Workplace love, how important is it?
- Aug 9, 2019
- 2 min read
Why is compassion so important not only at work, but in our life as general?
Most of us start a new job with the attitude of team spirit. Everyone goes in to a new job full of excitement, dreams and love. Even so, the most common question in interviews is, whether or not you are a team player. It all sounds so friendly and intriguing. But what happens once we join and are up for performance evaluation? From being a team we are suddenly all individuals and assessed impersonally. Mostly the evaluation is on the work done, the numbers in the file or sometimes personal biases under the table. Most companies follow a bell curve model of performance evaluation where they force their employees to compete with one another to mark the best, mediocre and worst employees.
Honestly, we are not new to the comparison model. Ever since we were born we have been in the comparison game, competing for grades for schools, competing for better resumes for even landing a job interview and even competing at the work place to gain better reviews. No where are we taught or valued the core human emotions we strive for. We are social beings who long for compassion and love. But in the 'real world' we are taught to live on complete contradictory values. How do you think this really serves us in our self-actualization?
I remember one time at work, there was a task that got overlooked by my colleague and a senior member saw it undone; what I was advised to do by the senior member was to just leave the task undone and let the manager 'take it up' with my co-worker. I honestly didn't care about the management bashing someone, rather I cared about the work getting done.
We are human and we make errors, it's part of who we are and how we learn and grow. So instead of condemning somebody for their errors I believe in politely reminding the work process or helping out in accomplishing a task. Unfortunately, that's not how most of the people feel, because of this constant competition that we are in, ever since we were born, most people feel happy in sabotaging someone else and proving themselves better than others. I wonder how this sentiment is going to help in an organization actually being a team initiative. Aren't these sentiments completely against what we as humans are at our core?
So let's work towards promoting and inculcating human values like compassion, love and kindness at work. Instead of evaluating people on numbers and following a bell curve, let's encourage people to help one another, coach each other and work together as a team. Let's not grade unique people on a set scale of numbers, rather let's grow them and the company together using their unique talent.
This change doesn't just need to happen at a corporate level but at a more intimate and personal level. As both the workforce and consumers we need to approach services with some more love and compassion. A little bit of workplace love is much needed.
How do you suggest we can work on changing this mindset of constant comparison to that of love?
Relationship Crisis is well thought out write-up. It's objective and insightful.
Work Place Love is beautifully written and expressed.