Dealing with dilemmas@work
Why am I here? What is the
purpose of my job? Dealing with questions like that is not easy and yet, you
might be required to pacify a team member who's having an existential crisis
French philosopher Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin said that we are not human beings seeking a spiritual
experience. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Be that
as it may , finding the motivation to go about our daily lives at home, work and
in the world becomes exceedingly difficult if we begin questioning every moment
of our lives. Society dictates that we make a living and lead respectable
lives, which is why the majority of the populace clocks in hours at work every
day . But now and then, there comes a phase where it all starts to look
meaningless. And if you're in the position of a leader or team manager, you
might very well encounter team members who seem to have lost their sense of
direction at work.
The dictionary defines an
existential crisis as 'a moment at which an individual questions the very
foundations of their life: whether their life has any meaning, purpose or
value'. It might be a modern malady , but when it strikes at work, it can lead
to significantly lowered performance and even depression if left unchecked.
“The first thing I do in such cases is to listen to them. I allow them to sit
freely and talk in detail narrating the whole story from start to finish.
Often, the solutions come from their own mind. With a little moral support,
they come out with their own solution.Every problem has a solution. But, it is
very important to find out the root cause first,“ says Debasis Chatterji, CEO,
Netxcell Ltd.
Sometimes, a particularly
life-changing event can trigger an existential crisis and lead to diminished
enthusiasm at work. Rather than hastening to draw up a performance improvement
plan, sit down and take some time out to talk to the person and identify the
source of their dissatisfaction. It could be that the organisation needs to
shake up things to remove a sense of stagnancy , or the feeling could stem from
changes in the person's personal life.Chatterji narrates an experience he went
through, “ Around two years ago, we had a project to execute at a very short
notice. The project leader was a well-qualified person and he had successfully
delivered many such projects with zero error in the past. But in this
particular project, he could not deliver properly at the POC (proof of concept)
stage due to which he was terribly sad and went into depression thinking that
he had lost his technical prowess. After a lot of investigations, we came to
know that the project did not go through the full cycle of testing due to lack
of time. So, bugs were not properly detected before it went into the production
stage. Theoretically , it sounds quite simple that it was not the engineer's
fault But for a registered winner, it was very difficult to make him understand
that as he was under the impression that we were just pacifying him. It took us
lots of time to convince him.“
It's all right to feel
disoriented at times. What matters is that you quickly regain perspective and
appreciation for your life and career.
|
Ankita Shreeram
|
TOI15JAN16
No comments:
Post a Comment