“I can’t afford to feel low”,
said the COO of a big company following a stormy event at the company. Some of
the employees rebelled against the COO and went on a major strike, accusing and
abusing him for the recent project failure and demanding his resignation. The
conflict was eventually settled and strike was called off with a peaceful
mediation by the BOM without removing COO from the company. However, the
resentment inside some of those employees still remained. It was then after a
few days, when I asked how he was doing, he said he can’t afford to feel low
and said amusingly that he will sulk after a month, not now.
He has been working with the
company for more than 10 years. He is one of the most positive, jovial and
compassionate leaders I have come across. He trusts his employees and has faith
in their commitment towards the company. He inspires and supports his team
members to go beyond their task requirements and rewards them for creativity.
He is visionary and risk taking. He has an open door office, where anyone can
walk in and speak freely to him. He works as mentor to his company employees
rather than an autocratic leader. Therefore, seeing some of those people
turning against him in such big way was very disheartening.
I recall once my supervisor while
training us counseling said, “it is okay to cry with your client in the
session”. In a therapy session, normally the therapist is expected to be the
stronger person in terms of handling distress and be more ‘emotionally
balanced’. When my supervisor said so, it was a tinker in my mind. ‘It is okay
to cry along with your client’ meant that it is okay to express those intense
feelings. That “okay’ in fact assured that by being emotionally expressive, I
am not going to lose my status of therapist. I can be as much competent and
effective in helping my client. It would just mean that I am sensitive,
empathic and more importantly a ‘human’, which will in fact enhance the
effectiveness of the process.
