We all hear and say that life cannot be predicted… it’s full of surprises, some good and some shocking but there’s one thing common, it beats you often when and where you least predicted.
And nowadays, with so much happening around us, it’s fair to say, “Facts are stranger than Fiction”
But, while we sail through life, our mind tends to make certain perceptions. We know that they can be wrong, but we still enjoy perceiving things as they look. I am also an observer, and I got my lesson in perception about 6 years ago, while I was working for a big tech company who had setup their BPO in India.
I was recently promoted as an Assistant Manager and I was really naïve about leadership and people management skills as such. And recently, there was a lot of hype in the company about disciplinary actions and in subordination complaints, Warnings being given left right and centre to almost everyone.
I had a team of 15 senior agents, who used to report to me. One of them was seriously a troublemaker. He was the one who had complaints about almost everything happening in the company. From cafeteria to security, from work desks to the reports, he had issues with everything. I was slowly and unknowingly making some strong perceptions against him in my mind.
So now, even if there’s something genuinely wrong, and he raised it, I would not give an ear to that. Yes, I agree I was behaving like an arrogant boss who doesn’t want to listen to complaints, but that’s what the perception was doing to me.
One day, there was an escalation call (Managers are supposed to take escalations if there are any), he called me to take it, and just then, I was rushing for a meeting. So, I took that call on his system, told the customer that I will call him back in 2 hours and marked an email to myself from his id.
Subject “Sup call not taken” J, along with the customer details in the email.
The meeting went on for a while, and when I came back, I completely forgot about the call in daily fire fighting.
2 days later, my boss calls me in his room and asks me if everything is going right. I responded in affirmation. Then he asks me about the escalation calls. I told him, that they are going fine and I take all of them. Although, as soon as he asked, I got reminded of the call I missed two days back. I was thinking of calling the customer back immediately after going from here.
But, my boss just then told me that he had received an escalation from one of my team members that I don’t take sup calls. I was shocked and of course, I was angry like hell.
Not only that, he said, the he had received a written complaint in the form of an email. I was really fuming with anger when I asked him to show the email. He showed the email to me on his laptop. And guess what? Who would have written that email?
Yes, it was the same guy. I kind of controlled, and told my boss that it was just a one off case and he can ask my other team members about the escalation calls.
Finally, my boss agreed and told me to take care in future. I came back fuming and without even thinking I blasted the guy in front of the entire team. It was probably the first time a Manager was shouting like this on his team members in front of the entire floor. Everybody was quiet including the guy. I kept on blabbering and then left the room.
After I got settled and came back, this guy came to me and said, “Sir, I did not complaint about you, in fact, it’s the first time I have seen a manager being so prompt about taking escalations. Otherwise, the managers just keep pushing the escalations to senior team members. How can I complaint about you?”
But I was not in mood to listen, cos, I had seen his email on my boss’s laptop. How can that be a lie?
I again argued with him and asked him to show me his mailbox. He promptly did. I checked the sent items and you know what had happened?
The other day, when I was rushing for the meeting, I had inadvertently, marked the email to my boss instead of myself.
The poor chap had nothing to do in that, and moreover, the Subject line was such that it looked like a complaint and that too was written by me.
I apologized to him and promised to myself that I will never ever create a perception again for anyone.
I felt so bad and guilty about the whole incident at that time and now that I think of it, I laugh at myself.
We should definitely try and see the things from a different perspective than what they seem to be.
Somebody told me long back, “A perception is easier to build but very difficult to break, and it’s applicable to everyone”
