Poetic learnings

“Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”- Rumi

A part of me has always been an ardent admirer of poetry. From Robert Frost to William Blake, from Ernest Hemingway to Erin Hanson, from Charles Bukowski to Rumi to Ghalib, I can almost enjoy all genres alike. I feel, there’s something about poetry that takes you places, broadens your horizons and gives you life lessons to keep. Once you immerse yourself in a poem or a couplet, you can live many lives, travel many places, find some truth in lies and appreciate the grandeur in trivialities. Same is true for reading, in general. 

The above lines by Rumi are one of my all time favorites and with each year that I add to my life, they keep making more sense, both personally and professionally. 

Over the years, I’ve learnt that much of what we believe as right or wrong, true or false, virtue or vice is not so much about its absoluteness of being so but more a function of judgements we make & the lenses we wear. Often these judgements are based on our past experiences, beliefs and value systems. In terms of behavioral economics or psychology, this phenomenon is better known as biases. Biases affect the belief formation, reasoning process, decision making and human behavior in general. 

We all tend to suffer with biases. Both at workplace & life in general. 

At workplace, these biases can over time become counterproductive. That’s because bias confirmation leads to stereotyping & stereotyping is the first step towards killing innovation & creativity. 

"One who turns up for work before time and slogs long hours is a dedicated worker", "One who possesses an ivy league MBA degree is better at management", "one who follows orders religiously is the best follower", "one who questions and expresses disagreements is not a team player", "one who craves work-life balance is not serious towards career", "the millennials or Gen Z aren’t as dedicated to work as were the baby boomers". These are just few examples of biases we often operating with. 

If there was any truth in the above said, we wouldn’t have seen college dropouts creating multi-million dollar apps, Gen Z burning their midnight oil & institutionalizing startups with sky-rocketing valuations, batch toppers quitting well paying jobs to start their own ventures, or working parents acing both their personal & professional lives during this pandemic. 

So essentially the point I am trying to make is that as leaders & organizations, we must give up biases and be less judgmental. The world could definitely do with a little more acceptance than judgment. When we are accepting, we make room for creativity, innovation & performance. And no I am not talking of anarchy. There’s got to be rules, compliance framework, org ethos & culture but don’t create robots in name of all that. Let there be opportunities for people to debate, disagree, differ, yet collaborate, for dissent is what makes us human. And human potential is enormous if you let it unleash. Free up employees from the fetters of “this is how things are done here” and give them a sense of purpose instead. Trust me, when people find purpose in their jobs, they create magic. Have Trust, enable and most importantly, stop judging things & people. Give wings to your team and when they fear of making mistakes, get right back to poetry and narrate them these lines by Erin Hanson:

“There is a freedom waiting for you, On the breezes of the sky, And you ask, “what if I fall?” Oh but my darling, what if you fly ?”