Who is the Black Sheep?
Yes, even I would like to know this, who is this black sheep?
That everybody thinks will be responsible for his/her well being, may it be home or at office. Yes, you were a child once upon a time and children generally in their process of thoughtless explorations may not know the obvious dangers and hence require some direction, 'taking care'. But please you don't fall into that category. You are not a momma's boy or daddy's girl anymore, you have learnt to use your radar and you can sense your own dangers. Just start moving forward and quit worrying about a hand-hold all the time.
This may not be true with all the people, but I would like to send this message out to all those people who have their 'expectations' over people and that too at all levels. You have all right to expect, but do not be fooled that things would go the same way as its supposed to. What you have is a wish and not all wishes are destined to come true. I'm writing this not because people haven't understood their expectations, I'm sincerely bothered about the time that they spend on brooding over it before or after and its such a waste of precious human energy.
If all that energy could be tapped, I don't think we would need the sun anymore and the divine energy of the Sun could be used in some other noble hunt for mankind :-)
Seriously, aren't we surrounded by such people and so many times we end up pacifying them on how their expectations with another person didn't go well and we are saying the same things again and again. I just feel like pouring water on their slumbering self-esteem.
Also me being a member of the HR community stand witness to so many people expecting things from their colleagues, managers or the organisation all the time. Well you have the right to expect and your rights on your expectations are justified but there ends the line that you can cross. How you would want these expectations to work out for you in the way you want it, lies totally on your existence with the groups that you are interacting with.
Here, lets play a game, I call this 'show me the black sheep' so send me a mail once you know the answers for these questions;
Show me the black sheep...
... who said that its the manager's responsibility to take care of your career?
... who said that your father has the responsibilty to provide for all your needs?
... who said that organisations have to provide for taking care of your economic needs?
... who said that your friend has to take the fall at most situations?
... who said that Sr.Management is only responsible for the company's growth?
... who said that your mother has to defend you at all times?
... who said that your team members should approach you at all times if they are stuck?
... who said that you forward your resume to one person and they should land you in a job?
... who said that your Govt should take care of corruption while you keep giving that extra 10 out?
... who said that you send a mail to one person and they should look at it the minute it lands in their inbox?
The amount of dependencies that you create is the amount of control that you lose. The more you lose control of your surrounding, the more you lose on the control you own. Do begin to realise the structure around you and see how you can create your own destinations to reach. All the people you need are there around, but they will be only till the point that they are interested to provide any help, if you expect things to come on a platter, I wish you all the best for finding the lost Black Sheep - which is YOU!
Inspired By: Ayn Rand - "Who is John Galt?" and Song from Delhi-6 "Kala Bandar"
The Peninsular Boss
Let me ask you this... if all the working professionals in the world have been given a choice to work with the boss of their choice, how would it be? what do you think will happen.
Well imagine this big land of people, with all the working professionals on one side and their respective bosses on the other. People have been instructed to move around and stand in the same line as the boss they would like to choose and work with.
If you take a aerial view of this event you will almost see a game of human 'Solitaire'. People lining up one behind the other, where the boss himself is choosing to move, under the boss of his choice, huge line on one, little smaller in the other and maybe some of them would choose to pass and go back to the 'deck' waiting for their turn to be part of the line whom they want to work with, boy they might not be able to choose whom to work with but they sure do know whom not to work with :-)
However, I would not want you to look at this event but just rewind your mental thought process and go to that point where people started moving to be part of a particular line. What do you think their prime thoughts were, the moments between the time they were asked to move and the time they moved?
I'm able to see all those people run their entire life experience and reminisce the best instances of all those faces that they saw as their boss, who managed them or maybe still managing them.
What would these instances be which made them take the decision? If I have to go a little more deeper what did these instances contain?... For me its "emotions".
No matter how unemotional a person can be, at that time, I believe the factors of growth, career, money, future all that came out of emotional impulse from that person.
