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Feeling appropriate at work is one of the important sources of life satisfaction. Coach Leonid Krol explains how to achieve this state.
Leonid Krol, owner and ideologist of the Incantico project (Italy) and the Coaching and Training Workshop of Leonid Krol, director of the Institute of Group and Family Psychotherapy, professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. His website
Psychologies: To what extent can we influence our professional path at all? Can we say that we choose our own life?
Leonid Krol: Only at a very superficial view the world is rational, and each person makes his own plans for life. In fact, a variety of circumstances plan his life for him while he “plays the trumpet.” Remember the aphorism of Ostap Bender: “Fate plays with a man, and a man plays the trumpet”? And this is a very optimistic view – more often than not, our activities bring us much less pleasure. We are influenced by scenarios of family and family, habits and character, experience gained during periods of great susceptibility. Being able to understand these hidden connections in order to see your life more clearly is a great resource for development. Anyone who is ready to remember, ask friends and relatives, fantasize and see analogies has a chance to get an insight about the main motives and guiding events in his family, understands much more about himself, his character, about his ways of making choices and planning life. Then it becomes clear to him that external circumstances are less important than it seemed.
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Can you give an example?
OK.: Let’s say a middle manager in a bank (always acting according to instructions, careful, responsible, with an excellent education) lives with hypertension. He used to associate it with heredity – his father also had high blood pressure. However, in fact, the pressure reflects his working circumstances, because it rises in a situation of external pressure, when the environment “presses”, and it is difficult for our hero to relieve this tension, to channel it. He falls into immobility, turns into a “man in a case” (and inside this case the pressure rises).
But as soon as he finds “internal supports”, he realizes that there were those in his family who acted uninhibitedly, were ready to take risks, as the situation begins to improve. Next, he will have to draw up a program of small pleasures for himself, introduce his own relaxation system, and as a result, such an objective indicator of health as blood pressure will radically change for the better. In general, the transfer of attention from the “necessary and unpleasant” to what we like and attract changes our view of the world and attitude to work. Instead of the usual stiffness, tension, increased control, a different mode of behavior comes, a different image of oneself. Self-reliance, reliance on individual programs, on internal guides often leads to a change in circumstances.
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What can be these guides, these attitudes towards our work?
OK.: Very different. I will list some in a slightly exaggerated form. “They pretend that they pay me, and I pretend that I work”; “I work well and honestly, they should take care of me”; “I drank in the morning – the day is free”, “Monday begins on Saturday” (after the name of the novel by the Strugatsky brothers, that is, the work is so exciting that you want to be in it all the time, including weekends). “I work for survival, let the children live – and my life is paused”, “Work is not a wolf, it will not run away into the forest” … The list of such slogans, of course, is much longer. They display the key images of our unconscious, that virtual world that largely creates the real world. It is important to penetrate, to feel, to see what scenarios, what “blanks” lying inside us control us. If we manage to track this down, we will no longer be “carried” through life, the zones of real control will greatly increase. Moreover, the more we look up to ourselves (in different, and not only in our best states), to our capabilities, the more effective and happier we become. An attempt to unify ourselves, to put ourselves in a common system, to focus on the average temperature in the hospital reduces our sense of relevance and happiness.
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How do you see your work and yourself?
Our relationship to work will become clearer if we use a spatial metaphor. Leonid Krol offers 4 questions that will help you understand your habits and attitudes.
“Above the work or below it? If an employee looks at work “from above”, then he plays, chooses, changes circumstances. In this case, the subjective view and possibilities are more significant than the workflow itself. The attitude to being “under” is felt as “against the current”, “with a load”, involuntarily (a load can also be carried with pleasure, with a sense of duty and purpose, but it does not cease to be a load).
Work in front or behind? The work is planned, viewed in stages and tasks, split up, then the dipped beam, then the main beam is turned on. It causes excitement, and I want to “overtake” it, make it faster, feel “on horseback”. Or vice versa – it must be pulled like a strap, it feels like the past (both in technology and as a repetition of the past). “Work behind” may well be associated with the sphere of museums and libraries, while the cult of the new is realized in samples, estimates, models.
Right or left? Conventionally, what is on the right is samples, a matrix, an algorithm of actions and the expectation of given results. And the “left” is associated with the unexpected, non-standard, indefinite, out of the usual (including the scale). The left is more process-oriented, the right is more predictable.
Outside or inside? In this fourth opposition, the subject is opposed outside, reflecting from the outside about work as an actively changing reality, and the subject inside, thinking of itself as an active, “warmed up” part of the process and result.
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The working mood largely depends on colleagues. How would you describe the team that inspires us and brings out the best in us?
OK.: This is a creative, effective group, a group of high mutual support and spontaneous psychotherapy. A group that has reached this stage of maturity works in brainstorming mode. It has both the realization of each, and the overall effect of the accumulation of well-being. In it, colleagues listen without interrupting each other with monologues, in it there is a high level of grasping and attunement to each other, a lot of smiles, personal, comic addresses, interjections, and changes in intonation. In communication, a special language is adopted, where there are both terminologically accurate expressions and figurative ones. Such a group is ready for unexpected manifestations of everyone, it is possible to get out of the usual, well-established and familiar roles, a short solo and retreat to the periphery of the discussion. At the same time, there is a feeling of care for the participants, increased patience with each other, involvement and interest. As if there is a security system, insurance against breaks. This attitude is accompanied by an increase in the number of jointly generated meanings, ideas, observations and suggestions, and this is visible to everyone. Doubts are allowed, but the number of negative statements is small, especially since there is no room for devaluing what others have said. Everyone is needed and appropriate, contributes, turns with its unexpected sides and enriches the overall fabric of what is happening. Such a group (or an organization built from similar groups) becomes an emotional refuge and at the same time a factory for the production of meanings, gives an increase in quality, creates a completely successful and monetized product.
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“There is a sense of care for each other. Each is necessary and appropriate, makes its own special contribution, turns in unexpected ways and enriches the fabric of what is happening.
Such teams, perhaps, are an exception to the rule?
OK.: Yes, we still have few of them, but there are more and more of them in the world. Among the Russian organizations I personally know, I can name, perhaps, Sberbank, where emotional intelligence is taken into account and the experiences of employees are considered as a factor influencing work efficiency. Development goes along the line of concern for the comfort of people at work. These are not just one-time team building events, but the creation of an environment where people are more open, emotional, and involved in informal communication. It’s not just about how much time to spend in the office, how vertical subordination is arranged, not only about material motivation. A special space for communication is created; conditions that stimulate hobbies and meetings of interest. The role of feelings and attunement in increasing creativity and performance becomes apparent. In other words, loosening up and being less bound by corporate regulations leads to a better organization. If employees are properly selected, emotionally involved, if they are taken care of, then their responsibility and return are much greater. And it is natural that more and more people aspire to work in such organizations.