Shrinivas – the glue of the friend group
One friend from my engineering days quietly held our entire group together — planning every trip, managing every ego, making sure no one felt left out. Decades later, I realised he had been demonstrating a rare leadership trait I now call the Fevicol skill.
Every friend circle has one person who makes the group actually work — the one who plans the trip, remembers who's upset with whom, and makes sure nobody gets left out. I had that friend. His name was Shrinivas, and watching him for years taught me more about team leadership than any classroom ever did.
In short- Shrinivas, my friend from engineering college, was the natural glue of our friend group — he planned every trip, managed every detail, and kept everyone in sync.
- This ability has a name: the Fevicol skill — the rare capacity to hold a group together emotionally, not just organisationally.
- Shrinivas carried this skill from college into his career as an entrepreneur, where it became the foundation of his leadership style.
- The Fevicol skill sits inside Team Capabilities (Trait #22), part of the Motivating Others cluster on the EQ side of the Winning Kite.
- Every complex team — in IT, hospitality, films, politics, or product launches — needs at least one person with this skill, and you can deliberately build it in yourself.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
Team Capabilities is Trait #22, part of the Motivating Others cluster on the EQ — left side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). It is what turns a group of individually talented people into a team that actually flies together. Without it, even the most skilled group stays a collection of separate wings — impressive alone, going nowhere as one.
The friend who planned everything
During my engineering days, I had a friend named Shrinivas. On paper, he was just one more guy in our group — no title, no official role, nobody had appointed him anything. But somehow, he was the one who held us together.
Whenever we planned a trip, it was Shrinivas who took charge. Not because he pushed his way into it, but because everyone instinctively turned to him. He decided the destination after actually listening to what different people wanted. He worked out the budget so nobody felt priced out. He booked the tickets, sorted the stay, planned the itinerary down to timing, and somehow still left room for spontaneity. Every detail was handled, and handled well.
What made Shrinivas different wasn't just his organisational ability — plenty of people can build a spreadsheet and a timeline. What made him different was his magnetic personality. He had a way of making every person in the group feel like their opinion mattered, like they were essential to the plan, not just along for the ride. He was the natural leader of our circle — not appointed, not elected, just recognised. As the person who took it upon himself to manage and plan our trips, ensuring every detail was perfectly executed, he became, without ever asking for the job, the person the rest of us organised our lives around.
Looking back now, decades later and after years of studying leadership traits for a living, I can see clearly what I only felt instinctively back then: Shrinivas was the glue that held our group of friends intact. Take him out of the equation, and the group would probably have drifted apart into smaller, looser knots of people. He was the connective tissue.
The skill that has a name: Fevicol
In India, Fevicol is not just a brand of adhesive — it's a cultural shorthand for something that bonds unbreakably. "Fevicol ka jod hai" is what people say about a connection that simply will not come apart. That's exactly the phrase I reach for to describe what Shrinivas had, and what I now teach corporate teams to recognise and build: the Fevicol skill.
The ability to keep a group working effectively together is a valuable talent in itself. Every high-functioning group almost certainly has at least one member with this skill — the one who acts as the glue that holds the team together. And here's the part leaders often miss: the more complex the group's task, the more critical this person becomes to the group's success. A two-person task barely needs it. A cross-functional product launch, a hospital ward, a film production, a software release involving programmers, designers and testers — these fall apart without someone actively doing the glue work.
Think about where this shows up around you. In Bollywood, where multiple stars with equally large egos work on a single film, nothing gets made without someone managing the harmony between actors, technicians, and crew. In politics, seasoned strategists spend entire careers bringing together different factions and interests — that is Fevicol skill applied to power. In the corporate world, a project manager who can pull marketing, sales, and R&D into one coordinated product launch is doing exactly what Shrinivas did with train tickets and hotel bookings — just at a larger, higher-stakes scale. In hospitality, a general manager who can align front desk, housekeeping, and food and beverage into one seamless guest experience is running on the same skill.
The pattern is identical everywhere: someone has to actively hold the team's cohesion together. It rarely happens by accident.
From friend group to founder
Shrinivas is now an entrepreneur. And here is the part of his story that matters most for anyone reading this at work: he still shows off these exact same skills — not just to his friends anymore, but to his professional team.
His innate ability to lead, inspire, and unite people has helped him build a successful business. The same instincts that once decided where twelve friends would go for a weekend now decide how his company operates day to day. He creates an environment of camaraderie and collaboration in his organisation, encouraging his team members to voice their opinions and contribute their unique talents. That's not a coincidence — it's the same muscle, just flexed in a boardroom instead of a train compartment.
The impact of Shrinivas's leadership is felt by everyone who has the privilege of working with him. His approach fosters innovation, productivity, and a sense of belonging among his employees, which in turn drives the success of his ventures. Shrinivas is a living example of how the Fevicol skill can transcend college days entirely and become a genuine, durable leadership asset in the professional world. What starts as "the friend who plans the trips" can become "the founder whose team never fragments under pressure."
What Team Capabilities actually looks like at work
The Team Capabilities competency — Trait #22 on your Winning Kite — is about building strong and effective teams that work together toward a common goal. People strong in this trait share a recognisable pattern: respect for others, genuine helpfulness, and a bias toward working together rather than around each other. They actively encourage and inspire everyone on the team to take an active, enthusiastic part, rather than letting a few loud voices dominate.
