Ramesh, the Chennai Production Manager Who Didn't Know He Was Scaring His Team
A Chennai automotive plant's production manager thought he was decisive. His team thought he was aggressive. The Elbaek Model closed that gap in one uncomfortable, transformative conversation.
Ramesh ran a shop floor at an automotive plant in Chennai the way he thought a production manager should - fast, firm, no wasted words. He believed he was decisive. His team believed he was aggressive. Neither of them knew the gap existed until a simple two-column exercise called the Elbaek Model put both perceptions side by side on paper - and Ramesh saw himself clearly for the first time.
In short- Ramesh, a production manager at a Chennai automotive plant, discovered through the Elbaek Model that his team perceived him as overly assertive - almost aggressive - a blind spot he had never once suspected.
- The Elbaek Model, created by Danish innovator Uffe Elbaek, maps self-perception against others' perception on chosen trait axes to expose exactly these gaps.
- Once Ramesh saw the overlap - and the gap - between his self-rating and his team's rating, he consciously softened his tone and decision style without losing his edge.
- The result: better collaboration, higher morale, and a measurable lift in his team's productivity.
- This is a Relationship Intelligence (RQ) tool on the Winning Kite - you cannot build trust with people whose real experience of you is invisible to you.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
The Elbaek Model belongs on the RQ - Relationship Intelligence - side of The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). RQ is about how accurately you read the people around you and how accurately they read you back. Ramesh's story is the cleanest illustration I use in workshops of why RQ cannot be assumed - it has to be measured, however uncomfortable that measurement feels.
Fifteen Years on the Shop Floor, One Blind Spot No One Had Named
Ramesh had spent years earning his stripes on the floor of a Chennai automotive plant. He knew the machines, he knew the line, he knew how to hit a production target under pressure. When he became production manager, he carried the same style upward - clipped instructions, quick decisions, zero patience for hand-holding. In his own head, this was simply what leadership under deadline looked like. Assertive. Efficient. Necessary.
What Ramesh did not know - because nobody had ever told him, and because he had never asked - was how that same style was landing on the people executing his instructions. To him it was urgency. To his team, it often read as something closer to aggression: a manager whose tone made people flinch before they answered, who left little room to raise a concern or admit a delay, who made the floor feel tense even on ordinary days.
This is precisely the kind of gap the Elbaek Model is built to expose. Not because Ramesh was a bad manager - his technical grip on the plant was excellent - but because self-perception and others' perception of us routinely diverge, and without a structured way to compare the two, that divergence stays invisible indefinitely.
What the Elbaek Model Actually Is
The Elbaek Model was developed by Uffe Elbaek, a Danish innovator and leadership expert known for his work in organisational development. Think of it as a self-assessment map. You pick a handful of trait pairs - opposing qualities relevant to your role - and rate yourself on each, from 0 to 10, with the important rule that the two ends of each pair must add up to 10. Score yourself 8 on collaborative, and independence automatically caps at 2.
Common axes people use include:
- Selfish vs. Helpful
- Pessimistic vs. Optimistic
- Dishonest vs. Honest
- Independent vs. Collaborative
- Assertive vs. Passive
- Analytical vs. Creative
- Risk-Taking vs. Cautious
- Detail-Oriented vs. Strategic Thinking
You are free to swap in whatever traits matter most in your own professional context - for a production manager like Ramesh, Assertive vs. Passive was the axis that mattered.
How the Diagrams Reveal a Blind Spot
Here is where the tool earns its name as a 'magic' exercise, and it is genuinely simple. You draw your own self-assessment diagram across your chosen axes. Then you draw a second diagram - your honest guess at how a colleague, direct report, or supervisor would rate you on the same axes. Meanwhile, that same person independently does the mirror exercise: their own self-rating, and their rating of you.
When you lay the two 'how they see me' diagrams over each other, the areas that do not overlap are your blind spots - traits that are visible and obvious to the people around you but were sitting completely outside your own self-image. You can strengthen the accuracy of the exercise further by pulling in more than one evaluator; two or three honest voices give a far richer picture than one.
There is an emotional pattern worth naming here too. If you consistently rate yourself higher than others rate you, that gap usually traces back to ego - the 'I am the best' story we tell ourselves that others simply do not buy, or as we say plainly in Hindi, 'Teri aukaat kya hai?' That inflated self-view is what causes friction long before anyone can explain why. If the gap runs the other way - others rating you higher than you rate yourself - the issue is usually confidence, not competence. Either direction, the Elbaek Model gives you hard evidence instead of a vague feeling that 'something is off' in how people respond to you.
