Powering up with People-Centrism

People-centrism is an aspect of socio-emotional competence. Something expert agree makes success more predictable than just having talent. There is a reason for this; a high level of talent could be rendered useless (possibly even self-destructive) without the navigation system provided by socio-emotional competence. The idea is to think in terms of what you have that makes others happy and allow yourself to be occupied by it in your entire life. There is such a thing as the right job and the right spouse. It might sound a bit strange for those who have come to believe that your life is about you and that you must do only what you want and that what others want does not count.  Working only for yourself is unsustainable; it represents defect. Beyond the religious opinions, we have also seen form the work of scientist like the Richard Dawkins that altruism is the best means of ensuring the continuous existence (not that I like the guy).

Life itself is what you say it is and there are no real right ways of doing anything unless we have a clear and specific objective in mind. That is when the road to point x cannot be the same as the road to point y. All philosophies work except; there is such a things as fruits of your seed. You cannot possibly plant guava and reap mangoes. So what you put in must return its corresponding result- that’s among the most constant of all rules and it does not change for anybody. So rest assured the philosophy you choose to live will bring its attendant results without exception. Perhaps this is what informed ideas like “love thy neighbor as thyself”. In the final analysis, it is in your best interest.

People-centrism is to be sure that you are meeting the needs of others by being more of yourself. The last component; the being more of yourself bit is of extreme importance simply because; it is the only way to give the best of you, which happens to be what people want. In fact its true power is demonstrated by modern business theories. Products and services are created for the creator’s own benefit of course- to make profit. But this is only possible when the customer is happy as you probably already know. An unhappy customer is bad business and bad business collapses business. At the same time to give your best, you have to concentrate on what you do best. So there is a clear balance required between the two in order to generate the two way happiness that awaits you.

But if you think this applies to business alone, think again. In fact business might be several thousands of years behind as the authors of scripture had already figured this out earlier. And if we had been paying attention we might have gone a lot further in our civilization skipping several crude ages. I guess in a way, it explains why the likes of Daniel Goleman think that emotional intelligence (which is an aspect of socio-emotional competence) makes success more predictable. Those whose job directly makes people happy are usually very successful. Take comedians and musicians for example. What about writers and filmmakers. When they are good at what they do then they are guaranteed patronage from almost everyone. Why? Happiness- good feeling.

Your output generates a feeling within people whether you want to accept it or not. You have a choice to decide whether this feeling is a positive one or the opposite. To set out to deliberately create a product that generates a good feeling for people is people-centeredness. It is deciding that people are the reason why you do what you do and hence you are going to make sure that they are happy with what you give them.

This idea makes your life better because it is only when people are happy with you that they tend to want to make you happy in return. They give you what they have; their attention, their money and their most treasured assets.

A father who is happy with the potential son-in-law is happy to bless the marriage. Simply because he is happy. He likes the son-in-law enough to give away his precious daughter with a blessing. He might be happy because he is sure that the son in-law will make his daughter happy. So before straying too far, let’s get a grip on the idea. The happiness that you think you are looking for depends on other people’s happiness. If you can give happiness then you are bound to receive it back in plenty. It is kind of like willing to forego your grain of corn and putting it in the soil. You can only reap thousands in return.

So you are wondering by now, what influence does people-centrism have on your performance. I have already said that being competent in the social environment makes your success more predictable than just having a skill or talent. I have also pointed out that it is how people are feeling about what you do that counts. What they really buy is the happiness or good feeling you create. In a team your work might be the raw material for another person’s work. If it is bad, it makes their work harder and vice versa. People- centrism means that you consider the effect of what you are doing or not doing on others in order to ensure a good feeling. Such behavior represents quality as people are always the end users of what we do.

It cuts through communication as well as what we say have a way of stirring up the emotions of others. Considering the fact that the run of people are largely emotionally unintelligent, it may rest with you to find people-centric ways of delivering a message or making a point. You are probably already aware of the important role communication plays in any environment. When staff is people-centric it is a double win for the organization as they will respond to both internal and external needs the right way. The marketing concept of understanding the needs of the customer and creating the perfect product for a targeted group is therefore a powerful one. But so is the economic idea of firing from a competitive edge. Your goal is to combine bother both for a powerful outcome. Not surprising that marketing is rumored to be a wayward child of Economics.

