Meera - The Defensive Senior Manager

    Meera was a brilliant senior manager whose warmth could turn cold in an instant. Then she found the one hidden pattern behind it - and learned why self-awareness is the first pillar of emotional intelligence.

    Meera - The Defensive Senior Manager

    Meera - The Defensive Senior Manager

    She was one of the sharpest strategists I had ever coached - and one of the hardest people to work with. Some mornings Meera was warm and collaborative; by afternoon she could turn cold and snappy, and nobody knew which version of her would show up. The story of how she found the one hidden thread behind it all is, to me, the clearest way to explain what self-awareness really means at work.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Everything in this book hangs on one picture: The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). Picture a four-sided kite. Success sits at the top - the result everyone wants. On the left is your EQ (Emotional Intelligence). On the right is your RQ (Relationship Intelligence). At the bottom is your PQ (Productivity). EQ, RQ and PQ together lift you to Success. You rise on balance, not strength alone - and a kite with one weak side never flies steady.

    Meera had plenty of PQ. She was a formidable strategist. What she was missing sat on the left edge of her kite. And the very first thread on that EQ side - the one that holds all the others in place - is self-awareness. That is where her story begins.

    The office is an emotional battlefield

    Before I tell you what changed for Meera, let me set the scene - because her behaviour did not come out of nowhere. Every workplace looks calm on the outside: desks, laptops, deadlines. But beneath that surface runs a constant emotional current. Your office is not just a place of work - it is an emotional battlefield. Every single day you meet triggers: a harsh email from your boss, a colleague taking credit for your idea, a client shouting over the phone, a project that fails despite your best effort, a teammate who does not pull their weight.

    These are not just events. They are triggers. And how you respond to them reveals your true level of emotional intelligence. Picture a typical day: you wake up late, your spouse is upset, the school fees are overdue, and the car is out of fuel. Traffic chokes you on the way in, your boss is already angry, a complaint is sitting in your inbox - and then you spot the one colleague who irritates you just by breathing in your direction. What happens next? Do you snap at your team and fire off a sharp email? Or do you pause, breathe, and choose your response?

    That tiny space between feeling and reacting is where EQ lives. The professionals who stay stuck react. The professionals who rise respond. Meera, for all her brilliance, was living permanently in the react zone - and she did not even know it.

    Meera’s story: when insecurity wears the mask of aggression

    I once coached a senior manager - let us call her Meera. She was a brilliant strategist. Give her a messy market and a blank whiteboard and she would map a path forward that left the room nodding. On paper, she was exactly the kind of leader every company wants.

    But she was unpredictable. Some days she was warm and collaborative - she would pull a junior aside, coach them patiently, and light up the whole floor. Other days she was cold and snappy, cutting people off mid-sentence, dismissing ideas with a wave of her hand. Her team learned to read her mood before they read the agenda. They walked in every morning quietly asking themselves: which Meera are we getting today? That is an exhausting way for a team to live, and it slowly eats away at trust - no matter how good the strategy is.

    Meera herself could not explain it. When I first asked her about the pattern, she was defensive - which, as it turned out, was the whole point. She insisted she was simply "direct" and that people were "too sensitive." She had a hundred reasons ready. And that readiness to defend was the very clue we needed.

    The breakthrough came during a workshop. As we worked through her reactions, incident by incident, she began to notice something she had never seen before. It was not random at all. There was a thread running through every cold, snappy episode. Whenever she felt insecure about a decision - unsure whether her call was right, worried she might be exposed, afraid of being second-guessed - she became defensive. The insecurity did not show up as fear or doubt. It disguised itself as aggression.

    Read that again, because it is the heart of the story. Her sharpness was never really about the person in front of her. It was a shield. When she felt most unsure inside, she pushed hardest on the outside. The colder she got, the more insecure she probably was in that moment. Once she saw that - once she could name the pattern out loud - she could finally manage it. She could catch the feeling as it rose and choose a different response. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and for the first time, Meera could see.

    That is why self-awareness always comes first. Not because it is the easiest pillar, but because it is the one that unlocks all the others. Without it, Meera would have spent years managing symptoms - apologising after outbursts, promising to "be nicer" - while the root cause stayed invisible. With it, she had a lever she could actually pull.

    What self-awareness actually is

    Self-awareness is the first of the five pillars of emotional intelligence. It is the ability to recognise your emotions as they arise - without denial and without judgement. That sounds simple. In practice, most of us are terrible at it.

