Category: Teamwork

Dear Suryakant,

You have asked me (and I quote your email): ‘What should I do with my competitive behaviour. In a team- I want to be the best. The feeling is similar to being 1st in the class. In fact throughout my high school and Engineering, I was either 1st or 2nd in class.

However in real life, this behaviour sometimes makes me less productive and prevents collaboration with others. I would appreciate it if you could give me some suggestions – either via an online session or email if possible.

Well. Here goes.

First, congratulations in seeing so clearly a part of yourself which many people dare not touch. Most of us run away from looking into the mirror when we find something unpleasant or undesirable. Its also called: our psychological or personal “Shadow”, which comprises of those qualities, impulses, and emotions that we cannot bear for others to see and thus cast into the hidden domain of ourselves. It takes courage to call out a quality in the self, which is normally looked down upon by society.

The Psychodrama session which we did in our last meeting— while it was about your difficulty in ‘speaking up’ a point of view which you believe was in the best interests of the organization, especially in the presence of ‘authority figures’  ; it unearthed another topic— of your competitive self which gets triggered, which was until now buried in the unconscious. This is also the power of Psychodrama.

In this role-play, where you were the protagonist, we called on ‘stage’ group members to play these two roles: the boss and the boss’ boss. As we explored the tension between you and your boss (ofcourse there are organization politics all the time), and your diffidence in sharing your view point, we understood that to get out of ‘Freeze Mode’ requires giving up the need to be right, and allowing yourself to make mistakes and risks.

And as the enactment explored not only external behavior, but also ‘inner’ aspects, such as unspoken thoughts and feelings, fantasies of what others might be feeling and thinking, you discovered an unspoken competition between you and your boss (who is almost your age) which was coming in the way of building a healthy relationship, which in turn was impacting the way the project was moving forward.

As you know, in Psychodrama, we  don’t ‘advise’, but offer a ‘sharing’.

The fact is that competitiveness is one of my ‘demons’ too. Demons don’t entirely go away, even after addressing them. They have a habit of visiting again, but with an impact of decreasing intensity, as we start recognizing them.

At a recent meeting with peers, this popped up again.  I found myself getting annoyed with the lack of structure, and discussion which was skidding out of (my) area of relevance and interest as per the broadly defined agenda.

I am so used to leading groups that I wished that I could have just cut across the ‘bumph’ and moved on. That’s what I do in my groups. I let things roll for a while, and then step-in and ask: Guys, what is really happening here?

But I was uncomfortable in voicing this in a peer group.

Because there are inevitable comparisons and competition in a peer group- Who occupies how much space? Who is more senior/ better/ more competent even among equals? And this comparison coexists with the anxiety of wanting to be accepted by the group. And this anxiety creates a dilemma: Should I speak up? Or stay silent?

Speaking up means ruffling feathers and risking making myself unlikable.

Staying silent means killing my authenticity- and my interest and enthusiasm dies out.

These realizations make me feel uncomfortable. But ‘Presence’ is being comfortable with the discomfort.

Some things which help me are:

–Know your triggers -Who sets you off? When?

–Notice your body signals: the heart pounding, the breathing becoming shallow. Attend to these with a gentle compassion.

–Challenge yourself by engaging with the situation fully instead of going into withdrawal mode.

–Find something to appreciate in the person you are feeling competitive with. Say it aloud to them. This will help you to say your piece, but in a relational way.

–The brain is getting fired up with these signals. Use it to bring energy in the room. Your (different) point of view can bring value to the topic, and help improve the quality of the outcome.

–Even if afterwards (post meeting) you realize that you were not able to present your ‘wise self’, do it afterwards in a 1:1 conversation.

–And finally, don’t worry about expressing yourself in a ‘perfect way’. If there are ruffled feathers, and you don’t come out in your best, polished way, you’ll deal with it later.

College Reunions and the Art of Dying

Author Rashmi DattPosted on Categories Leadership, Managing our emotions, Personal Growth, TeamworkLeave a comment on College Reunions and the Art of Dying

When I talk of the ‘Art of Dying’, it is not a literal idea. It is not a matter of dying physically, but of a metaphor whose central idea is to let our ego die.

