Stop Getting Obsessed About Your Boss! FOCUS on Competing With Thyself - Rest Will Fall In Place...

I have come across end number of folks who work overtime to impress their relevant stake-holders and leave no stone unturned to make their God (Boss) happy. In my early days in GE, once I was very unhappy with my Boss and I shared the same with one of my peer and said to him, buddy, "I disagree with him and he is not ready to listen to my point of view. Either he should convince me or get convinced". He then turned to his desk, took out his diary and showed me a page where at the bottom a quote was written. He made me read the quote which said - "GOD IS GREAT, BOSS IS GREATER" . 

I agreed with him at that point in time, however, there was an angst which continued and evolved into an implicit and tacit determination resulting in a decision to FOCUS on Thy self - making my own self proud of doing what I am doing, setting my own performance benchmark and exceeding them, make sure that I am happy with my work...rest will fall in place. 

However, for majority of people their single minded focus remains to look good in their Boss eyes, and all their energies are directed towards and for them. May be for the right reason.

I came across a situation which echo the same sentiments and thought to share with you folks. The situation is as follows : -

Ria was working in in a reputed organization as front line HR Manager and one fine day she went to her Manager and said, “Boss, I think I am underutilized, can you help me enhance my role”.  The boss was bit surprised to hear this and agreed to meet with her once he returns back from his travel. 

Meanwhile, she also confided to Ryan (her coach) that despite her spending most of time in chit chatting with operating Managers, Leaders and staff and sharing an excellent repo with most of the them, stake holders continue to escalate issues against her which make her boss feel unhappy. Also she felt that her peer group kept barging into her work space for no rhyme or reason. Hence was bewildered as to why there were escalations and how to make stake holders including her Boss happy while taking peers along.

Ryan, told her to share with him her objectives.  Having gone through Ria's objectives, he told her "Looking at this document, it seems your plate is more than full. Let’s pick up few of your key deliverable and review the status. Ryan asked her, 

Was she meeting all the people who were anticipated to attrite? 

Were people issues visible to Process Management so that they could be resolved?

Was she meeting her targets w.r.t. employee one on ones?

Were programmes launched in the unit running well?

and she did not have answers to any of this. 

Ria being front end HR resource, should have been thorough and should have this on her finger tips.  

It later transpired that Ria was primarily working on ad hoc tasks and issues and was not focusing on the objectives that were integral to her role.  

It is imperative that at staff level, we focus on building our base and ensure that we are detail oriented. When it comes to HR engagement function most of us think that chit chatting with Business and building personal rapport is enough. It is indeed a matter of despondency that some of us prefer working at superficial level and do not understand the essence and importance of various programmes and practices which are formulated to address the requirement of Business and people who are supporting the business.

It is also imperative to understand the power of focusing our energy on right things and not getting unnecessarily worried about others trying to damage your reputation or doing you some harm.  People choose to handle such situations in different ways. Some people love to blame others. however, it is nothing but waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with others, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.   

Some of them would use their defence mechanism to safeguard themselves.  However, most effective option would be to focus on yourself - how could I do it better, what improvement can I bring in self, could I have had handles the situation differently etc..  It is a known fact that positivity in thyself inculcates positivity in others.  Click Here to read more.

[Views expressed are personal]

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