What you think in Bedroom travels to Boardroom!

Warning – We are not taking about what you do in bedroom travels to boardroom. This is a universally applicable script; not an adult one. It is about our character and thoughts at Home or Work, Private or Public place.

Often, we tend to think that we can switch on or off our traits or thought process from home to office or vice versa. This is completely misplaced. You may, at the most, hide your feelings or expressions; but what drives these, does not change. It is an exaggerated notion that you can compartmentalize your character, barricade your behavior and thereby keep them insulated from one place to another.

What is really different at Home and Work

Home and Work differ only by “Environments and Requirements”! As a result:

  • Home gives freedom; Work can give fear – fear of performance, profit/losses, image and so on.
  • Home brings comfort; Work brings discomfort of compliances.
  • At Home, you have lifelines; at Work you have deadlines.
  • At Home, you shape others’ destiny (spouse, children..); at Work, others shape your destiny.
  • At Home, you have partner’s pressure or pleasure; at Work you have peer pressure.
  • At Home, you can boss around or be bossed; at Work, you invariably have bosses (except for your own business).

You, as much as anyone else, are the common entity at both places and subjected to differing “environments and requirements”. But, the way “rules apply and work” do not differ at Home or Work. What varies is only your response.

So, remember – at private or professional places, same Rules apply; but your Responses vary! You do always carry seamlessly your approach and attitude, pleasures and pains to these “environments and requirements” from one place to another and back. If you have been stressed at work, you may try to hide at home; but let there be no illusion that it has not traveled home with your mind. And reverse is also true.

Why “What you think” travels from Home to Work and back

Look at what drives your thoughts and in turn actions:

Your information and consciousness –> your character –> your thoughts/action

You are a unique character and regardless where you are, irrespective of your environments or requirements, your character would not change on its own. It is because of this, whatever you may do, you would carry your thoughts and corresponding actions everywhere with you.

Then, what makes you to behave differently at Home and Work

Your behavior is essentially a response. Response comes from:

Character + Emotions –> Thoughts/actions + Emotions –> Response i.e. behavior.

From above, you can see that your character cannot change on its own. What changes are your emotions and hence behavior. This is the key!

You can, now, relate lot of examples, where behavior changes by 180 degree due to emotional aspects:

  • A husband very caring at home, behaves as a bad boss at Work, because of his biases (emotional aspect) against sub-ordinates.
  • One is seen as introvert before spouse; extrovert before sub-ordinates, because his spouse is dominating!
  • Person is dis-organized at Home; but very organized at Work, which is actually not by his/her character; it is by fear factor!
    If a person’s character is of good planning and organization, he/she is bound to be that way both at Work and Home!!

Examples of split personality and dual behavior

As a corollary, I come to a very important aspect, why people show dual behavior.

A wrong perception prevails worldwide that people having split personality have dual character. Their character is one and only one; what split their personality are their different emotions under different “Environments and Requirements”! Examples:

  • A manager displays broad mindedness, pragmatic views and people friendly approach before his management.
    But, for his team members, he is autocratic, believes in favoring few and mistrusting most.
    His 1st set of actions is driven by his ambition to go up or fear of getting pulled down (emotional aspects). On the other hand, 2nd set of actions exhibits his feeling of insecurity. Common factor is his character – weak personality and poor confidence.
  • Someone preaches simple living and high standards; but in his private life, he does exactly opposite.
    He is plagued by his love for praises and popularity. Character wise, he is dishonest.
  • A person likes to pick faults in others; but does not agree with his own. Emotionally, he is an egoist!
  • An employee respects his senior, as much as he respects household help at home. Emotionally, he is compassionate and by character, he is consistent.

Look at above example carefully. First 3 bullets show negative characters of persons and dual behavior/split personality! Last bullet shows positive character but no split behavior!!

What is the take-away?