People are not the same and hence their needs differ. People-centrism is therefore begins when we identify that group that has a need for the advantage we have. The lesson here is that, regardless of what you are; there is a group that needs you as much as there is group that does not. To force yourself on the wrong target is to create friction and discomfort for others and yourself—not a very people-centric approach to things. This can affect performance or output in countless number of ways. People-centrism ensures great management and great staff. It develops great products and guarantees success. As people we are micro-businesses in our own rights and we can consciously apply some of these principles in our lives for better relationships and better performance.

Friction in all its forms negatively affects performance which is supposed to be an effortless venture.  People must be the central focus of what we do and that will help ensure that the maximum output is obtained out of people, systems and equipment. The most valuable assets of any organization or nation are its human resources. People are the key ingredient. What we do is by people and for people and about people—maybe that sounds familiar. The most advanced theories of business and even the survival of mankind are people-centric in nature. This article is just a scratch on the surface of a much bigger idea that is captured in the uptimetricse® system available at the CSD®. Please feel free to share your comments with us. It will be highly appreciated.

Some questions you can play with in your mind.

How people-centric are you on a scale of 0 to 10?

Identify someone you are unhappy with and state clearly, reasons why they generate this feeling within you?

Identify ways in which this situation can be turned around?

Is it possible to treat all your communications and actions with doses of people-centrism or or do you find this difficult?

What is the real reason why you do what you do?

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EI: a treatment for trapportunities

This article explores Trapportunity in more detail than more previous post which did little more than define it. Trapportunity is a phenomenon that may not be new to you at all if you look through your life. It has however not been easy to indentify as it had not been labeled properly until now. Trapportunities are traps that sell themselves as opportunities. The textbook definition is; Traps masquerading as Opportunities. What they do is to frustrate you by taking you off your track by luring you into the trap they really are. The result is that you are unable to reach goals, frustration overwhelms you and you cannot perform at your best. Sometimes they simply slow down your progress towards your real goal. Other times they deceitfully misdirect you towards what might seem like a better goal.

In the previous post I made a point about the fraudster who of necessity must dress like a real business man in order to gain the confidence of his victim. To do the opposite is to undermine his objective. In the same manner it is necessary for a trap like anything negative to present itself as an opportunity- it is the very nature of the negative. It must mimic good or cease to exist. It thrives on it and one must be first very aware of this.

Often Trapportunities plays on the lower needs. Food, clothes, shelter, sex etc. Bodily needs very easily frustrate us when in short supply. When a man is hungry to the worst limit, a piece of bread that belongs to somebody else will begin to look attractive. In most case he might eat it before remembering it did not belong to him. This is bound to invoke undesirable consequences. Responding to the needs of the lower kind is the easiest way to falling into a trap thinking we have seen an opportunity. A struggling business man in possession of a great idea but has no money to feed himself, may encounter what might seem like an opportunity. He may give away a great idea for the immediate gratification. Years down the line he will regret this. We saw a clear example with Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25:29-34.

Trapportunities present themselves in such unexpected ways; they are easy to fall for unless one understands them thoroughly. While they are a major cause of failure, they are easily avoidable when one chooses to do the right thing all the time without exception. It is a question of taking the right road instead of taking the dangerous winding short cut without knowing where it really leads. When Joseph was asked to work in the house of Portipher, (Genesis 39) he encountered what was one of the most serious Trapportunities a man can face. When your masters’ wife offers you her body, it is a first class “ego-sweller”. There are very few men who can survive this especially when she threatens you in addition.  It is easy to see how the history of Israel would have taken a rather dramatic turn if Joseph had fallen.

Another of such Trapportunity presented itself after Jesus’ baptism when Satan came with the bread temptation after a 40 day fast (Matthew 4:1-11). Now seriously when a man didn't eaten anything for 40 days, everything looks edible. All he needed was to accept Satan’s proposal- a device that was designed to establish the destruction of mankind by derailing Jesus from his mission. Hungry as he was, if he had responded to his bodily need of hunger at its extreme, the history of mankind would have taken a different course. It needs to be said that it that it would not have been a helpful one.

Those who have mastered themselves enough to allow their minds to control their bodies are therefore very often high performers as they easily survive Trapportunities that would have either derailed them or slowed them down. This is the realm of discipline of course— delaying one’s gratification till later. It is not uncommon however, to find ourselves in a Trapportunity as some may be so subtle we may not be able to detect them. Sometimes we may think we have ended up in it by accident. The cold fact however is that, we are the most active participants in the creation of our circumstance. When we do find ourselves in a Trapportunity however, the technique we need to apply is a very simple one.  

