I hate you for you did not love me enough

One of my senior colleagues has been visiting me for some official task. And in routine conversation one day he happened to talk about some of his experiences with our ex- boss. He had worked with him for more than a year, and he had lots of stories in his memory to tell. The stories were indeed adventurous, as one can imagine out a year of administration of a residential university with 3000 students and nearly half on campus.

He started by appreciating the ex boss, and told about his interactions with him. Interestingly, in most of the incidents he narrated, he was the ‘Hero’. He was the one who always stood by the boss irrespective of anything. He had either helped the ex-boss come out of the difficult situations or he had warned before. He was always the one who wanted to save and safeguard the boss in tricky situations.  And more interestingly, in such cases the boss rarely listened to him. Rather, according to him, he ridiculed him and never liked him; despite that he was all the time standing beside him, for him.  Then, he started criticizing and eventually abusing the ex boss. And in those stories, there came a point when he had got so fed up with the boss' attitude towards him that one day left the office. And the story went like this that the boss called him and pleaded to come back and he in turn lambasted the boss over the phone.  

Can't Afford

“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.