Hats Off
28/11/16
As we grow older many things just don’t change but they increase. Yes, some also decrease, but overall, there are more things increasing than decreasing. The things that increase are: age, experience, memories, abilities, responsibilities. The measure of growth is that the amount of responsibilities, and this is often used for comparing the growth trajectories of different individuals to determine their relative contributions and accomplishments.
This has resulted in all of us having to handle multiple responsibilities. Many a times this can be a problem since there could be internal conflicts between the different responsibilities we are expected to handle. The solution to this problem begins with the recognition of the fact that we do wear multiple hats – a metaphor for the different responsibilities we discharge. Secondly, it is good to remember that we have only one head, and only one hat can fit at any one time. Although we wear multiple hats, we should remember that at any point of time only one must be worn. Thirdly, we can forget which hat we are wearing at a moment, but the rest of the world can see which hat we are wearing. So, it is necessary to be reminded since we cannot see at what we are wearing. This is important since if we fail, that is if there is a difference between our perception and what the rest of the world sees, the conflicts of the position becomes much more glaring and the discharge of our responsibilities takes a beating. Lastly, the rest of the world can also be myopic, they may not see the hat you are wearing, but may see it through their memories, expectations or images they might have created in their past, and thus what they see will be not uniform. It could be helpful if we not only remind ourselves but also the outside world that among the different hats of yours which one you are wearing at the moment. This becomes more important greater the variety of the hats we need to wear, i.e., the diversity of the responsibilities we need to discharge, which means that there are more watchers out there to see what we do, and we need to restrain our biases and conflicts.
management, bias, conflicts
Delectable Debates 