a New Boss

“If you want to grow into leadership, you have to be willing to take responsibility for any damn thing that happens – good or bad.”

—Sadhguru

Question: Sometimes we find that when a new boss comes into a company, he makes many changes that are at odds with the company’s past culture. This leads to a lot of instability within the company. How should we deal with that?

Sadhguru: In every institution, there is always a process in the selection of a leader. Once we make someone a leader, if everyone does not give their support, he or she will not be able to take the organization anywhere. If you keep up your old habits because you think they are good for you, what can a new leader do? As an employee, you may want status quo. But the new leader probably wants to take the organization somewhere else, to a completely different place that you are not able to think of. If you could think up all that, they would have made you the leader.

If you are interested in the company, organization, nation or any institution for that matter, once we elect or select a leader, we must support them entirely. A leader cannot come down the line and tell the entire staff of the company what he is planning to do. It will not work. Anyone who leads from the front is always alone in this because you cannot share it with even the nearest person around. If you talk too many things, they may freak.

To make something large happen, there are many steps that are taken simultaneously and a lot of things have to be strategized. If there is no strategy, no leadership works. If you are a leader, you must think a hundred steps ahead. But if you talk about these hundred steps, no one will stay with you. To one person, you may explain a few things; to another, you may explain a little more; and to many more people, you may not explain anything at all. If you explain everything to everyone, nothing will work because people will make chaos out of it. 


Whoever the leader is in your corporation, you do not know what he has on his mind. The problem is, the moment a leader tries to make changes, everyone down the line, from top to the bottom, thinks the boss does not know what he is doing. You should leave that to him because once he becomes a leader, it is not just that he can wield power, he is also responsible to make it successful. If he fails, what has to happen to him will happen. But you don’t have to go about pulling his leg and making it a failure. Your business is to take instructions and do it, whatever it is.

So leave it to your new boss. Let him do what he wants to do – just support him. If he knows what he is doing, it will be a success. Otherwise, it will be a failure. But whoever selected him, they have gone through a certain process and they believe he will succeed.

If you want to grow into leadership, you have to show the necessary competence and above all, be willing to take responsibility for any damn thing that happens – good or bad. You don’t sit and calculate how much you have done today. If you always see at the end of the day, “There were so many more things to do, but I have not done them today because I ran out of time or energy,” you will naturally grow into a leadership position. 

Editor’s Note: Looking for some motivation? Here are 25 quotes by Sadhguru on Leadership, Business, and Success.