They also do something many leaders forget under pressure: they build a strong sense of team identity — a feeling of being part of a cohesive group — and a real commitment to the team's shared goals. People with this skill make sure team members are working together well and efficiently, and they actively protect the team and its reputation, even when it would be easier to protect their own. Critically, they give credit to everyone on the team for the team's successes, recognising that each person made a difference, rather than letting one name absorb the applause.
I saw this trait in full flow when I trained the team at MAEER MIT's VishwaRaj Superspeciality Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, working with Dr. Aditi Karad, the hospital's Executive Director. Her team's capabilities and seamless teamwork were genuinely impressive under some of the highest-pressure conditions imaginable. Dr. Karad's leadership had created a culture of teamwork where everyone worked together toward a common goal, with each person's contribution valued — doctors, nurses, and support staff alike. Even the hospital's HR head, Harsha Palwe, spoke highly of her abilities when I discussed her leadership style during our training sessions. That is Team Capabilities operating at scale, under real stress, with real consequences — not a theory in a workshop slide.
You see the same trait, at a different register, in how Vighnesh Shahane, CEO of Ageas Federal Life Insurance, leads. A former cricketer turned corporate leader, Vighnesh brought a sportsperson's instinct for shared credit into the boardroom: he consistently made every victory a team victory, never attributing success to a single individual, because he understood that a good leader isn't measured by individual accomplishments but by their ability to uplift the entire team.
The emotional intelligence underneath the glue
Here's what's easy to miss about people like Shrinivas: the Fevicol skill isn't primarily a scheduling skill. It's an emotional one. Holding a team together means noticing who's gone quiet in a meeting, who's feeling overlooked, who's silently frustrated with a decision — and addressing it before it curdles into disengagement or conflict.
This is also why healthy disagreement doesn't threaten a team with strong Team Capabilities — it strengthens it. Open disagreements can lead to better decisions, but they can also damage a team's ability to work together if handled poorly. The difference lies in emotional intelligence: teams with self-awareness, empathy, and strong communication can have heated, honest arguments without those arguments turning personal or leaving lasting damage. When arguments do become personal, decision quality drops. When they stay fair, open, and focused on shared interests, teams reach stronger conclusions and stay bonded in the process. Daniel Goleman's research on emotional intelligence has long pointed to exactly this: the best teams aren't the ones who avoid conflict, but the ones emotionally equipped to have it constructively. Shrinivas never studied EQ theory in a classroom — he lived it, instinctively, one trip at a time.
How to build your own Fevicol skill
You don't need to be a natural like Shrinivas to develop this. A few deliberate habits build it over time:
| Habit | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ask before you assume | Shrinivas planned trips only after listening to what people wanted — not by dictating destinations. |
| Handle the invisible details | Teams trust the person who quietly prevents problems, not just the one who solves visible ones. |
| Give credit outward, not inward | Naming who contributed what builds the team identity that keeps people committed. |
| Repair friction early | Address quiet tension before it becomes an open rift that fractures the group. |
Why this trait matters more as work gets more complex
The more complex the group's task, the more critical the glue person becomes to the group's success. This is especially true in industries where the goal is to create or invent something new — product teams, hospitals under pressure, IT development squads coordinating programmers, designers, and testers to hit a client deadline. Complexity multiplies the number of places a team can quietly fracture. Someone has to be actively watching for those fractures and repairing them before they widen.
That is the real lesson of Shrinivas. He wasn't managing logistics for the sake of logistics — he was managing the emotional cohesion of a group of friends, and later, of a company. If you want to build teams that don't just perform but stay together under pressure, start by asking: who in my team already has a bit of this instinct, and how do I recognise and strengthen it? And just as important — am I building this skill in myself?
If you're working on strengthening Team Capabilities and the wider EQ side of your Winning Kite across your organisation, explore Avinash Chate's Signature Corporate Training Programs or browse the full list of Corporate Training Topics. For teams navigating live conflict or fragmentation right now, get in touch through the contact page.
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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
What is the 'Fevicol skill' in leadership?
The Fevicol skill is Avinash Chate's term (from Stars at India Inc.) for the rare ability some people have to hold a group together — building trust, managing egos, and keeping everyone emotionally invested in a shared goal. It sits inside the Team Capabilities trait on the EQ side of the Winning Kite.
Is Team Capabilities an EQ trait or an RQ trait?
Team Capabilities is Trait #22 in the Motivating Others cluster of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) — the left side of the Winning Kite — because it is fundamentally about how you read and manage the emotional climate of a group, not just your one-to-one relationships.
Can the Fevicol skill be learned, or is it only natural?
It can absolutely be learned. Shrinivas was not born a manager — he practised planning, listening, and including people for years as a student before it became instinct. Any leader can build this skill through deliberate small acts of inclusion, credit-sharing, and conflict repair.
Why do organisations need people with the Fevicol skill?
Complex, cross-functional work — product launches, hospital operations, film productions, software releases — falls apart without someone actively holding the team's cohesion together. The more moving parts a team has, the more critical its 'glue' person becomes to its success.
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By Avinash Chate — Maharashtra’s #1 Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker. .