We can say the ego is a view of ourselves, which we have derived from our set of experiences, accumulations, analysis and memories. It carries all our prejudices and distortions and is formed by a limited and partial perception of reality, which prevents us from fully understanding ourselves and others behind the veil of judgements, evaluations and conditions defined by the world.

We are meeting in Goa for our 40th reunion …from the year of our joining BITS Pilani. There is excitement, and at the same time, I’m also asking myself the question: ‘What am I doing here?’. For in our original batch of 400 ‘boys’ and 20 ‘girls’ the representation in Goa is 50 men and 2 women— just Vandana and me. The girls and boys didn’t interact much in our time— the relationship was binary. Either there was a romantic involvement, or nothing. The in-between option didn’t exist, like hanging around as friends.

So there is a mild anxiety—How will we relate to each other? There has not been much interaction in these 40 years— between the boys and the girls—except for an odd few professional exchanges.

But I know intuitively this is an important milestone, and something significant is waiting to be discovered, so here I am.

The first glimpse of it is visible when we meet in the afternoon for the round of introductions. The question that is generally asked at reunions ‘What do you do?’ is replaced by ‘What did you do in your last job?’ for many of us.

Yes, we have to reckon with the transition we are going through in life— we have worked for 35 years; we are in our late fifties. Often when small groups of college mates have met in the past, the unvoiced (or voiced) question that is discussed is: Who are the most successful from our batch? Who ‘made it’? Who were the surprises? Etc etc. Part of the debate could be defining and redefining the criteria of ‘success’.

But that question is no longer valid.

We are having to contend with the transition from a life of Achievement and Success in the outer world to the dreaded R-Word, of Retirement, where the invitation is to go inwards- to Contemplation and Inner Search.

When I talk of the ‘Art of Dying’, it is not a literal idea. It is not a matter of dying physically, but of a metaphor whose central idea is to let our ego die.

We can say the ego is a view of ourselves, which we have derived from our set of experiences, accumulations, analysis and memories. It carries all our prejudices and distortions and is formed by a limited and partial perception of reality, which prevents us from fully understanding ourselves and others behind the veil of judgements, evaluations and conditions defined by the world.

It is the same Ego which with some annoyance notices my roommate and I are the few people who have been given a room without a balcony in the beautiful resort in Goa which the organizing committee has selected for our stay. Which concludes to: hmmm. I am less important than the others who got room with a balcony; Where do we dry clothes after our dip into the sea? But it is a momentary glitch: we say, ‘Never mind about that, let’s go down and join the gala evening’.

As we meet, interact, beyond the exchange of biographies— the mandatory starting point of which is the mundane question ‘What do your children do?’ We go beyond that and have deeper conversations of the meaning of life, of what makes us truly happy. There is an attempt of knowing the person behind the Vice President who made it/ who is still in the running/ or didn’t make it. There is a softening in our interactions, beyond the labels which had got into the way of the heartfelt connections which we all wanted, but were unable to make.

And in all these realizations I am helped by my roommate for the two days—she is so chilled out that nothing much disturbs her. She just has a good laugh about everything and doesn’t take herself seriously. I marvel at the synchronicity that has arranged for our stay together, and my delight in rediscovering her after so many years.

I realize it is the same ego which made me decide not to wear the BITS T-shirt for the group photo- because in my vanity I felt it would make me look fat.

So the answer to my question: ‘What am I doing here?’ is to celebrate the dying of the ego. Which allows us to joyously celebrate every moment as it arrives. And to reclaim some friendships which we couldn’t make during our 4 years of stay at our magnificent campus.

Perhaps the divide occurred in the first place because we had fixed notions of how the girls should be treated by the boys, and vice-versa.

It is to notice that the room without the balcony doesn’t matter because I can open our hotel room window and hang the clothes out to dry in the sun; which I discover only in the morning we have to leave.


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Contact us if you have teams in your organization that are separated by divides of egos and fixed notions; and there is a need to build bridges of communication and understanding beyond labels and judgements.