WORK LIFE

As a person who has around 4 years of experience working in a corporate environment, I can say with 100 percent conviction that people management is an ART.

I had dealt with all kinds of people, worked with some really naive / dumb to extremely brilliant / smart assess. Now don’t take that naive = dumb, I meant both kinds of people. I always consider myself to be dumb in a lot of things, so being dumb is nothing to be ashamed off. I try to be honest about my opinions and I never get scared that I might offend others. Now for all the people who have worked with me please don’t take it in the wrong sense, people who know me well will know my respect for them. For those who don’t, please don’t assume things and my opinions doesn't matter anyways.

I know I might be wrong and others can always prove me wrong. But it takes some effort to do that and I often find people not ready to talk about difficult issues. When you ask a difficult question it’s easier to avoid or sidestep it than voicing your true opinion. Very few people are brave enough to say what they actually think.

Say out of 10 people if 8 are saying you are good with your work and relations and only 2 have problems with you, then overall you are a success at what you do. You cannot satisfy everybody. The 2 are a minority and most probably the problem is not with you. Of-course you try to sort things out with the 2, if that doesn’t work then you just carry on minding your own business. I have done this and it worked most of the times. Sometimes even your good intentions can be misinterpreted as bad. 

e.g. – I know this guy who used to work his ass off, everybody loved him for his dedication and honesty. But he still had his differences with his managers and he became a troublemaker for some. I told him not to slog so much. Only slog when it matters, eventually he too agreed to my point when he got screwed :-)   

"Difference of opinion" is a given in any work space, it’s how you deal with it which matters.

e.g. – I used to fight with my manager on a lot of issues, of course I have utmost respect for him and that was the reason I made an effort to fight or express my strong disagreements on issues. No matter how many disagreements we had my manager understood my intentions so we always tried to workout solutions. He is still a very good friend, a well wisher and an excellent critic.

The few people, whom I don’t respect at all screw up themselves without any outside help. Now that is also an art I suppose.   

Cheers

Pradeep