Privacy at very public times

One thing I notice is that most people I know knows where I am. By the way, I know where most people I know are right now…

It seems that the time for total surveillance – and we could say matrix surveillance since everyone can check on everybody else – is here, for a few years now. So, what about privacy?

In fact, the feeling of privacy is needed to build a strong sense of self-esteem. Without privacy, it is hard to understand a person’s role in the society and, as a result, to love and appreciate the self, the very basis of self-esteem. Without self-esteem… well, we may have a society, but people won’t thrive for success, they won’t try their best and they will normally drift away.

However, in certain human civilizations, that is not so true. The example of Ubuntu in Africa comes to mind and it implies that self-esteem may also be built on the basis of a strong bond with each other, where everyone’s welfare means a person’s welfare.

Maybe the lack of privacy is pushing the rest of civilization to rethink itself; Ubuntu and other cultural practices and systems can provide a model for a new era where privacy wouldn’t be an issue due to its absence.

Patience, an underrated key for success

Very few stories show how patience is important in reaching aims.

In Chris Gardner’s story, shown in the movie The Pursuitof Happyness, however, patience is shown as a very strong quality that pushed the man onto his limits, until he was able to break it and come out of a very tough situation.

Maybe people think of patience as a person who waits in a queue, with no hurry and no ambitions in life, instead of a very troubled man who did not even have a proper place to live whilst struggling to take care of his son.

But that is patience: a quality or virtue that allows us to wait for results, giving us the needed energy to live, or survive, until they come. And for a patient person, one day those results come…

So, check your patience as your ability of having a goal, investing in that goal and waiting to reach for it.

Asking for help, a way to make others grow

An interesting feature I have seen in many leaders is the fact they ask for help whenever is needed. On the contrary, many people I have met whom I thought were leaders, judged themselves very independent and capable, and so they seldom asked for help; years later, my perception about their leadership changed considerably and I have been able to see them as good managers, far from real leadership.

Many reasons could be given for that, but a very simple one is the fact that by asking help, leaders are training others. This natural training is part of a long term education and it becomes fundamental in the other person’s growth and their own leadership, as a natural consequence of being led by a leader is that a person may be a leader one day.

In other words, whenever a person asks for help from others, they are giving them the opportunity to improve themselves and enhance their skills. It is also a way of checking how much of the leader’s influence has impacted that individual.

So, what is the difference between being dependent and give others a chance to grow? It is basically from the attitude of taking from others whatever they have, different than enabling others to work better.

Beyond praise: motivation without carrots or sticks

An old paradigm to handle people is the famous (or infamous) carrot or stick: the other does good, a reward comes; if he or she does it badly, then the stick beats them.

Well, you cannot say it did not work, as it lasted for a very long time and it is still present at many companies even today. Not far ago, Ken Blanchard has launched a book called Whale Done!, humans are compared with, well, you can guess – Whales! More specifically, killer whales.

However, most people are a little more difficult to be handled, or manipulated, than whales and there are various reasons for that:

• As humans, we are a very complex species. Sometimes carrots work, others don’t, because what really stimulates us to do something is normally beneath many other supposed reasons.
• So, praise has different effect in different people. For instance, it may help someone to perform better next time, but it is just a temporary incentive. Besides, the next time praise comes, it has to be stronger than its former version to make someone perform better.
• At some situations, praise does not work. If you are very good at what you do in terms of skill or dedication and someone praises you for something you already know you do well, so the effect is small as it is just an acknowledgment or credit, which should be given ALWAYS no matter what.
• For some people who are extremely good, they are not expecting praise, but they prefer to receive realistic feedback, quite often negative and so called stick; in this way, they can improve and reach excellence. In these cases, sticks are carrots.

Better, if someone does something exceptional, a big clap, flowers, chocolates or a nice meeting works very well. Also, people are much more informed nowadays and they don’t need praise as they used to, because they know what they are doing and its quality. Of course, as a rule, we should always acknowledge and give credit.

Based on this, what do people like you and me really need, in terms of motivation from our own managers or leaders?

