Roles- At Work & At Home

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displacement, family and office roles, psychology

Sarah Kershaw has an interesting article in the New York Times called ” Family and Office Roles Mix “. It speaks of how our position in a family influences the way we approach issues at work. There have been studies to show these differences in the first born of a family as distinct from the second born and so on. The very environment in which we were brought up does to a large extent influence the way we look at things. The roles we have at home make us, in a sense, adopt those very roles at work.

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Displacement

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A Step A Day, defence mechanism, displacement

“Our Project Manager, Ramesh is in a very bad mood just now” said Krishna, a software developer to his colleague.” I saw him coming out of his boss’s office after a hour or so. He was looking very tense and annoyed”.

Within minutes, Krishna was called in to Ramesh’s cubicle. Without losing any time, Ramesh began to scold Krishna about the delays in the project, quality problems, lack of commitment to time deadlines etc.

It so happened that Krishna  did not have any subordinates. If he had, he would most probably have passed on the heat to them.

What we have seen is something we see everyday. People using the defence mechanism of “displacement”. We see it at home too. The elder son returns home after being scolded at school by his teacher. His kid sister waits eagerly to welcome him home. The boy not only spurns her but goes on to blame her for something she is not remotely responsible for.