Category Archives: Work

#223 Phobias

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Everyone has phobias. These are deep rooted fears that sometimes drive irrational behavior. Whether you get away with showing your phobias depends on how much power you have. Thus innocent people get locked in an asylum, while the powerful get to become dictators of a whole country.

If everyone has phobias, you have nothing to be ashamed about. How phobias get created is interesting, psychologists and psychiatrists make a living by trying to answer this question. Thus if you go to a shrink about your phobias, they will see your world thru their lens, and may make you sound crazier than you are.

If you go to a friend or well wisher, you will likely get bad advice if such friend or well wisher is seeing your world thru the lens of their phobias.

Your best bet is to explore your own phobias by developing deep self awareness. As you self awareness increases, you will go thru the stages of grief. While the Kubler-Ross model has five stages, my theory is that different people have different number of stages. The more stages of grief you go thru, the bigger your task of understanding your phobias before you attain mastery over your phobias.

Thus, if you are in a blue mood, use it to discover your phobias, and establish where you are in the stages of grief. It will be more productive than reacting with anger or other negative emotion.

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#222 Filing a complaint

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At some point, an escalation will turn into a complaint. Be sure you are complaining to the person who can act and right the wrong. Or to a person who can suggest alternative solutions. Above all, do not complain to someone who is just a sympathetic listener. (Complaining to such people is called “gossip”)

When you complain don’t bother to point to an individual who may be at fault. This may seem counter intuitive when you are angry, but you have to try this to experience the benefits.

If you ignore the person but hit hard on the problem, the person “at fault” may work to right the wrong. This may work to your advantage and you will gain an ally.

Your co-workers are taking note of how you complain. If you go after a person, they will trust you less. What will you do if they make a mistake? Will they have to watch their backs?

If you hit hard on the problem, it is likely you will expose a business critical issue and more people may come to your aid. This means higher visibility for your situation and faster resolution.

Try this approach if you’ve been denied a promotion, given lower or no raise, not put in charge of a plum assignment, or undermined in front of your team. The difficult part is to get past your emotions and describe the problem with clarity and precision. Your co-workers emotions are probably overflowing at this point as well, don’t do anything to make it worse.

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