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Are you crystal clear about the ROLE(s) that you play?
Over the recent past, one of the points which was repeated umpteen times during my conversations with several people was around ROLE CLARITY. All these discussions made me pause and reflect on why ROLE CLARITY is so important in today’s day and age…
Fundamentally What does ROLE CLARITY really mean?
Firstly, what are the very many roles you play in life as a part of your professional and personal life? For e.g.: most of us play the role of a child, spouse, parent, teacher, student, friend, professional, citizen, etc.
Secondly, what are you accountable for as a part of these roles and who are you answerable to? For e.g.: As a blogger, one is answerable to themselves and to the readers. It is the blogger’s responsibility to ensure that quality content is published (w.r.t original content, well thought out, interesting content,supported by relevant data & facts, and literally accurate with respect to grammar, spelling, punctuation,etc.) on a regular basis on your blogs
Thirdly, are the people / environment around you in-sync with your understanding of your role ,i.e, Is there a general consensus and agreement on this with people who matter in your life?
Let me illustrate my point with a few examples.
A very succesful business woman I know who is also the mother of a teenage girl said this during our conversation “If I look back at my life, one of the reasons for my success at work and life in general was phenomenal clarity on my roles and responsibilities from the very beginning – especially at home. To be very specific – It was my responsibility to put food on the table. Whether I cooked or got someone to do the cooking or ordered food from outside, I was accountable for it! There was a very clear and explicit understanding between me and my husband around this. And though I initially resisted taking this up, I later realized that it was actually good simply because I knew what I had to do at home on a daily basis. And hence, I used to objectively plan to ensure that food was laid on the table on time. To be honest, life was a lot easy for all of us. Not only did it give me an opportunity to ensure that healthy food was served, but it also helped me in planning my activities and enlisting the required help to ensure this is addressed on a daily basis.
Role clarity is especially important for women. And more so for working mothers. One of the reasons for a lot of stress in the lives of women is due to this. Most working mothers somewhere don’t know what is their PRIMARY ROLE at home and hence tend to ignore key domestic responsibilities or take undue stress in life“
The second example I quote is from a personal mentor and guide whom I deeply respect. He said to me during a conversation “One of the reasons why many of us have problems is that we don’t have clarity on our roles – either at work or at home. And this state can put immense pressure on you simply because it is hard to deliver anything in life if you don’t know what is expected of you. And role clarity for yourself is just one part of the story. Your immediate environment and ecosystem including the people who matter the most should also be aligned with your point of view – Else you are on the path to …..”
The reason I emphasize this and even wrote up a post is because as I reflected on my own life and spoke to people around me, I observed the following visible charactertics
1) Lack of clarity on the roles that one plays
2) Lack of clarity on the relative priority of the roles that one plays
3) Lack of clarity on the key responsibility and accountability associated with each of the roles
4) Lack of general consensus from the environment / ecosystem around our roles is fairly common
So pause and reflect.
Are you clear about the many ROLES that you PLAY?
Are you clear about the responsibilities associated with these many ROLES?
Are you clear about the relative priority of the responsibilities?
What’s you view on this subject? Leave a comment to let me know
