9th May 2011
`Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude'
William James
Throughout the day we do various activities. At no point of time we can say `I'm doing nothing'. Our time is always filled up with some activity or other. Like we are always thinking something or other, we are always doing some work or other. But, the critical issue is: has our work resulted in the expected result? If at the end of work, nothing takes place, we might as well done nothing! We have to focus not only on our activity level, but also check if we have met the objective set for doing the activity.
I want to give an anecdote. Last weekend me, my wife and my daughter had been to a restaurant. It was a very hot day, and the restaurant was very warm. There was not much of a rush, may be it was not a peak hour time. We occupied a table on one side of the hall. After sitting for a while, we noticed that the wall mounted fan placed over our table was not working. We called the waiter and requested him to switch on the fan and he pressed a switch on the switch board. Again after a while we noticed, that the fan over our table was not working, and the waiter had switched on the fan which is next to our table. We thought that the waiter had done this by mistake, and called him and requested him to switch on the fan over our head. His reply was very funny! He said that the fan over our head was defective and requested us to occupy the other table where the fan was rotating!
This behaviour of the waiter did not irritate me, since these days I am focusing more on the attitude of people rather than on their external behaviour. The following issues came to my mind:
- If the waiter knew that the fan over our table was not working, should he not say so and request us to occupy the other table?
- At least after he switched on the other fan, he could have told us that the fan over our table was not working. Why did he not do it?
- He only responded after we called him that the purpose of our requesting him to switch on the fan was not met and he did not show any sign of regret about his poor service!
May be we have to be more sensitive if we are meeting the reasonable expectations of people. It is this factor which builds or breaks our relationships. People are intelligent enough to look beyond our external behaviour and understand our attitude/
N C Sridharan
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