Life is a mixed bag of people and emotions...in People/Team management – Manage it efficiently.

Life is a mixed bag of different people and the resultant emotions that we have because of them. There are different kinds of people in our life as in, the people who need us, people who want to take advantage of us, people who hate us etc. We too tend to be the same to others depending on certain circumstances; it is quite natural. I am not talking of Parents and our children here, with whom we are biologically motivated to love; they come with their own set of challenges. That’s a different story altogether.

Then there are people who like us and people who we like. They could be at our workplace or in our personal life.  In this post we will focus on this particular category of people. These people are not connected to us and we eventually meet them. We set off on a journey to make a connection with these people over a period of time. We will now discuss the first set of people ‘people who like us’. They are not at all difficult to identify, sometimes it is so obvious. They will communicate more often with us, they will feel happy in our presence, they will have a particular interest in our likes and dislikes, they will be over apologetic when they do something that offends us, they will go out of the way to be of some help to us, in extreme cases, they sometimes behave and act as if their world revolves around us, they get deeply hurt when we find fault with them. There could be numerous  other gestures to identify them.

Now there is this other set ‘people who we like’, they too are not that difficult to identify as we tend to do some of the above mentioned things with them. Initially we may not notice it but over a period of time the signs will be much more evident.

Our actions with these two different sets of people and the reactions that follow by far, constitute our mental state of mind in our life. It is very important to be sensitive to these situations. Hence, these situations need to be identified at an early stage and managed very efficiently; failing which it could result in a mess. The approach is pretty much the same in both cases; it may only vary with the level of involvement. Here are a few tips that could help through this situation.

·         Open and timely communication – a very vital aspect, as anything we postpone will only result in dealing with even bigger a mess.

·         Defining boundaries – again a crucial condition so that nothing is left in a gray area, eliminating the possibility of any ambiguity.

·         Setting expectations – a very central exercise which is often ignored in situations like these, setting expectation needs to be done with others and with our own self too (sometimes it is most important to do it with ourselves than others).

·         Realistic thinking – a fundamental condition that is easily ignored by the attitude of taking everything for granted (for example : taking other people’s time, nature and priorities for granted)

·         Taking Stock of the situation – this particular tip is the most helpful, taking stock of where the situation is heading is very essential. If we are not sure or lack clarity we can always approach for a third party perspective. A Third party because they are not thinking the way you are and are not bound by your feeling, emotions and hence is more likely to give a honest and genuine evaluation of the situation.

Different things work out for different people, but the point is not to delay the process and come up with a solution soon enough. The solution may not be favorable to us always, but it would certainly contribute towards the peace of mind in the longer run. The things that happen in our life is mainly our own doing, most of the times. Nothing impacts our life more than our own actions and thinking.

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