“Please contact my secretary to find the time
in my schedule, I’m over booked…” Have
you ever heard a similar from an important CEO or other top manager? He/she is
obviously under the time pressure, a stress situation or … If this happens
frequently it is normally understood that such people don’t have free time.
In my post Cause and consequence / Urgent and
important the
pressure because of mainly dealing with urgent instead of important issues was
already discussed. To further it, concentrate on the next problem, well
described by Zhuāng Zǐ proverb: “If you cannot even govern your own self, how can you govern the world”.
In a hypothetical situation – how you should
(would) deal with a violent situation on the street that may occur to you one
day?
You most probably are not used to such a
situation and you start to panic instead to calm the situation. Your voice
could be the key. If your voice is lost, you lose the last step in your defense.
In most hostile events, the first stage of panic begins with fast and abrupt
breathing. Then the sweating starts. And the panic is rising throughout our
body from the feet to the brain. If, at the time, we have already lost our
ability to speak, the body stiffens; the stiffness of the body prevents our
defense. To prepare us for fight or flight the unconscious mind takes over the
control. However, if we are still able to talk we may control the situation and
the opponent as well.
In business, as an opposing practice of
controlling others is encountered in MBA schools: managers go through courses
and books teaching them how to control people mostly by using a zero-sum game,
that is — someone wins and someone loses. And this is obvious in the case of ‘the best
of the month’, where only one person can be that, all the others are losers. And
this is quite a popular practice. It shows that one cannot control the complex system behavior and therefore turn over the power of
(his) control to individuals of a group. They fight between themselves instead
of collaborating.
Back to the hypothetical violent situation: what
would be the outcome of such a zero-sum game control behavior?
So, controlling others is not like in MBA’s
teaching turn boss power of a control to others. It is about controlling what
and how one shares power. It is about one’s internal control.
Therefore, bear in mind when you cannot control
yourself – you do not control others!
You are right!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your advice.
Joaquin
Thank you Joaquin :)
Deletejaro.