    Most people move through their day unaware of what they are feeling. They are irritated, but they do not know why. They are anxious, but they only notice after they have fired off three sharp emails. They carry tension home from a fight and then wonder why every conversation at the office turns defensive. The emotion is driving the car; they are just a passenger telling themselves a story about being "logical."

    Self-awareness changes that. It is the discipline of pausing and asking three honest questions:

    The questionWhat it does
    What am I feeling right now?Names the emotion instead of letting it run silently.
    Why am I feeling this way?Finds the real trigger - which is often not the person in front of you.
    How is it affecting my tone and decisions?Reveals the damage the emotion is doing before you cause it.

    For Meera, question two was everything. On the surface she was "annoyed at a sloppy proposal." Underneath, she was insecure about her own decision and terrified of being wrong. The moment she connected those two, the aggression lost its grip. Daniel Goleman, who popularised the term emotional intelligence, placed self-awareness at the base of the whole structure for exactly this reason - but you do not need a psychology textbook to feel the truth of it. You need one honest look in the mirror.

    Self-awareness sits inside a bigger picture

    Self-awareness is pillar one, but it does not work alone. It is the doorway to the other four pillars of emotional intelligence that we explore across Stars at India Inc.:

    Notice the order. Meera could never have reached self-control while she still believed the problem was "sensitive colleagues." Awareness had to come first. That is the logic of the entire EQ side of your Winning Kite - and it is why we build our Signature Programs to start people exactly where Meera started: with seeing themselves clearly.

    How to catch your own "Meera moment"

    You do not need a workshop and a coach to begin. You need to become a quiet observer of your own patterns. Here is what I ask managers to do:

    1. Track your defensive moments for one week. Every time you feel the urge to push back hard, jot it down - what happened, and what you were really feeling underneath. After a few days a pattern usually appears, just as it did for Meera.

    2. Look for the emotion under the reaction. Aggression, sarcasm and stonewalling are almost never the root feeling. Underneath is usually insecurity, fear, embarrassment, or exhaustion. Name the real one.

    3. Ask someone you trust. Others often see our patterns long before we do. A candid teammate who tells you "you go cold whenever your plan is questioned" is giving you a gift, not an insult.

    4. Build the two-second gap. When you feel the heat rise, pause and silently run the three questions. That gap is where a defensive senior manager becomes a self-aware leader.

    Meera did all four - imperfectly at first, then more naturally. Her team noticed within weeks. The mornings of "which Meera today?" faded. Her strategy stayed just as sharp; only now people wanted to be in the room with her. That is the quiet power of self-awareness: it does not make you softer, it makes you steadier.

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    Take this further

    If Meera’s story sounds like someone on your team - or like you on a bad day - that is not a weakness. It is a starting point. Self-awareness is the most trainable trait there is, and it lifts every other side of the kite once it clicks. Explore the full model on The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework), see the range of corporate training topics we cover, or talk to us about a session for your leaders.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Who is Meera in Stars at India Inc.?

    Meera is a composite senior manager Avinash Chate coached - a brilliant strategist who was warm on some days and cold and snappy on others. In a workshop she discovered that whenever she felt insecure about a decision, she turned defensive. Her insecurity was disguising itself as aggression. Once she saw the pattern, she could finally manage it.

    What is self-awareness in emotional intelligence?

    Self-awareness is the first pillar of emotional intelligence - the ability to recognise your emotions as they arise, without denial or judgement. It means pausing to ask: What am I feeling right now? Why? And how is it affecting my tone and decisions? You cannot fix what you cannot see, which is why self-awareness always comes first.

    Where does emotional intelligence sit on the Winning Kite?

    EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is the left side of Avinash Chate's Winning Kite, the KITE Leadership Framework. The kite has four sides - Success at the top, EQ on the left, RQ (Relationship Intelligence) on the right, and PQ (Productivity) at the bottom. EQ is the thread that holds the whole kite steady. You rise on balance, not strength alone.

    How can a defensive manager become more self-aware at work?

    Start by naming the trigger. When you feel the urge to defend, pause and ask what emotion is really underneath - often it is insecurity, not disagreement. Notice the pattern across several incidents, get honest feedback from someone you trust, and create a two-second gap between feeling and reacting. Awareness of the pattern is what gives you the power to choose a different response.

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