The Biz of Coding

What is Detachment? Leadership Q&A on LinkedIn

by Ujwal Tickoo on August 8th, 2007

Bjorn Martinoff has this interesting question on LinkedIn: "What is Detachment?". First, I am not surprised to see this question on LinkedIn — a professional networking site. Leadership in Professional life is a lot about managing oneself along with managing people, partners, investors, Wall Street and business units.

At the time of my writing this post there are more than 45 answers within 2 days. Most of these are very high quality. Below is my answer to Bjorn's question. Do check out the other interesting thoughts posted by people on LinkedIn — a thread worth reading.

…To me Detachment is a difficult creative state to reach or attitude to have. Its a state of mind where you can work creatively but accept failure/sucess with an even, balanced, objective state of mind. Personal feelings of depression or irritation or helplessness due to failure get replaced by analysis / acceptance of reality etc. Same with success — it doesnt disconnect a person from reality but keeps the person rooted humble and smart. :)
Yogananda's interpretation of Gita or his Autobiography (available at Amazon) covers this subject well from a Yogic philosophy perspective…

LinkedIn Launched Q&A sometime last year. This is the case of a Social Community with people's professional qualifications/lives implicitly marking their reputation - engaging into Q&A. A reverse process of Y! Answers being a Q&A site opening to creating trusted Networks.

If you notice the answers at LinkedIn have a strong Business/Work life related tone — detachment as experienced at "work" — something quite in context to a LinkedIn User. At a general Q&A site I would imagine answers ranging from "staying cool after a fight with my boyfriend" to "dealing objectively with my relative while the property dispute continues." I would call LinkedIn's Q&A an excellent example of context specific Q&A — where profession lends an angle to even philosophical questions like "What is Detachment?"

POSTED IN: Leadership/Life