When clients behave badly...

My colleague was upset the way our client spoke to him. Then there was yet another one complaining about an aggressive and hard-to-convince partner in Ahmedabad. Both the colleagues were going back home mentally pooped or sulking in office - forced to tolerate what they had to undergo. We are constantly shocked by the things other people say and do or by the things they don't say and don't do. How can my boss have ignored me? How can my colleague have taken the credit? How can my employee have made that mistake? How can my partner be so inconsiderate? As a leading management practitioner puts it - The problem is not us. And it's not them. The problem is our expectations. It's not that people behave well or badly. It's that we expect them to behave differently than they do. Even when they have proven our expectation wrong time and time again.

The Indian market is attracting lot of interest - it's expanding, integrating diverse interests, cultures and of course redefining tolerance. The likelihood of us interacting with people very different from us is increasing by the day. And of course, we should admit that people who are different do things differently. How often have we come across pople who don't look at us when we speak to them, people retorting, people absolutely quiet.
Have we forgotten the rule - 'Treat other people the way you'd like to be treated?'
It's important for us to take every interaction as an experiment that gives out a little bit more about the individual we are dealing with. It's easy then to change expectations to more accurately align with reality. Every interaction provides a clue to better yourself in dealing with the other. It's because we are automatically changing our expectation every time...