Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The break Up

The other day while watching news they talked about a new book that's coming to market. The book focusses on how to break up with people with whom you have platonic relationship. Like your hairstylist, your doctor, your maid or your daughter's friend's overbearing mom - anyone with whom you do not have romantic involvement/relationship and would like to fire them. Initially I laughed at the subject and was very skeptical about how it might go. But it clicked for me. this book and it's author who was interviewed talked about the real life examples or 'what to says' while breaking up with these people. Key was to break up in a professional yet very dignified way. Care has to be taken to maintain the other person's dignity but still letting them know the reasons for your moving on. Theses gals even role played some situations where the author helped with 'what to say' during break up and 'how to say' kind of things. I thought it was really cool skill to have. When you think about it we struggle about these things. Especially Indians are really bad about this. I remembered a situation from childhood when we changed our family doctor of 15 years to a more competitive and well known doctor. We felt guilty, we felt bad, we felt that we are cheating someone. Now, when I think about it I wonder why did we feel that way? We were not cheating anyone. We have full right to hire and fire any doctor that we want based on their competitiveness. Somewhere we think " oh, what will our doctor think if I tell them I am switching to other doctor ". It's the guilt that accumulates within us and so we try to do anything- we try to avoid that person, try to take another route away from his office or if we meet him then instead of confronting the reality, we try to sugarcoat things or tell the doctor that we haven't been sick for long time. Yeah right !! We were always taught that confronting directly is a bad thing. We are more about saving face in the public instead of facing reality. Is that productive? I don't think so. Nobody wins. Having clarity about how you feel about their services and stating them the reasons of your moving on might help them improve their performance. Competition always keeps people on their toes. So, why are we afraid to confront people with the reality. How many days, years and generations we are going to sugarcoat things and keep underperformers in dark? So, if you have such relationships, instead of facing the guilt syndrome, confront them and move on to a more competitive service provider. I think it's a win-win for both the parties. Isn't it?

4 comments:

  1. good one...i will try something soon and see how it works....

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  2. Hey Sameer, whats the name of the book?

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  3. Dump 'Em: How to Break Up with Anyone from Your Best Friend to Your Hairdresser

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