By- Prof. Y Siva Sankar Director – Admissions & Dr Srabani Basu- Associate Professor – SRM University -AP ( Amaravati)
In the Indian tradition, Lord Hanuman embodies—immense strength anchored in humility, devotion, and an almost invisible ego.
In an organization, “Hanumans” are the people who neither chase titles nor noise, but consistently shoulder disproportionate responsibility and still give credit away. They turn vague intents into actionable plans, protect the mission when others waiver, and often stay out of the limelight even when they are the real force behind success.
This blog is a call to leaders: your most critical competitive advantage may already be on your team, working in silence. Your task is to identify, nurture, and empower these unsung anchors before the system wears them down or pushes them out.
The Shifting Sands
Modern organizations are steadily moving away from rigid hierarchies to more decentralized structures: squads, pods, cross-functional teams with high autonomy and shared accountability. In such environments, senior leaders define direction and constraints, but the real decisions—trade-offs, experiments, crisis responses—are made closer to the customer, at the squad level.
This shift creates opportunity and risk. On the one hand, autonomy enables faster decisions, better local judgment, and greater engagement; on the other, without strong, grounded individuals, autonomy can degrade into chaos, misalignment, or paralysis. The Hanuman-type team member becomes crucial here: someone who can hold the mission in mind, coordinate with others, and act decisively without constant supervision.
Leaders often fight this with slogans and perks, but the real antidote lies in nurturing a culture where people feel safe to contribute fully and see their effort genuinely matter. Hanumans, when recognized and backed, can become cultural multipliers who model ownership, devotion to the mission, and emotionally contagious commitment.
Traits of the Powerhouse
The first defining trait of a Hanuman-type contributor is ego-less power: they possess immense capability, yet show little interest in self-promotion. Their ambition is not for personal brand, but for the institution’s success, much like Hanuman’s steadfast devotion to Rama rather than to his own glory. They don’t hoard credit; they redistribute it, while silently carrying the heaviest loads.
Second, they combine resourcefulness (Yukti) with initiative (Shakti). They don’t come back with problems alone; they come with options, workarounds, and experiments. When the path is blocked, they find a route over the mountain, around it, or through it—just as Hanuman adapted, negotiated, and innovated in situations from crossing the ocean to infiltrating Lanka.
Third, they exhibit fortitude (Dhriti) and alignment. They stay steady under pressure, do not crumble at the first sign of resistance, and keep their compass tuned to the organization’s core purpose and values. This makes them uniquely suited to hold teams together through ambiguity, restructuring, or high-stakes transformation, when others are tempted to panic or retreat.
These traits rarely announce themselves in meetings. They show up in how deadlines are rescued, how conflicts are quietly defused, how crises are handled at 11 pm without fanfare. Leaders who only reward volume of voice will consistently miss these powerhouses.
The Hanuman Effect
When a leader consciously empowers Hanuman-like contributors, front-line decision-making becomes more robust and responsive. In decentralized models, such individuals become the living bridge between strategic intent and everyday action: they interpret priorities, make calls in grey zones, and ensure that local decisions still align with broader direction.
Their presence also supports psychological safety, which research at Google (Project Aristotle) shows is the single most critical factor for team effectiveness and innovation. Teams where people feel safe to speak up, admit mistakes, and take interpersonal risks show higher performance, more new ideas, and lower turnover.
Hanumans often create this safety informally, by backing juniors, absorbing blame, and redirecting credit upwards or sideways. In an era plagued by disengagement, they act as a bulwark against quiet quitting. Their visible commitment normalizes going beyond minimum effort not out of fear, but out of identification with the mission. Colleagues take cues from them: “If this person, who could easily do the bare minimum, still cares this much, maybe this work is worth showing up for.”
However, this effect is fragile. Overloading such individuals, ignoring their growth, or taking their loyalty for granted can flip the story: the most devoted can become the most disillusioned if they feel unseen or used. Leaders must therefore treat their Hanumans not as infinite resources, but as strategic assets to protect and develop.
Identification & Nurturing
To find your Hanumans, you need to look beyond the loudest voices. Ask questions like: Who consistently steadies the team in crises? Whose name keeps coming up when you quietly ask, “Who actually made this happen?” Who others go to when they are stuck, even if that person has no fancy title? These patterns often reveal the real anchors.
Practical signals include: people who underplay their own achievements, who are cited as “reliable” by many functions, who volunteer for tough, mission-critical tasks, and who instinctively think about impact on students, customers, or users rather than optics.
Confidential 360-degree feedback and skip-level conversations are powerful tools here, because peers often see the quiet heroes more clearly than senior management. Once identified, these individuals need strategic recognition, not just occasional praise. This means giving them meaningful stretch assignments, role clarity, and access to decisions—without drowning them in “fix everything” work.
It also means designing growth paths that allow them to rise without forcing them to become political or overly self-promotional, which can be deeply misaligned with their nature. Succession planning must explicitly account for these silent achievers. When you map future leadership pipelines, ask: If this person left tomorrow, what cultural and executional gap would appear? Who else embodies similar devotion, resourcefulness, and steadiness, and how are we preparing them?
Building a bench of Hanumans ensures your institution’s values and execution strength survive beyond any one charismatic leader.
Conclusion
Every era of leadership has its tools and trends, but the human constant is the quiet, unwavering anchor who holds the mission when complexity, politics, and fatigue threaten to pull it apart. In today’s world of squads, agentic AI, and distributed power, these Hanuman-like individuals are more indispensable than ever.
If you are a leader, make this your immediate action: identify at least one Hanuman in your ecosystem within the next week, acknowledge their contribution specifically, and invite them into a more intentional partnership around the mission. Then design systems—of recognition, growth, and succession—that ensure your unsung heroes are not only preserved, but multiplied.
Your legacy may depend less on the brilliance of your own mind, and more on how you treat the devoted strength that already walks beside you.
