Right vs Responsibility

The real inspiration for this blog is last Friday evening's random conversation with my colleague, Sahil, as he had promised me to share certain lessons on what it takes to build healthy Relationships from mythology. 

We have often heard some of the best professional and personal lessons from tales of Mahabharata, Ramayana or from various other personalities of those times and often find answers to our today's problems or complications in their stories.

 ...and it was one such beautiful lesson that Sahil shared with me on understanding the difference between Right vs Responsibility (Dharma) in a relationship

 We discussed the various manifestations of Rights and Responsibilities within every relationship we carry in our life, and that's actually the genesis or set the foundation of how a relationship can turn out to be via various experiences from our day to day lives.

 For e.g.

1. Personal relationships

Right says to demand what's legitimately yours in terms of one's expectations from the other person on a zillion things.

In Ramayana, every relationship between Raghukul nourished when everyone was performing their respective Responsibilities for being a son, brother, husband or a king. The story took a bitter turn when the desire for Rights came into that led to the breakdown of the family.

Looking things in our lives, let's say in a marriage, a partner is perfectly right in his/her expectations from the other half on things ranging from being nice, spending good time, understanding his/her feelings, supportive, caring, full-filling all desires, wishes, having an emotional connect etc etc etc and the list is endless.

On the other hand, Responsibility is inward looking and reminds what I should actually do instead of focusing on my rights on the other person. And this perspective opens a different world but similar and endless self-realizations on one's own responsibilities in the relationship ranging from understanding the other person, being nice, caring, emotionally connected etc etc etc as already mentioned above

2. Professional relationships

In Mahabharata, both Yudhisthir and Duryodhan competed for the rights for the throne and end up with catastrophic war. Duryodhan could have been rewarded with the throne automatically by the upper management if he would have performed his responsibilities of a prince better than Yudhisthir. Little did he realize that a throne may come with Rights but it always seeks a Responsible king.

Similarly it's not very different in case of our day to day professional relationships too. For e.g., Right says a Direct Report (DR) is supposed to know from his PM how his performance is evaluated, is the process objective, is the PM committee to the growth of the DR etc etc. These and many more such expectations often create a friction in the relationships as the PM often feel a DR is not understanding the big picture objectively and instead of addressing the concern, his actions become reactive, tactical often the trust in the relationship gets adversely affected.

Looking at the same picture from a different perspective of Responsibility, if the same PM takes it as his/her duty to makes all possible attempts proactively to establish an element of trust, clarity with the DR w.r.t to his as well as organization's commitment in the growth of the person, then may be the same DR doesn't ever feel like exercising his above rights and their relationship goes much beyond a professional association.

Also at times the PMs share feedbacks with their DRs as their Right because they are the PMs. The feedback should certainly be shared but do we ever wonder how the equation between them would improve if the same feedback is shared with a sincere intent of Responsibility and not as one's Right. The focus of the whole discussion can turn towards fighting a problem together instead of one vs. other.

One who is Responsible is worthy of Rights and it is our Responsibility to serve other's Rights.

I myself have not cracked it fully as yet but I certainly felt a lot clearer and empowered knowing the role of Right vs Responsibility in a relationship and here are my key lessons and realizations from this conversation

• It's the distinction whether we are externally focused (My Right on the other) or inwardly focused (My Responsibility towards the other) that defines our real commitment to any relationship.
•  The 'Right in a relationship' can always be proved right on paper and on logic but if the focus is only on that Right then it's certainly wrong for the health of relationship.