Entrepreneurial mind-set and integrity in question

Suffering is a gift, in it is hidden mercy! Rumi

Z called me from California to express his frustrations, ideas, motives and courage that often leaves him in shambles. When I heard him talk I could feel how much I can resonate with his emotionally personified mind-set, how much alike we are from a professional thinking perspective, almost the same and that’s because we both believe none can question our integrity!

The only tiny advantage I carried different from Z to handle pressure and uncalled for situations at work was maturity with a pinch of little experience and slight difference in the pattern of thinking and approach towards corporate life challenges.

Z and I are alike in so many ways, the way we envision things, plan, think, work, and approach with specific strategy, and the intense energies we carry to office every morning of our lives, until we’re reminded of ourselves of being a salaried employee with an employee code who has a boss over him and a super boss above him and a super duper boss over all of us who runs the show for all of us.

Z and I are genetically born with entrepreneurial mind set, we take our work with great seriousness and live with it, and we believe taking ownership of our work is as important as breathing to life is. There is no second thought to it, we breathe because we’re systematically created and designed to breathe without ever getting tired of breathing or to ever forget breathing even when we go to sleep. No human has ever lodged a complaint to a doctor that he gets tired of breathing unless he finds himself in space without oxygen cylinder.

Similarly, Z and I wants to work the way we breathe, without any control or involvement of any control being implied over our nostrils that decides at what pressure and intensity we can breathe and how much we are allowed to breathe.

One of the major good problems we have is we get religiously involved with our work with great integrity, intensity and passion and when we go home to sleep we see dreams that involves business meetings, roundtable discussions, paperwork, Xerox machines, thought leadership, we literally live our work.

Individuals like us often find ourselves in trouble because this is where the ego of leadership comes in with full force to warn you about the consequences each time there is an idea around which you want to work but conflicting with your boss on the ground of “capability check” one one side! There are two types of bosses under whom I’ve had the privilege to work under.

One who binds you to the chair with ropes of silly responsibilities, provide half cooked training, always ensures to keep you away from getting on that next big opportune, ensures your good work never gets noticed and always look for an opportunity to impose his impulsive side on you.

The second type of boss I’ve had the opportunity to work under were the ones who opened the gates of opportunities for me, challenged me, provided me intense training, pushed me beyond my limits, had hot doggy fights inside cabins on projects, thought leadership, discussing gaps, improvisation, strategy, and loopholes. I would disagree with him in 9 out of 10 cases I’d discuss with him until what the boss was saying comes 100% true and I’d still be allowed to talk my mind and next time we go in for same doggy fight and never for a second his ego and bossy attitude ever got in between us and that is because he never allowed that to happen ever.

When you’ve a boss like that to run you through, what it does to you is it makes you mentally so strong that no challenge appears big; no bad situation can shake you. It makes you mentally stronger and instils in you so much positivity that you actually begin to feel and enjoy the pleasure of being a human, you then begin to taste the pride of being son of Adam and that mind-set comes from only a few graceful souls.

If Z or anyone is being looked up on as a mere code that’d bring xyz value to the organization while the humane side being not at all considerate for Z then I am sorry to say this, a lot of corporates runs like this if not all of them.

While I believe these are classic examples of individuals whose integrity, honesty and loyalty with his company and a great skillset that helped him reached that position in his career have every chance of collapsing or getting shattered if not communicated immediately. An instance where constant humiliation, ego satisfaction bashing, bringing personal life challenges to work and venting it out on subordinate has all the potential to not only damage the relationship but also enforce people to get out of that situation at the cost of his job and health.

I read more about these challenges on LinkedIn than the purpose for which the professional network was formed. How many of these individuals have been through traumatic experiences, they were super champions all through, on their merit of excellence in their own backyard of skillset and one morning it is all taken away just because one has that advantage of authority.

I am sure there are many like us in the corporate world out there that have a similar mind set but cannot fully express themselves on their roles due to sometimes lack of trust from their boss, or management being judgmental about your very being or the way communications takes place each day with the leadership who is above you.

I tell Z, the only problem I see, the only good problem I see to your frustrations is that you and I are blessed with entrepreneurial mind set, we, under the state of our sub-consciousness believe as though we own the company that we work for, therefore in the interest of company and its growth, we work in certain manner and zeal that we believe we must do what we think is right and great for the company (project driven decisions) while we completely forgotten the fact that we are just another code of the company who at the end of the month gets his pay and it is not us who runs the show but our superior does in almost all instances.

If Z’s or anyone’s boss does not recognize and reward him for his massive contribution in shaping up and building the company with fine hard efforts then what Z must learn in such situation is to completely overlook the harshness and unjustifiable act from his leadership, but then Z or anyone cannot do it because it is never easy for anyone.

I exemplified Z to turn back a bit, think and ponder on the day you receive your employment letter and the excitement it gave you, if you’ve buried that memory then resurrect it through your mind to remind you of the fact that if you do not “listen and obey” then you will face serious consequences that can rip you off completely.

So next time if you ever feel you’ve been victimized overlooked purposely and ignored against a significant achievement, then tell yourself, if I do not learn to tolerate this with ease and let it go with a kick then it can have a severe impact on my living.

End of the day I’ve been hired to “listen and obey” and not to “think and work” if the company I am working for has that particular style of operating of course, there is appreciable difference between the two and make it a practice if you really want to help yourself.

A constructive thought can really help those doers and champs in the corporate world who can never fully express themselves out of fear of losing against a repercussion that can eat your job away or make your life even more miserable if the situation you are locked in happens to be going against your boss.

This is a mid-level crisis that must be enjoyed with great pride, this should make such individuals tough and add maturity to the way they deal with situations like these and remain focused on your learning and grow your learning curve high each day till the end of your time.

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