Role conflicts

We play different roles in our personal and professional lives. At home, we play the roles of parents, children, siblings , cousins or relatives. At the workplace, we are employee, manager, colleague, customer or supplier in different roles.

We inherit some roles while others are imposed on us by virtue of position or time. Either way, our roles keep changing over time. Let us examine the roles we play in our personal lives and how it changes over time.

We are born as children in a family and then become siblings when we have brothers or sisters. We then get married and have spouse and also have our own children thereafter. As we become parents, we become mother or father and so the chain continues.

Similarly, we join an organisation as an employee and then become a colleague, boss, supplier or customer to another function. Each of these roles are by virtue of the position we hold or by virtue of time and changes which happen over time due to promotions, transfer, attrition etc.

Let us first try to understand how role conflicts occur in our personal lives. We as children , want all the freedom in our lives. But as we grow up and become senior members in the family , we want to boss over our younger siblings and tell them that freedom needs to be earned.

Then , as we grow as adolescents, we defy the control of our parents. When we become parents after getting married, we feel bad when our children defy our diktats.

We tend to rediscover our roles when role changes happen and we experience what we saw in others. What we thought was wrong becomes right for us and vice versa. Welcome to this new world of family.

The role conflicts in the organisation are no different. As an employee, many a time ,we feel that our bosses are peeking over our shoulders all the time and do not allow us to breathe. When we become bosses, we tend to do the same and realise why bosses always kept an eye on us. As supplier departments ,we feel the pressure of our customers and when the role reverses ,we fail to be empathetic to our suppliers.

Life is a full circle. We get back ,what we give others. We realise the value of different roles only when we experience them. Otherwise, we tend to believe that other role holders are there to disturb our life and living, and enjoy themselves.

Even in the public sphere, roles keep changing and reversing. Let us imagine a prime minister becoming a leader of the opposition and the reverse happening. As a leader of the opposition, we tend oppose everything irrespective of merit. But as Prime Minister, we want the opposition leader to support us , in all our initiatives.

Role conflicts are a part of our lives. We need to learn to experience roles and empathise with other roles to minimise such conflicts. The day we realise that our roles are transitory, we may evolve and grow as human beings. What goes around, comes around.

Let us learn to play roles and respect other roles to minimise role-conflicts in life. Our tomorrow could have been somebody’s yesterday and someone else’s today.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th February 2023

How to build relationships/partnerships ?

We wonder many a time what makes relationship work and partnerships click !. There may not be a magic wand with anyone to make this happen. So I decided to reflect on this subject based on my personal experiences of great relationships and partnerships in my career and life.

I have introspected my life long partnership with my spouse. I have also thought about great colleagues at work and also suppliers and customers with whom I have partnered and delivered great results. To my surprise, I found that the basis of all relationships whether personal or official were similar.

I have distilled five critical conditions to make a relationship/partnership work. They are “Unconditionality”, “Mutual-respect”, “Give & take”, “Let go” and “Open & flexible”. While they may not be listed in any order of preference, each of them are critical for the success of a partnership and building of a relationship.

I will dwell on each of the conditions and try to illustrate with an example of how to apply it and make it work. All my examples are based on my personal life experiences although I do not mention names of people involved to protect their privacy.

The first condition of “Unconditionality” can best be explained by explaining the relationship with your spouse. I have been married for 38 years and still counting. Although we have had our own share of joy, sorrow and tiffs, our relationship has grown and matured over the years. This is primarily due to this condition of “Unconditionality”. We do not live or relate based on any terms and conditions. Our reactions are spontaneous and straight from the heart. We enjoy together and fight easily but have the resolve to mutually resolve all differences by ourselves.

The second factor is of “Mutual respect”. I worked with a consultant two decades back on a project. Although we met for the first time as a supplier and a customer this relationship has evolved and grown into a life long friendship due to immense mutual respect we have for each other. I have not yet met a person, who is more knowledgable than him on his subject and still he deals with me with utmost respect and dignity.

The next factor is “Give & take”. When I joined a particular organisation in my career, I realised that our relationship with the unions was not very cordial. Both the union and management filed atleast one case against each other every month. I wanted to transform this relationship and volunteered not only to stop filing cased against the unions but also volunteered to withdraw all pending cases and sit across the table and resolve it cordially through discussions except for violence or unethical conducts by employees. The union reciprocated willingly and till the end of my tenure in this organisation we did not have a single case filed against each other.

The fourth factor is to “Let go”. Most of us carry our grudge for years, if not decades and this prevents us from “letting go” or forgiving someone. The art of forgiving can heal a relationship and build foundations for a great rebuilding of a broken partnership or a relationship. I have experienced this in many personal relationships, which would have ruined , if not for my or someone else’s magnanimity to “let go”.

The last factor is being “Open & flexible”. We drive ourselves to a dead end in most relationships or partnership , as we refuse to be flexible and adaptive and open to feedback and change. If we can build this into our day to day life , relationships would be enriched and partnerships sustainable. The best example I can think of is when teams start fighting on the playground over a silly fowl. It could sometimes even lead to physical tiff and violence. Just being open and flexible to accept a genuine mistake by the players or the referee , could build great relationships.

It may be worthwhile to try these five mantras to build great relationship/partnerships in our lives.

S Ramesh Shankar

4th Feb 2023

Words, thoughts & action

Someone said, “ Words may inspire you, thoughts may provoke you but only action can lead your dreams to reality”. I found this very profound. Many of us are guilty of articulating words on new year through resolutions and even thinking about the same for some days. But mostly we do not act on those resolutions and they remain dreams in our lives.

Life is no different. We need to express ourselves in words and then think about those ideas. However, unless we act on them, we may never achieve what we want to. It is like strategic planning exercise in many organisations. Most strategic plans remain in power point presentations and in think tank discussions since no action is taken to make it a reality on ground.

In this regard, we have a lot to learn from the start ups. They spend less time in expressing what they want to do and thinking about it . They take the risk and experiment with their ideas and are not afraid of failure. Most organisations spend years on strategic planning and evaluation of alternative options and take no risks or action on the ground to try out their plans to make them real.

Imagine a student writing an essay on what she wants to become in her life. Then thinking and dreaming of how she wants to become a pilot and go to ISRO or NASA in her life. Unless, this is followed up with internships and courses in space research and visits to these institutions or similar ones, such dreams will remain a dream.

I have found employees are no different in organisations. They express their ideas quite eloquently and even think about their ideas and share them. However, they fail to act on them. This means that in most cases it remains a great idea or thought but will never see the light of the day.

We are no different in our day to day lives. As parents, teachers or leaders in organisations, if we focus only on sharing ideas in words or thoughts and do not have the courage to experiment and fail, it will remain a fantasy or dream in our lives.

This characteristic is learnt by our children, students or team members and they also spend all their time in expressing their ideas in words or thoughts but do not put in the efforts to translate those thoughts into deeds through concerted actions.

In many organisations, there is always a debate between the time spent on planning and execution. Many purists will tell us that if we spend enough time in planning, then execution becomes simpler. I do not disagree. However, my experience teaches me that many of us stop with expressing our ideas and thoughts in paper and fail to experiment through actions and execution on the ground. This means plans remain great plans on paper and never see fruition.

We need to dream. Then express our dreams in words. This could be followed by thinking about those dreams and words. However, the critical step for success is working hard and acting on those thoughts to make those dreams a reality in our lifetime. Otherwise, they will always remain dreams and fantasies in our lives.

Let us act today to convert all our dreams into reality.

S Ramesh Shankar

8th August 2022