  1. Your character does not change, whether you are in bedroom or boardroom!
  2. What changes is your emotions, which reflect as changes in your behavior or response.
  3. Positive aspects of your character would make you consistent and credible.
  4. Negative aspects of your character, just one or more, would result in your split personality or dual behavior and cost you dearly.

Comments

8 responses to “What you think in Bedroom travels to Boardroom!”

  1. Murli Avatar

    Transferred from LinkedIn

    Kedar Kulkarni has sent you a message.
    Date: 10/20/2012
    Subject: RE: What you think in Bedroom travels to Boardroom!

    Dear Murali,

    It was extremely feel-good to read this article. I dared to do some introspection also.

    Many thanks for putting most of my emotions into words…..

    Simply great !!

    Kedar Kulkarni

  2. Murli Avatar

    I am grateful for your illustrious feedback and views!

    Thanks a lot for your interest and time.

  3. Murli Avatar

    Transferred from facebook

    Hi Murli,
    Sushant Chanana commented on your link.

    Sushant wrote: “One should take a role, do it 100 percent and then leave then role.. whether it’s our role at office or at home…take roles at appropriate tym…..execute them…prblm comes when we try to take our ofc roles at home or vica versa….”

  4. Murli Avatar

    Many thanks for yr valuable views! At the same time, what is most important is to manage yr emotions n learn those of others!!

  5. Pankaj Avatar
    Pankaj

    Interesting. I wonder if exposure to a certain mangerial style changes a person’s behaviour at work.

    1. Murli Avatar

      Thanks a lot for your views.

      It is quiet likely that such exposure can change a person’s behavior. Now, there are 2 parts – character of that person and his emotional aspects. Character would undergo a change, if he/she is really using such an exposure to drive a change in self. But, emotions generally change in such cases like a dogmatic person changing to more democratic style of managing; a toxic manager becoming more pragmatic. As illustrated in the Post, this has a direct bearing on that person’s behavior.

      Does that make sense?

  6. Rudra Avatar
    Rudra

    Starts with a nice ROFL warning, this post of yours 🙂

    Here, if you ask me, I don’t believe in differentiating between Home and Work, but that doesn’t mean I mix those together. I enjoy my work and don’t take it as “work”. It’s just like another routine activity in my life like bathing, eating, sleeping and similarly… working!!

    The problem arises when you try to take your work utter seriously. You shouldn’t do anything in your life that you don’t enjoy; otherwise you’re going to suffer the consequences and that’s when things in your bedroom start marching towards the boardroom and vice versa.

    To tell you the truth, I really feel the same kind of environment everywhere – be it my home, outside or Office… (and everybody should feel like the same). I know it’s weird but that’s how I live my life. It may be because I never took my work as “work”, it’s a hobby for me and I never grieve going to the office and staying/working there.

    In-fact I would say my thoughts help me in doing my business slickly at both the places. My both types of thoughts complement each other in a good way and that’s what I advocate to everybody!! Well, at-least I am glad that I’ve not developed that split personality in me so far in my life and I want to keep it like this.

    May be I am too early in my career and yet to experience those harder roads ahead and that’s why I enjoy my time at work currently. But I’ll definitely try to maintain this keeping in mind your 4 “take-away” points at the end… 🙂

    I personally feel if anybody tries to follow what I mentioned above (to a small extent if not completely), there will be no dilemma for him between his bedroom and the boardroom!!

    Cheers!!

    1. Murli Avatar

      Thanks a lot for your detailed comments and what you do when compared with this post!

      I am glad to state that you are doing what this post brings out; though it appears that you are thinking other way round. You are trying to feel and act same way everywhere. You carry your character and same emotions at home and work. Which is actually very good! You do not have slit personality so far. That shows that your character is positive (one of the key take away); great!

      Challenge would be as you move forward and face new situations. You would be temped to undergo change of character and exhibit different emotions. If you make sure that your character remains positive and learn to keep managing emotions in new situations; you would be the winner!!!

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