The Conversation That Changed Ramesh's Leadership
When Ramesh ran this exercise with his team on the Assertive vs. Passive axis, the result was not subtle. He had rated himself as firmly assertive - a manager who made calls quickly and communicated with clarity. His team's independent ratings put him much further along that same axis, closer to outright aggressive. The instructions he considered 'clear' were being received as commands with no room for pushback. The urgency he considered 'necessary' was being felt as pressure that discouraged people from speaking up when something was going wrong on the line.
Ramesh had never realised this about himself. Not because he lacked self-awareness in general, but because nobody on a fast-moving automotive shop floor typically stops to say 'the way you spoke to me just now felt harsh' - not to the person who signs off on their targets. The Elbaek Model gave both sides a structured, low-ego way to surface exactly that feedback without it turning into a confrontation.
Recognising the blind spot was the turning point. Ramesh did not abandon his directness - a production line under deadline still needs quick, clear calls. What he changed was the delivery: more room for a team member to flag a concern before a decision was locked in, a shift in tone that signalled control rather than pressure, more visible acknowledgement when someone raised an issue instead of a problem being brushed past. The substance of his leadership stayed intact. The experience of being led by him changed completely.
The outcome, as the book records it, was concrete: better collaboration on the floor, visibly improved morale, and a real lift in his team's productivity. None of that came from a new production technique or a capital investment. It came from Ramesh finally seeing an accurate picture of himself.
Why This Happens to Good Managers, Not Just Bad Ones
It is worth being direct about something: Ramesh was not a poor manager before this. He knew his plant cold. His technical judgement was sound. That is exactly why this story matters more than a cautionary tale about a 'difficult boss' - it is a story about how even a genuinely capable leader can carry an invisible blind spot for years, simply because nobody built a structured mechanism to surface it.
This lines up with what psychologist Daniel Goleman has long argued about emotional intelligence - that accurate self-perception is a distinct, learnable skill, not something that automatically comes with experience or seniority. Fifteen years on a shop floor teaches you machines and processes. It does not automatically teach you how your tone lands on the twenty people reporting to you. Only a deliberate feedback loop does that.
Putting the Elbaek Model to Work in Your Team
If you want to run this yourself, keep it simple and honest:
- Choose relevant traits. Pick 4-6 axes that map to real friction points in your role - not generic traits, the ones that actually matter where you work.
- Rate yourself honestly. Do not aim for the 'correct' answer. Aim for the true one.
- Get an external rating. Ask someone who will tell you the truth - a trusted peer, a direct report who feels safe being candid, or a mentor.
- Compare and discuss. Overlay the two pictures. Wherever the gap is largest, that is the conversation worth having - openly, without defensiveness.
I use this tool constantly in my Signature Programs and in the leadership modules under our corporate training topics, precisely because it does in twenty minutes what months of vague 360-degree feedback forms often fail to do: it makes the invisible visible, on paper, in a single glance.
If Ramesh's story reminds you of a version of yourself - or of someone on your leadership team - it is worth reading how this connects to the neighbouring idea of accurate self-assessment as a discipline, not a one-time event, on the Winning Kite framework page.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Elbaek Model?
The Elbaek Model, developed by Danish innovator Uffe Elbaek, is a self-assessment tool that maps how you see yourself against how others see you across chosen personality axes (like assertive vs. passive, or optimistic vs. pessimistic), revealing blind spots you cannot see on your own.
What happened to Ramesh, the Chennai production manager, in Stars at India Inc.?
Ramesh ran the Elbaek Model exercise with his team and discovered they rated him as far more assertive - almost aggressive - than he rated himself. He had no idea his instructions and body language were being read as intimidating. Once he saw the gap, he consciously shifted to a more collaborative style, and his team's productivity and morale improved.
How do I run the Elbaek Model with my own team?
Pick 4-6 trait pairs relevant to your role (assertive vs. passive, analytical vs. creative, risk-taking vs. cautious). Rate yourself honestly from 0-10 on each, keeping each pair's total at 10. Ask a trusted colleague or direct report to rate you on the same pairs. Overlay the two diagrams and discuss openly wherever the scores diverge sharply.
Where does this fit in the Winning Kite framework?
The Elbaek Model sits on the RQ - Relationship Intelligence - side of the Winning Kite. You cannot build strong working relationships until you know how your behaviour actually lands on the people around you, which is exactly the gap this tool closes.
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