Are We Really Allowing Ourselves to Fly?
Reflections on our potential, our beliefs about our potential, and how this makes a world of difference!
Hello Dear,
Welcome to One Doubt Please, the #NotJust Newsletter I began recently. The idea is to share with you #NotJust my (I say Not Just my, since hey, they are not mine alone!) reflections on governance, communication, technology, leadership, growth, learning, creativity and various other aspects of life, based on what I call my “experiences of inexperience” so far. If you have the time and inclination to read, and I hope you do or want to have it, I hope you would find some value in these reflections. I would also encourage you to contribute by sharing your thoughts in the comments, for instance.
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Ok, so let us come to the topic for today.
What’s Our Potential?
Let’s us start with a simple yet most likely a difficult question. What is your potential? How much can you achieve, how much and in what ways can you contribute, make an impact and leave a difference, changing people’s lives?
Yes, do you know your potential? Your potential for excellence, for doing good? As a working professional and more generally, as a person and human being?
What about the people in our lives, those at home, work or otherwise? How well do we know about their potential? What about the organizations where we work for or are associated or engaged with? How well do we know the potential of our organizations, our social institutions?
Ok so, what is your assessment? Do I hear you telling yourself that “yes, sure, I know what I am capable of”? That “I know what my son or colleague can and cannot achieve”, and that “I know what my organization can achieve, what its potential is”?
Tell you what, I would like to challenge you on this point and tell you that, no, we do not know our potential! Why do I say that?
Simply because of my belief that our potential is infinite, or at least large enough to be regarded as infinite for all practical purposes. I believe that for most if not all of us, whether it be we ourselves as individuals, the people in our lives, or our social institutions such as organizations, communities, nations and even the global society, a vast part of our potential for excellence and goodness is unknown, unimagined, unappreciated, unrecognized, unexplored, undiscovered, unrealized. And further that our aggregate potential for excellence and goodness is infinite!
Multidimensional Potential
It strikes me now that there is more than one way in which our potential is infinite.
One is of course the magnitude of our potential. My contention is that a lot many of us underestimate our potential - in both us and in others. [I realize that a lot many of us go about our lives, without getting the opportunity or courage to believe in ourselves. We end up believing we are capable of contributing much less than what we really are.]
However, infiniteness here should be not regarded as just a matter of magnitude. Our potential is infinite, also in the immense variety of causes we can engage in and contribute to, in the numerous diverse ways we can add beauty, meaning and goodness to the world. So, you might have always thought that you would never be able to speak well in public, in front of a large group of people; but hey, it is well-nigh possible that it is just one or two inhibitions which are holding you back. Or it could be just that you have not discovered a larger-than-life cause which inspires you and to which you would like to devote yourself to. Maybe that, and some practice doing it, is all what is needed, to make you a great public speaker? A speaker who can inspire people to move mountains and usher in revolutions in our individual and shared ways of being and becoming?
One can give numerous other examples, including from my own life. I would encourage you too to think of situations where you surprised yourself, by being able to do something which you previously thought was nothing less than impossible!
Well, there is a lot more which needs to be said about our potential, the relationship between the belief in our potential and our likelihood of being able to realize it and various dimensions of this problem, such as the way this plays even in geopolitics, where entire nations and their peoples are, over centuries, led to underestimate and not believe in their potential for goodness and excellence! We hope to come these in later posts in this #NotJust newsletter; for now, I would encourage you to check out the previous post in this newsletter, on Being and Becoming Your Best.
And let us now come to a specific facet and implication of the way we perceive our potential. Being a member of the Indian Civil Service, of Indian Information Service in particular, let me seek to share my understanding of how this dynamic plays out in “the services”, as the civil services are often referred to.
How Much Responsibility Do We Give Ourselves and Others?
Here is a key question which I believe is foundational to the growth and development of not just individuals, not just organizations, but even the nation and global society!
How much responsibility do we take up on our shoulders?
If we interpret “we” in the above question to mean not just each one of us, but also the other people in our lives as well as our institutions, we can see that this question includes within its fold the below question as well.
How much responsibility do we give others? How much responsibility do we allow them to take up or otherwise, give themselves?
This leads in turn to another variation of the question.
How much responsibility do we allow others to give others?
Ok, why do I claim that these questions are foundational to the growth of not just individuals, but also of organizations and societies? Mainly because the cascading and effect and cumulative impact of the numerous small ways in which we sqaunder and lose opportunities to take and give more responsibility, to oneself and to others.
For example, in the context of an organization, only if I give more responsibility to my juniors or “subordinates” can I expect to be able to take up more and higher responsiblities. Right? So, if I don’t do this to my juniors, and hence if I don’t take up higher responsibilities, my superiors also would be unable to take up higher responsibiltiies, and thus I am hurting their growth too. Thus overall, the performance of the entire organization is compromised. And if our organization is doing or meant to do something good, this in turn hurts the growth of our society and communities too. And so on. Here is something I had written on this dynamic, way back in January 2016.
Ok, now let me come to the context of the Indian Civil Service, as I said earlier.
Creating Donkeys out of Men (and Women)?
[Given below is a piece of reflection I shared with some fellow IIS officers, in May 2022]
I got the chance opportunity to interact with a former civil servant today. He said that in the IAS, they can create men out of donkeys and that in the Central Services, we tend to create donkeys out of men (and women).
On a smug note, I felt happy that it vindicated my position and belief on the need for every senior on the planet to delegate and create more responsibilities for their juniors. As I was telling a fellow officer recently... as a senior / reporting officer, I should give precisely those responsibilities to my juniors / subordinates which they are currently afraid of taking up, which they think they would fail at.
Since it is only outside our comfort zone that growth happens.
And it is only by stretching our boundaries that we break them and realize that none really exist.
What say?😊💐
Here is something I wrote on similar lines, in January 2016
Among other things, it reminds us how training and empowering our juniors is not only life-giving for them, but can also enable us to fire ourselves from our current roles. In other words, we should fire our juniors from their roles, this is necessary in order to do the same for ourselves. And if we don't fire ourselves continually, we are putting our future to fire. 😊
[End of the piece of reflection written in May 2022]
I have been inspired to write about this now, since just this week, I had multiple discussions with quite a few fellow officers on the level and extent of responsibility we are taking on our shoulders, both individually and collectively as a profession.
Flying Higher, Embracing the Growth Mindset
I hope to write more on this later, but briefly…I realized that often, we tend to assume that others believe in themselves, when in fact they may be sufferieng from a lot of self-doubt and lack of confidence, which stands in the way of their growth and development. The same could be true about we ourselves too. We need to learn to better observe others and listen to others more deeply and with greater empathy, to help ourselves face our fears and take up or rather give higher responsibilities to we ourselves as well as to the other people in our lives.
Therein lies our growth, and the insurance for our good shared future. What say?
As we depart, let me recommend one book. (I love books, by the way! My dream is to be able to just sit and read, write, reflect, discuss and share ideas.) Yes, please consider reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, if you have not.
“Thanks for the book. Very interesting and might prove to be life-changer.”
That is what one friend and fellow IIS officer, to whom I gifted this book, had to say about the book. She says it could change her very life, and this was even before she had finished reading it.
Before we conclude, here could be another example of giving ourselves more responsibility. 😊
There we go, let us leave this here. For sure, we will come back to this theme, and also to the many threads which emerge and remain unaddressed or incompletely addressed. Quite in line with my belief that conversations can never end. Ever. Good day!
Do you find some value in this? If yes, do consider sharing it with others for whom you think it could be of some help.
Thank you! Best wishes to all of us - Dheep.