We must see what we can do in order to drain the opportunity out of the trap. This is done by first of all understanding clearly that you are in a Trapportunity. Secondly it is necessary to clearly identify how you have arrived there—this means identifying the trap and how it has presented itself as an opportunity. Chances are there may be traces of an opportunity dotted around. Your next task then will be to clearly identify what opportunities can be salvaged from the situation and developing an exit strategy bringing the salvaged opportunity with you no matter how small. The following is a classic example:

Once upon a time when a good friend agreed to write for a TV reality show, he failed to recognize the trap that was hidden therein. A 24 hour reality show meant that he had to be at home all the time to watch the show and write his observations. It did him a lot of damage as it stopped him from working on his own projects. It affected his movement as he always needed to be at home. To make matters worse, he was seriously underpaid for the work that lasted two months and in the end it wasn’t worth the trouble.

But that’s just one way of looking at things. On a more advance level however, a good mental exercise initiated by myself allowed him to salvage the opportunities within the trap. Whiles the experience was painful in many ways, his feelings changed when he begun to understand the situation he was in, how he had created it and the reason for which he had done it. It was easier now to manage the situation and experience allowed me to help identify what the positives were. Soon the project was over. He walked away with a few things; a relationship with the media organization who hired him that he can build on in the future as he had upcoming projects of his own, the discipline of producing a number of articles in a day no matter what and a story I can use to demonstrate the idea to you. Not a bad deal in the end but only if you think about it the right way.

We have thus drained more opportunities than he initially saw in the situation and this has only been possible because of a good dose of awareness and emotional intelligence. When we are not emotionally intelligent enough, we allow the frustration of a situation to cloud our judgment and Trapportunity as a negative, feeds on negative emotions in order to grow even bigger compounding the problem. Trapportunities must therefore be avoided at all cost but if we should find ourselves in one (and this will happen), we must not walk away empty handed. There is always something to walk away with that can enhance our performance. Emotional intelligence helps a great deal and this makes it a fair treatment for Trapportunity. 

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The Excellence Delusion

Excellence is a great message and it is preached and taught a lot these days. We even have conferences about it but in the struggle to reach what we believe to be excellence, it seems many of us have misunderstood the concept. Many are trying to reach the top and it matters very little how. The dictionary definition of the word excellence itself; the quality of being outstanding or extremely good, can be misleading as much as it can be revealing. Having spoken to a few people on the matter, from my perspective as a performance coach, it is even clearer that we could really be misunderstanding the idea. I am calling it an idea for a reason as it gives us a chance to explore it further. It is my hope that this article will help us rethink what excellence really is and how it relates to peak performance. Peak performance is about being the best that is possible for one to be-- excellent or perhaps extremely good.

Often we reward individuals for an excellent job done. We tend to think that because they provided us with a great product or service or perhaps because they are at the top, they have excelled in their field and therefore deserve to be labeled excellent. Well, here is something to think about: A person who excelled in their field is not necessarily a good thing unless it is linked to their overall usefulness to humanity. This means uniting both parts of the dictionary definition into one force so that you have thorough positivity.

Hitler (wicked as he was)in many ways was an outstanding person who excelled very well in the arts of genocide and crude eugenics, if I may dare to use such an illustration. By many people’s standard of excellence, he was a great organizer; indeed his kind is very rare in history. Yet not many of us will be willing to accept him in the excellence hall of fame. Of course there are a group of people who bask in the glory of  the great work he did and are happy to wear his symbol with honor in a society which has forbidden these symbols- to them he is the icon of excellence. There is nothing surprising there, even Satan has followers.

To associate evil with excellence is a very challenging enterprise. This is simply because excellence must of necessity represent progress for life and hence must be inherently good. Let me state here that good has more dimensions than can be discussed within the scope of this article. Many fail to realize that excelling in our fields (i.e. one’s work or means of earning a living) is the means by which the larger spectrums of our lives are powered. This is even clearer when we understand the place of self-knowledge and purpose. This is because the full force of what we can do is released only by the person we truly are. Who we really are is something created to serve a purpose in the larger scheme of things. Our purpose then of necessity, must be in sync with the larger purpose of life and it is then; that excellence becomes truly excellent. Translate that into Christo-lingo; your purpose must be in line with God’s purpose in order for you to reach your true destiny.

