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The Balancing Act
WHEN YOU are dealing with as insidious a place as an office, you have got to keep two important details on the crest of your cranium. A) It is easier to work with people if you get along with them, and B) If you get along with them too well, you can never get any work done. It's a tightrope act all right. On one hand you have traditional management thinking which demands that you maintain a professional distance between you and your colleagues, and on the other hand you have new age... management liberalism (for the lack of a better word), which says that you should be as well-acquainted with your colleagues as possible. And if this means knowing how many corns his grandmother had on her toes before she saw light at the end of the tunnel so be it.
The thing with colleagues is that they are as strange a group as any other. As long as you keep them at an arm's length, they are either astute professionals sharing your daily load of toil or as the case may be, intermittent nincompoops wasting your time and feeding grossly off your sweat. Things change though, once you get to know them better, once you have been to their house-warming party, and cooed over their newborn's perambulator, or laid a sympathetic hand on their shoulder after a funeral. They stop being accountants or software programmers or graphic designers and start being human beings. And that is a difficult notion to contend with. For starters, if you look at it from a purely objective point of view, human beings are not always pleasant creatures to spend time with. They do too many things - they eat, sleep, breathe, talk (sometimes incessantly), have feelings, emotions, and worst of all, they show them too. They expect you to lend a shoulder for them to cry on every time their hours are increased or their deadlines are shortened or their computer crashes. Yes, it can be a torrid time. But on the flip side you can use their shirtsleeves for a towel every time you have a problem as well. It is a give and take relationship - a bond of dampness if you will.
The important thing to remember is that a personal equation is a vital component in the arithmetic of productivity. If you share a good rapport with your colleagues, chances are that you can work together as a team and perform as that mythical thing - a well-knit unit. The problem, however, is that while a lot of friendships are forged at work, just as many are broken. And that can throw a spanner in your professional relationship. This is partially because people will be people and as has always been the case, will be unable to forgive each other for the petty things like getting promotions out of turn or saying something they should have a long time ago. As a consequence, a lot of managers are increasingly wary of workers who fashion close bonds with each other. There is always the risk that they may fall out, causing much acrimony in the team and many awkward situations in office corridors. There is also that other problem - the problem of getting along too well. Yes, there is such a thing. Many a blissful working hour has been drowned in tea and pleasant chitchat and work has suffered because of it.
So, where do you draw the line between what is appropriate and what is not? What is the best distance to maintain? A metre, two metres, ten perhaps? Mostly, and this holds true for every organisation that considers, or wishes to consider itself progressive, anything goes. You can connect over coffee during breaks and you can fraternise outside of working hours in seedy bars or pubs. The problem, as we have said before, occurs when there is a rift. Repairing it can become an issue. Nine times out of ten, if a boss shakes a reproving fist at gabbing employees, or talks to two warring parties under a white flag, it has an immediate, and more importantly, visible effect.
However, there are no easy solutions. The best one can be arrived at using the measuring tape of productivity. If productivity declines because people in the office are getting too friendly with each other or as is usually the case, too hostile, it is ample indication that something needs to be done. A systematic programme of trial and error can only find out what that something is.
ARJUN SENGUPTA
arjuns.hyd@cnkonline.com
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