• A leader should always be attentive to other people’s development, helping them to improve their skills. One-to-one meetings or powerful messages do the work very well.
• If someone is performing well, but the manager or leader feels this person is stuck into a particular level, training may be the solution. If the person is in a management position, a coach is needed to help clarifying their needs and the solutions.
• Space. Have you ever been to Google’s office? They give people space so they can create, make lots of mistakes and come with wonderful ideas.
• Failure isgood. For long and middle term, the fact the other has failed means they have tried. If the failure is big, that only means they tried A LOT. It is time for some guidance, a nice talk and let the other reach success, a place you can’t go without having failed a few times.
• Time. A person is as productive as his mind is free. Sometimes, the individual needs a time off, a moment to recover or get his ideas together.

Open to adventures!

As a young boy, I was the last person anyone would think to be adventurous. A nerd-to-be, I was even scared to cross the street…

But situations helped to open something in the soul. First, due to a lack of finances, I had to go walking to school every day. It was about half an hour, a long time for a little boy, and that time helped me to develop some physical resilience and even mental as at some point, I was attacked on my way back, which was during the night… Nothing bad happened, but I developed some sense of how to deal with the world around me without running away or isolating myself.

Years later, because I wanted an education my family would not provide, I’ve enrolled into a military school. Those three years at the Air Force were a big adventure and they opened my taste for the different and the risk.

My first life outside my birthplace, Brazil, was in Chile. Learning Spanish was very complicated and getting a job without speaking the local language, at a time when Portuguese was not a fashion as it is today in Latin America… The only position I got was as a salesman, but I was such a bad salesman that I ended being the boss.

That is the reward of risking and the adventure: you learn, a lot. It is much more valuable than any course or anything other people may formally teach you, because you are embedded in the environment like a weird rock at a beach, being molded by others and circumstances.

Every time there is a challenge, I know it is an opportunity to experience something that is there, just waiting for me…

Come on; let’s embrace our next adventure together!

The soft side of a technical person

Many years ago, whilst taking a very important course that eventually would change my life, someone mocked of engineers in general due to their lack of communication skills and general sensitivity to other people.

As I identify myself as a technical person, I felt… It was fair, but not a nice thing to hear.

I understand what this person has meant as it is very common a technical person using logic instead of feelings while taking a decision or talking to other people, and although it works well, it doesn’t cover all dimensions.

A good example for me was when I was a programmer. My aim was to create good effective software for users, to save their time and to help the organization, but I really didn’t take in account their difficulties or issues at the time of implementation. One of the features of a particular application was a command that would display the present time (yes, I am talking about long, long time ago, when computers did not display the present time). The user struggled with that function and eventually, to save memory, I planned to eliminate it completely, and of course, I’ve blamed the user! Today, I see the problem was not the lack of effort by him, but my lack of proper communication and effort to training the user.

Many years later, an auditor shared a story. The company was going through SAP implementation, something that is costly in terms of money and energy, and many times have resistance from the part of users.

His company used to produce and sold beers. In this particular case, they were dealing with the delivery: a truck would come, present a sheet with all the order details, the person in charge would input that into the system, receive the proper authorization; then the truck would load the boxes of beer and leave.

However, the computer was far from the gate, about 100 meters, so the employee used to take time to reach there… due to that, he started to get slack in relation to the system, giving the beers and later inputting the information. Eventually, the company was robbed – it was only when the young man introduced the details realized the order was fake, which was too late, as the truck had left already. My surprise was that the auditor did not blame the employee and worked hard to fix the situation. Technical people do understand others…

A few years later, I had the opportunity to work with a very technical team. When we were planning the workshop, as a surprise, one of our meetings took place at the general manager’s home as he was still on vacation. He opened his house and the hearts of the family to us and it was beautiful to see a very human interaction. I was inspired and the workshop with them started by identifying their dreams…

Nobody is uni-dimensional. We are very complex people, with many layers and many levels. If you are a technical person, enjoy that soft side; if you have a friend or relative who is technical, enjoy their soft side. It is always there…

A riddle in our lives…

Who am I?

This question is probably the easiest one, for which we give our names, profession or status, depending on who is asking. Besides the truth, we can even lie or tell half-truths as a response. So, it is an easy question, right? Easy answer…

In fact, all we do, all we have and all our different states depend on the response, mostly the answer we give ourselves, because it is our identification that is our awareness, and according to the awareness the rest happens.

For instance, if your response is that you are a very talented person, it will be probably easier for you to look for a good job as you will have enough self-confidence to do that. However, if you think of yourself as someone without training or education, result will be different.

A reflected answer of this question may solve the biggest problems in the world and your biggest difficulties too. Who am I? Think about it, then decide and act.