When we are excellent by nature i.e. extremely good people, then this positively affects our output and the lager spectrum of our lives. We may have a lot of talent and ability but unless it is put to positive use, it is negated into anti- life instead of pro- life. What this means is that the skill and talent that should be assets are now liabilities. I have already pointed to Hitler as a negative example but there are many others spread across the annals of history. When we are good at doing bad things we cannot be described as good, much less excellent. It is not only the outcome but rather an attitude based on humanity’s quest for good which makes achievements honorable and admirable. Achievements are good only because it brings humanity to a new progress threshold.

Being the best in our filed is therefore not enough to be called excellent and we must be careful with who we are awarding with trophies of excellence. I remember a song by reggae musician Peter Tosh in which he sought to justify negative behavior in the youth by how they have been pointed to the likes of pirates as great men. By our standards of excellence, pirates and murderers qualify as men who have excelled in their fields and hence can be the examples for others. The world has seen genius fraudsters like Yellow Kid who are now role models for fanatics of the Robert Green cult. If indeed Osama Bin Laden was capable of the kind of organization we credit him for, then he must be a genius of some sort and as we have seen, he is a role model for many but are their actions pro or anti life. What Mr. Laden represents can therefore not be described as excellence although he did stand out.

The legacy Mahatma Ghandi left us with; has a great deal to do with the person he was. It is the likes of him and Mother Theresa that lived the excellent life. They excelled at living life itself powering it with the enterprise they were involved in. Their values were very clear and they stood by them. Unless it benefited the whole they did not get involved. They were not out for a selfish interest; they sought to improve humanity by their very existence. They served with everything they had in them and this is the reason why a person with the family name Ghandi will stand tall and proud while others with family names such as Hitler may seek a change of name. Ghandi sought to do a good thing using a good method; what many had tried to accomplish with hate he accomplished with love. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr knew this too and used it effectively.

Often when we are in difficulty to choose between whether the means justifies the end or the other way round, a consultation with our two internal voices becomes imperative. We pick and choose for our convenience hoping to reach the top where we will be recognized as one who has excelled. Values fail when tested enough and we do that one thing that we hope nobody will find out… just this one time and we will enter the arena of the excellent. Very soon, we will be awarded with the excellent trophy and we will proudly or shamefully hang it on our wall for everyone to see. When men and women of excellence are assembled, our name shows up on the list. Yet, deep down, we are harboring a little secret that is capable of taking the glory we have worked decades for away in one swoop. This can be at best described as building a castle on the sand; you will spend the rest of your life trying to stop the wind from blowing.

Well here is a tip: to pretend to be something we are not is evil. The very nature of evil itself requires an attempt at mimicking good and this in fact, is what makes it evil. Evil needs to look like Good in order to access the privileges good has so it can accomplish its goals. That is why a person who wants to rob you will come looking well dressed and present themselves well in order to gain your trust- they want you to think they are good first. They need to look and sound good. It is then that they are able to do what it is they want. This is not different from the people who appear to us as having excelled when indeed they have done the most unethical things to get to where they are.

That we created a great product is not enough unless we deliver it with excellence, too. It is then that the full power of the product can reach the distance which it is capable of reaching. We as humans are not different in this regard- excellence is a character that must permeate our very being. It is a way of thinking and must be born out of positive progressive thinking. It must seek to add to life and must NEVER be dissociated from God. We must understand it as a necessity to serve humanity and ensure that when we are called excellent, it is for living our lives the best way possible powering our existence through the means by which we earn a living as a means to serve humanity in truth. 

We must come to understand that it is the person we are (structure) and not so much what we are capable of by way of talent or ability (content). When the two get a good balance, however, we perform at our peak and hence reach true excellence. True excellence is not simply choosing something you can be good at and doing it to the best of your ability, it is understanding the person you are and making the most of it by using it to serve humanity adding to life in an exceptional way. Its rewards go beyond money, trophies, certificates and honorary PhDs. It is a powerful legacy that surpasses everything else and gives meaning to the saying, “good name is better than riches”.

The following questions help you make a valuable assessment

What is your own definition of excellence?

What is your preference, end justifies the means or the means justifies the end? State your reason

What does the world say about Gandhi and Madeba?
What names can be said to be the direct opposite of these two and why?

What is your current occupation?

Email the answers to  spidup@csdafrica.com to join our no-obligation,  one month free performance coaching program           

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