Interacting with others (Professional)

It is a spiritual law that what you put out, will be what you receive in return. The same is true of our interactions with others as well. You send vibes of hatred or jealousy to others, you will receive the same. You send out love, you will receive love. The effects of a law materialize with or without anyone's permission. 

Our interactions can broadly be classified into personal and professional. I mean to classify interactions itself this way and not the people, obviously we will discuss some personal aspects with a friend at work and vice versa.  

I intend to concentrate on the basics of professional interactions in this post. Interpersonal communications is a subject in itself, it cannot be covered in a single post. However, I do want to talk about one fundamental rule of personal interactions to avoid conflicts. Two of my friends do this really well - Share what you know with those who are receptive, but remain silent and avoid annoying others who are not receptive in any manner - Don't talk about philosophy with a gambler!. Do not fight or harbor a consciousness of anger, disagree calmly if you have to! 

When it comes to professional interactions, we have to handle interactions with peers, teammates, folks down the chain, and folks up the chain. The upstream interactions are as important as the downstream interactions. Let me share a problem that I had a few years ago, there was a guy who I thought was an A-word (we've all had this feeling about someone), but I had no idea why. He had some level of influence. Looking back, I was the only person who suffered due to frustration, my blood pressure ran high and heart worked harder than it needed to. I wish I had the tools I have right now to deal with such a situation. 

Let us make things simple - forget upward chain, downward chain, influential people, etc. Think about just two impersonal dimensions - (i) their confidence in self , (ii) their confidence in others.  Others = peers, organization, lead, manager, etc. A consultant would present these in a fancy 2*2 matrix, but I am just going to explain how I understand these. 

Almost every person will be in one of these categories. The first category are those whose confidence in self is high and confidence in others is high. This is an ideal employee. You will observe that with time, these people will be empowered by the org - to make decisions, to help others, etc. This natural increase in the license at work is a tangible way to measure employee contribution. It may not necessarily be a promotion, but it is more about empowerment. 

A second category is confidence in self is low, confidence in others (above themselves in the org) is high. This is not bad, they just need some encouragement and mentorship. When a person with a good heart guides them through, they will do well. 

The third kind of people just have low confidence in everything. They need coaching, meaning they need nudges so that they can start to be confident from within. This isn't necessarily bad, just needs more work. 

The fourth category is high confidence in self and low confidence in others. These are the people we classify as the A-word. They are plain dismissive. A friendly approach with them will not work, a neutral approach is necessary. It is easier to deal with a person who is not competitive with a bad attitude compared to someone who is competitive with a bad attitude. However, the only way to deal with this category is - be fair, stay calm, be neutral and most importantly, very clearly set boundaries with them. Otherwise you will be toast before you realize. 

If you are leading or mentoring a team, it is your job to figure out which category they fall into and act accordingly. It is also your job to recognize how much independence and empowerment each person in the team needs to be at their best. 

If you are a new team member, it is your job to ask for the kind of mentorship or coaching you need until you start getting empowered. 

It is all of our responsibility to ourselves to recognize and set clear boundaries with the fourth category folks (in the example we discussed). In-fact the three simplest conditions of happiness are natural eating, natural dwelling place, and good company (meaning carefully avoiding those who poison your system with unnecessary restlessness and emotions like anger, fear, jealousy, etc) . If you are persistently sincere, while being logical, things will fall in place, but persistency is key! It also takes persistence to maintain once someone reaches the empowered category!