Tag: relationships

Consistency

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Consistency is about understanding what matters to you, and then relentlessly act in agreement with that.

Of course, not all the things can matter. What is important to you? Is it punctuality, honesty, openness, candour, performance, trustworthiness, impact, family, work, relationships, knowledge, expertise, power, generosity, compassion, empathy, confidence, independence, audacity, heroism, harmony, challenge, … . How do you define that in a way that makes it important to you?

That is the first step, one that is often overlooked. Be careful with your choice, because the second part is going out there in the world and showing up every day, in private and in public, in agreement with whatever you have chosen.

If you value punctuality, you should not be late, and when you are, you should apologise and repair.

If you value generosity, jealously clinging to what you have is probably not your thing.

If you value power, you might not want to turn and wait when somebody is left behind.

It sounds difficult, and it is. But the alternative is changing the way you act when the wind changes, following the mood of the moment: demanding openness today and complaining for getting it tomorrow; promoting honesty in the morning and lying in the afternoon; building a career on audacity and charisma and pretending people will believe you are a considerate leader that seeks harmony.

We know how this feels, so the work needed to achieve consistency is worth it.

Give and receive

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It’s easy for most of us to complain about what other people do, the way they treat us, the things they say, sometimes even the thoughts they might have as they interact with us.

But are we as ready to say “thank you!” whenever they do something we actually like?

We shape the behaviour of those around us, and if complaints and criticism is all we give, whether we do that explicitly or not, why should we expect anything different in return?

Change in mind and body

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Change is difficult, of course. But there are two separate challenges that one faces when asking for change.

The first one is psychological. It’s the most common and evident one. It’s the resistance of the mind. We like comfort, we like things the way they’ve always been, we don’t know what we might get into by changing. Perhaps we also recognize that circumstances are not great, and yet we cling to them, as the unknown is scarier than an imperfect known.

The second one is behavioural. This is more subtle. It’s the resistance of the body. We have embraced change on a theoretical level, and yet we keep falling back to old habits, to old frameworks, to old practices. We know we need change, and we are struggling either because nobody has shown us how to change or because nobody is holding us accountable for the little daily things that are needed to fully shift.

Both challenges need to be considered, and one might only be halfway through when everybody nods to their ideas and says: “this is great, exactly what we need!”.

Targeting millennials

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Few years ago, during an hiring process, I was asked to come up with ideas to improve how the company was presenting the product to prospects. I decided to title the presentation I put together “targeting millennials”.

The presentation featured few suggestions that still today I believe would have benefited the company, but of course the very same idea of “targeting millennials” is nonsensical.

“Millennials” is a wide group of people that has in common only the fact of being born between 1980s and 1990s. Sure, there are some similar traits, a shared cultural background, some icons everyone from those years can relate to. And yet unless your product is really, truly a mass product, targeting a generation is as ineffective as and article about knitting on the front page of the Financial Times.

A better way to approach the assignment would have been asking “why do people buy this product?” (instead of “what type of people buy this product?”, as it typically happens when targeting based on demographics).

I was out of the hiring process after this stage, and to be honest I think they did take a sensible decision.

Futile

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You know a person that advocates for recycling, and while driving she uses her phone.

One of your friends works for a non-profit organization, and every time she goes grocery shopping she is happy to pay €0,20 for a plastic bag.

Your boss is a great coach and mentor, and never misses an occasion to express her support for military intervention in the latest geopolitical confrontation.

A colleague of your partner always cracks hilarious jokes when she is over for dinner, and without fail she ends up getting drunk and forgetting huge chunks of the evening.

The CEO of that company that is creating a lot of jobs and who’s paying its fair share of taxes is only motivated by being on the first page of the newspaper and buying the latest model of sportscar.

As we are more and more prone to separate the world into “good” and “bad”, we are forced to pick one slice of someone’s life and let it creep all over their behaviour, motives, reputation, and identity.

“Good” and “Bad” are convenient, but living is much more than that.

If we are not exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life, then putting people into boxes is just a futile activity. And we are never exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life.