[Self-Introduction] How I, who learned the 'limits of being right' at a traditional Japanese company, acquired the weapon of profiling
Self-Introduction
Hello. My name is Suika. I am a salaryman in my 30s, working at a traditional Japanese company, with a family just like anyone else.
Having worked as a salaryman for over a decade, I have had my ups and downs, from smooth periods to times when I suffered from power harassment, had a mental breakdown, and had to take a leave of absence.
Whether times were good or bad, a common thread—perhaps due to my personality traits—was that I would constantly blame myself or have anger and frustration toward those around me swirling in my head.
Why couldn't I have said that better at the time?
I really hate drinking parties.
It's annoying that he's all talk and never actually does anything...
Why am I the only one who is this busy?
I need to be more open-minded. Complaining won't change anything.
Ah, I want to quit.
Thoughts like these would constantly swirl around. When work got busy, my family life would suffer, and then I would be expected to fulfill my roles at home, but I had no energy left. Tormented by a sense of futility with nowhere to turn, I would end up lashing out in frustration.
Honestly, in my real-life relationships, I don't want to tell anyone about these raw, messy emotions or the pathetic stories from my home life.
Even when I told my family that I was struggling, they would say, 'We're both working, so our conditions are the same, right?' and wouldn't accept it at all, leaving me in despair. Since work wouldn't wait, I had no choice but to keep facing it at 100%, and I was pushed to my absolute limit.
I suspect there are many salarymen out there who are struggling with balancing work and family life with these same thoughts.
The background to why I decided to start a note
As I wrote in my self-introduction, my head was constantly overflowing with messy emotions toward myself, my colleagues, and my family. I spent my days trying to control these feelings so they wouldn't show on the surface while facing work and life.
A certain event triggered a change, and I became able to control those messy emotions I wrote about above.
It's not some brainwashing story; there was an event that made me think about how I perceive things (my perspective).
Today, while I'm at it with my self-introduction, please let me talk about that event and how I was able to change my perspective.
It is not that I have completely lost all my messy emotions, but I have definitely learned to keep them under control.
I thought there must be many other salarymen suffering from the same problems as me, and I wanted to share those feelings with someone, as well as reach out in the hope that it might be of some help to others.
Please note that as I am still currently employed by an organization, I have remained anonymous and reconstructed some parts with fictional elements to prevent my identity from being revealed. I would appreciate your understanding in this matter.
The event that changed my life as a salaryman
From here on, I will talk about why I felt there was a 'wall that cannot be broken through by logic alone' and what led me to start profiling. I will share the event that triggered it.
I personally considered my own strengths to be my pleasant personality, my agility, and my quick response time.
(In my self-image) I am a pleasant person, so it is impossible for me to give harsh guidance to subordinates or juniors. Especially since I have the experience of taking a leave of absence in the past due to power harassment, it is even more impossible.
I intended to treat everyone fairly as a good mentor, but I felt an undeniable sense of discomfort with those around me.
One day, seeing a junior whose work had come to a complete standstill, I judged that it was a situation where I needed to lay out a path for the work so that all he had to do was execute it. I presented the general approach and gave instructions in a way that left the details to him.
When I asked about the situation at the meeting scheduled for a few days later, to my surprise, he had done nothing...
A flash of anger surged within me, wanting to blow him away, but I held it back and asked, 'How is it going?', and he started asking questions about the framework I had prepared.
In short, he had questions about what I had prepared, so he couldn't proceed until he resolved them...
However, I thought to myself:
'There were definitely opportunities to ask in these past few days.'Are you kidding me, you brat?'.
After the meeting, I felt a sense of dishonesty, as if my kindness had been rejected, and the following thoughts swirled in my head.
I had laid out the path for him to help him because his work had stopped in the first place.
He promised to 'do it,' so why hasn't he made any progress?
Did he not actually do it and only prepare questions because he was dissatisfied with my method?
Could it be that he thinks of me as an equal rival?
When my thoughts reached this point, I suddenly wondered.
Looking back at his usual behavior, he always seemed to be struggling.
Perhaps he is suffering because his actual ability does not match his self-image of wanting to be a capable and excellent person, and he is not getting results.
He always listens well to the opinions of those around him, affirms them by saying 'That's right,' and tries to live up to them. He seems to be trying to find a landing point where he can please everyone, even after incorporating opinions from different angles.
Why is that again?
It must be because he wants to be evaluated by responding to what he is told.
However, in reality, you cannot get any work done if you listen to everyone's opinion.
The goal of the work is set, and even if various opinions are raised, you have to select and discard them to decide how to proceed on your own. I thought that was obvious, but I realized that perhaps he was struggling because he couldn't rationally make those obvious choices.
If that were the case, the advice and support I had given him until now might have been like beating him with logical arguments, speaking as if it were natural to be able to organize things that he couldn't even process in his own head.
Perhaps he wasn't unmotivated, but rather the landscape he saw was fundamentally different from mine.
Thinking about it that way, the state of him putting up a wall makes sense, and looking back at the past, there are parts that ring true.
It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck from the top of my head down to my back.
However, I am a very considerate person.
I am sensitive to the nuances of people's words and actions, and I was confident in my insight.
When I wondered how it was possible that I hadn't noticed this, I was suddenly struck by the realization that what I was being considerate about was 'how I appeared and how I was perceived by others,' meaning my focus was always on my own self-consciousness.
Because my eyes were focused on how I appeared, I was communicating without the premise that what was obvious to me was not obvious to my junior colleague.
So, from his perspective, I probably wasn't a 'friendly, easy-going, and kind senior,' but rather an 'eerie person with no bottom, who casually makes impossible demands while acting kind.'
What I learned from this realization, and what I want to share from now on
Everything I wrote above is my own imagination, and I haven't actually verified it, but it has been a trigger for a significant change within me, and since then, my perspective on things has clearly changed.
Until now, the world I saw through my own values (my own filter) was everything, but now I am looking at myself looking at the world through my own filter from a bird's-eye view. That is how I have changed.
Just because my perspective has changed doesn't mean that my irritation and frustration have disappeared; I still feel them just as I did before, but I have changed in the sense that I can now objectively recognize myself when I am irritated.
With this as a turning point, I am aware that working at a traditional Japanese company has become much easier than before.
This is because I have become able to view myself objectively, including my own emotions, without being swept away by them.
By shifting the perspective that had always been directed toward my self-consciousness toward others, I have also become able to understand and imagine (profile) why that person acts the way they do.
I will continue to introduce how I am working as a salaryman by utilizing profiling, so I would be happy if you would read it.
See you later!