Managing Work and People Without Harshness and a Domineering Approach

There is an apocryphal story involving the Mother, a sadhak and a bullock. The sadhak complained that the bullock was being obstinate and not cooperating. The Mother asked the sadhak to bring the bullock so she could observe it. After doing so, she indicated there was nothing wrong with the bullock. She advised the sadhak that the bullock’s obstinacy was related to something inward the sadhak needed to address, and she counseled patience, understanding and goodwill. The sadhak and the bullock both benefited.

The vital ego, when it is put ‘in charge’ of a project or supervising or managing the activities of people, frequently tries to assert itself and exercise a form of power over others, which can lead to some rough handling of others. Particularly when this ego aligns with the mental nature that believes it knows better than others what to do and how to do it, there can arise a certain narrowness and intensity that creates a difficult working environment. This can take on a certain harshness and oppressiveness which, in the long run, is not helpful. It is best to find ways to encourage, to support and guide in a positive manner, and only to exercise anything more intense than that when absolutely needed to preserve the integrity of the project.

This does not mean, however, that individual variances in method or process by individuals need to be discouraged. On the contrary, as long as the work is done, and done in a reasonable fashion, these individual activities provide those doing the work a means of gaining their own knowledge, and learning, growing and developing their own insights and power of action. In many cases, one finds that the people actually doing the work, with this amount of flexibility and freedom of action, may find ways to enhance and improve upon the work, and certainly the working enviironment is more conducive to harmony and collaboration than in a tightly controlled and discipline-centred management process.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “To take advantage of what is good in others, keeping one’s eye always on that, and to deal tactfully with their mistakes, faults and defects is the best way; it does not exclude firmness and maintenance of discipline, even severity when severity is due; but the latter should be rare and the others should not feel it as if it were a permanent attitude.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 2, Looking at Oneself and Others, pg. 47