Worried about being left out
I have just recently joined this travel company. Work is good and my colleagues are also great to work with. Every festival, my colleagues want to celebrate by giving gifts to each other and this is something that I don’t like as I feel that it is a waste of money. I don’t mind doing it for one festival like maybe Christmas but gifting for every occasion not only becomes expensive but finding a decent gift is also time consuming. I am afraid that if I let them know my thoughts, they will not like it and may distance themselves from me. I don’t want something like this to cause any bias towards me or for them to leave me out of plans in the future. Please help me deal with this situation as I don’t know what to do.
Ans: Here you are confused between two conditions that is causing fight between your true self and the self that you want to portray to the world, something that want to do versus something that you are suppose to do. You have to decide what is important for you, saving money and time or saving you relationship with your colleagues and your social image informs of them. Think about pros and cons for both situation. If you want to stick to your needs of saving , it is your call and other may be judgemental about you but if you think that for you that amount of money and time is very precious then you shouldn’t mind the labels that they give you, you aren’t going to be with anyone long term, if you change your job in future you may not meet them ever but you will at least have the saved money. On the contrary if you feel that few bucks of money doesn’t matter if it’s the matter for your self image and you want to keep these relationships which are very worthy then you might as well stop fussing about few money here and there if it is worth to keep these people close to you. This is something only you will be able to decide depending on what is most important to you. Take a wise call and either ways there will be some negatives which you will be prepared for, either loss of money or few relationships.
Also Read : Agony Aunt helps you to deal with professional life problems
Overloaded
I have been practicing law for the last 15 years and have made a name for myself. As my success grows, my workload also increases and due to this, I constantly find myself swamped with a never ending pile of work. I find that I don’t have enough time to complete all the work and therefore no time to engage in a recreational activity to help me de-stress. When I decided to become a lawyer, I was aware of the amount of work load I would have to deal with and yet when I am now faced with it, it seems too much. I also need the work to be done perfectly and therefore have a tough time delegating work to juniors as I feel that they won’t do a good ob. Please help me as I don’t know what to do.
Ans: You seem to be facing two problems here, one is your need for perfectionism and another is the lack of work-leisure balance. Well, both are interlocked, but the key is you inability to delicate work, as it is obvious that once you learn to do that you can fairly get enough time so other things. A good leader is always someone who will know how to get the job done, by trusting his fellow workers as supervisors job is to keep check on the nature and the deadlines of the job and not end up doing everything by themselves. You can begin with small task that are not too risky and that can be managed well by them, once you are confident about them keep increase the task with the difficulty levels and to your surprise they may handle it perfectly. Of course, you can give your feedback or make the necessary change before the final call, however if the basic pillar is build you would just need to continue from there. Doing this you will be liberal from the unnecessary burden that you are piling up create some time for yourself.
Read More : Agony Aunt helps you to deal with professional life problems
Tug of war
I work in a very small setting. My work place consists of 1 boss, 5 seniors and 4 interns. Since I joined a year back, I have noticed a friction between the seniors which has gradually escalated to the point where they don’t talk to each other. Being the senior most intern, I am sought after by all the seniors as I am aware of how everything works and get the work done faster than the rest. Each senior wants me to do their work first and don’t give me an opportunity to explain that I already have work pending of another senior. I don’t want to consider leaving this place as there is talk of one of the senior’s leaving and me getting their position. I really need help in this situation as the constant tension in the office and the constant fight over me is giving me a lot of stress and I don’t know how to put my foot down or if I should. Please help me.
Ans: Your mind is simply thinking too much about this situation, because if you would have thought well you have answered your query yourself in the above explanation. You know this is for a while and the internship can be lasting for only few more days and soon you will be offered the position of an employ and you won’t have to take everyone orders anymore. You will have your set of work assigned to you and you are in charge of those duties that’s all then you will not be a mediator anymore, so ideally you can leave the situation as it is and rather wait for it to change on its own, and this way you are protecting you relationship with the seniors too. Obviously if currently you are very over worked and other seniors are delegating more work to you, you can be assertive and state that you have few things piled up in accordance to their respective deadlines and hence you may take longer to complete their expected work, if that suits them then you can accept it otherwise they get the point that you are too busy to get more.
