Standing Up for Yourself at Work — how nature takes course through the least resistance (you)
Have you ever started at the new job, with the contract and a list of duties, but in the end you find yourself working late at night, doing the task that’s not your job, and you have this feeling that something went wrong for you along the line?
Good news is, it is very typical and happens at every sector of the job! It is natural.
The bad news is that at some point you became a person with the least resistant path for someone to get their work done. It is all in the small print of your contract. You got caught in the last section of your contract where it says, “And other duties as required by the necessity of blah blah blah department.”
Think of water flowing from the top of the mountains down the river.
The water flows around the rocks down the stream. The path it chooses will be with the least resistance craved by the rocks.
Or imagine a balloon holding the water inside under pressure. If you make hole in the balloon, the water will come out from that hole while relieving the pressure from the other places of the balloon.
You are that hole, or least resistive path that allows all the pressure to flow toward you — because you are the least resistant team player in the team.
Now lets looks at your situation at work:
It is part of nature, a social structure where the survivors are the fittest. The fittest in the human society is who does not sees themselves as a victim, but someone who is responsible for their life.
You chose this situation the moment you agreed to let others have their way — when you didn’t listen to your hunch that this screamed “not fair”. And I choose the word “choice” intentionally because you are in the driver’s seat.
Asking for what you want, and that includes saying “No”, is the exercise of your resistant that everyone has the ability. Some saying it more often, and some don’t do it enough.
The high standards of any visionary teams are driven by the values of fairness, equality, innovation, and collaborative work . But these values are also UNnatural, at least where human ego is involved, the survival instinct will always persist.
The instinct of self survival and the limits of physical world possibilities always work overtime. They don't care about those high words vision.
No one has yet cancelled the factors that constantly and passively make the decision for us — phenomena such as “loudest wins”, “fittest over the weak”, “privilege”, “connections”, “power”, and “money”.
Like they say, life IS “unfair”.
The other side of the coin is the higher consciousness and power of will. We created those high values and virtues because the reason knows better. No wonder it takes a high vigilance, active work, and persistent redirection for teams to work better and smarter.
We always battle our own nature since the dawn of history.
When you rely on nature of things, you can take step back and detach yourself from making it personal or making it the fault of others. Making it personal and blaming other only reinforces the idea that you have no control and you are a victim. It is no one else’s fault, and it is not your fault either — it is just the way it is.
Now, the application part:
You have three choices: 1) raise your voice and make it heard, 2) decide it is not worth it and quit, 3) don’t change anything.
When you address the issue to your boss — follow these guidelines:
1. talk in a calm voice — “lecture like” tone of voice, matter of fact intention
2. speak from the space of power — remember you are not a victim — things are not happening TO you, they are just happening, and you are part of the deciding factor of the happening.
3. make the issue a matter of what are the rules, obligations, and expectations from your job role (and not about a person, your opinion, or their fault of mismanagement) — remember everyone is doing their best
4. ask for what you want in a form of a solution — how else can the water flow through your team?
5. remind them how the solution is a win/win situation — sometimes it is a form of (a) promotion and more money, or (b) you keep me in the same position, remove extra obligations, and I won’t quit.
6. don’t be afraid — they will use your basic fears (believe me they know) against you — to disarm them is not to deny your fears, but face them.
Standing up for yourself means accepting the natural things of things SO you can harness the nature and fight for the higher values for yourself and others.