Now.. wait I'm not here to talk about emotion as a human functionality and how it affects judgement in human beings. But I would want you to focus on the logical flow that specific emotion has created which reached a point of decision for that person.
Being born in a peninsula I guess I had this notion that anything that has a 3 way connection to a entity can be a peninsula :-). My theory... there are 3 such 'ocean' of factors that draws us 'ships' to the coasts of this 'peninsular' boss that we want to work with.
Ocean 1 - Engage
The boss who knows your true potential and utilises you to the fullest extent of tapping all your interests. He/she will ensure that they have enough task list which will keep you enganged all the time. You may relate to this happening to you now, and may say "whats the big deal, Im buried with work anyway". But I'm drawing your attention to this peninsular boss, who would give you the tasks but you will not know the extent that you are already managing.
Your work may be transactional, you may be doing mundane things, post man's job, absolutely no time for a breather but in that process you would have come to know the links in the chain and slowly without your knowledge in the pretext of giving "additional responsibilties" you would be handling the responsibilities that they would have been handling, the movement of end-end of that chain.
You would have learnt how the machine works as you pass through the gears and linking the chains making an entire gigantic process. From then on, any task/project/structure becomes a machine to you and all of you have to do is link them, gear them and create a self-managed overhaul process.
During this entire journey you would have received your training, you would have handled the unknown, you would now start visioning your next steps, plan, prepare, implement and complete. The best part, at every single stage it would be your signature on the final structure.
Ocean 2 - Nurture
Your working knowledge, your grasping powers, your analytical thoughts, your strengths, your weaknesses all that would have come out during the engagement phase. The peninsular boss maintains his own performance diary, he has made notes (mentally or on a desktop .txt file who cares) all through out and all he/she have to do now is ensure that you are re-charged on all those areas.
There are so many times when you are attending boring trainings, seminars on topics that are alien to you or endless meetings which are gibberish, but if you would notice the peninsular boss would ask you how it went and spend sometime with you to understand what you have learnt, who you have met, how was the atmosphere and provide you with ideas which you can put back into your work and with every such instance habituate you into putting anything back into your work.
You will be ready for thinking differently, acting on higher plane which would help the boss place you by his side so that he can create the visibility, the boss ideas will be yours and you would know exactly what to do with them as you know the entire machinery now.
The process of growth would become automatic, you would be known around the place and what you do. You have been familiarised in the industry... you would have been... nurtured.
Ocean 3 - Enhance
Its time to let go of the hold on your seat as you already have the handle bars straight and you are pedalling away, the road doesn't scare you anymore, you are flying the machine alone and the boss just needs to be on the ground provide you with directions and let you know of the climate.
You get to venture into your own roads or fly into the yonder, by just knowing that there is a line connected and you can always trace back. You have no fear of falling and you know if you do its your own doing. The boss would give you new roads to travel, enhance you to the bike or the car, give you the lats and longs and you would just know where the wind is or how the wind is... to reach there.
You will be doing things only which interests you and you would get into interesting work even without you asking for it. You remember a song that you heard when you were a child, you might remember a entire movie, but can you tell me one lesson from your 5th grade now. Where your interest is, you would automatically retain it. The enhancement of your interests will be in the peninsular boss's best interest :-)
Even if I had to categroise, in my mind, the enthusiastic natured would fall into Ocean 1, the analytical, cautioned natured will fall into Ocean 2, the mature, independent groups fall into ocean 3 and by groups I mean it could be the boss or employees. Even if one of the above attribute has created an equation between the employee and the boss they would remain inseparable for a long time. These attributes would go to the extent of both groups making all efforts to take care of any kind of factor, may it be in their personal or professional life, not affect this equation and the surroundings would conspire, would crumble for them to stay that way. Retention has been mechanised :-)
So look out for this peninsular boss create the equation. Rest assured, your satisfaction levels on the job will always be recharged, 100%.
