“Don’t instruct me on my duties! I’m the brother of a King...the son of a King...we have a history that goes back untold centuries. You’re the disappointing son of a brewer! A jumped-up jackeroo from the outback! You’re nobody. These sessions are over!” Bertie shouts at Lionel in movie ‘Kings Speech’.
I am sure most of us who had seen this movie, must have been shocked while watching this scene. Most of us must be feeling pity for poor Bertie who had chosen to turn blind eye towards well intended suggestion of Lionel and driven instead by wrong analogies. Well, my dear friends, Bertie was neither the 1st person on this earth to behave like that nor the last one. We all rather represent Bertie in some way or other in our daily life.
Just take an example of dealing with peers or subordinates at workplace. Imagine a situation when a peer/subordinate accidently exposed our lack of understanding in the subject and on top of that offered a meaningful solution to improve our capability. Most people at some point of time do face this uncomfortable conversation. Do you remember what was the instantaneous reaction ? Wasn’t that in similar line to what Bertie reacted to Lionel ?
Question is “Why? Why most people behave irrationally when challenged by peers/subordinates (with respect to age, rank, power, wealth etc) but react in almost opposite manner if challenged by authorities?”
There may be numerous justifications but I believe that both the reactions are caused by only one emotional state, FEAR. It may sound strange, so lets take this way; Fear of Loosing Face directs irrational behavior towards peers/subordinates. Whereas Fear of Loosing Stability asks to keep calm in front of authorities and swallow the anger.
However, most people in this world would rank Fear of Loosing Face higher over Fear of Loosing Stability. Reason might be rooted in social nature of mankind. We live in the society where everything is measured by loosely defined tapes like Wealth, Position, Age & Knowledge. Naturally the ones who are being respected by others do possess command over one or more of those parameters. Slowly, those beneficiaries built their own World of Influence (An Empire of their own belief), where they can live in a false comfort zone. When a smart peer/subordinate tries to pull them out from that comfort zone by challenging, it can be considered as an ultimate loss (i.e. loosing the so called Empire) and then people behave in an extreme manner (or irrational) to save it any cost.
In fact, Fear of Loosing Face also plays a vital role in the response for Fear of Loosing Stability. People normally accepts decisions from authorities till they find their comfort zone is not being busted. As soon as attack is on the Comfort Zone (e.g. Question on abilities during a public meeting), most people turn defensive. They prefer to loose stability rather than loosing face.
However, such a defensive attitude has a potential danger of ending up being complacent. Person practicing it may build layers of Ego and Overconfidence. It can affect productivity, as the thirst, for learning new things and honing existing skills has been either reduced or no longer exists. If so, then it is the perfect road to pitfall, both for an individual and the employer.
Some blessed individuals have abilities to control their emotions. They can analyze situation as a neutral person and then decide how to react. But most people fail to practice this. There is no silver bullet to handle such tricky solutions, but a combinations of two prong approach may help.
Address Individuals' perspective & Address Manger’s perspective.
1) An Individual may do an introspection (self reflection) to identify potential areas of clashes (Ego / Strengths / Weakness / Viewpoints / Bias etc) in long run. It may help in avoiding surprises and being defensive to some extent.
2) Manager / authorities normally like to choose the best talent in the Team. While choosing team, if focus is also kept on team composition (e.g. who are natural leaders, who are logical/strategic thinkers, who are doers and to run the show which kind of members are needed), then interactions between the individuals can be managed more swiftly and incidences of Loosing Face kind of clashes may be reduced upto certain extent.
Its easier to say than practice. But if we do not start practicing because its difficult then chances of success are far remote. As one of my colleagues says, “If you have to go to moon, you should 1st try getting few inches up from the ground”, so lets try doing it to see the impact.
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