If you are an achiever of 21st century, this blog is for you

 

Rajesh, engineer-MBA, returned from the United States leaving a plush job to do something for his country. He started a NGO. After 5 years, his NGO is one of the top most NGO in India. But the NGO has stopped growing because his senior people do not stay in the organisation. They leave once they get enough experience. 

Rajesh tried different options. He got better qualified people. He paid them higher salary. He changed their roles. He gave them training. Nothing worked. 

When a professional cannot produce results in the physical world, such as making a cooker or car, thinking mind directly 'reads' the physical reality, spots the objective error, and corrects it. But in a people-reality (social or interpersonal world), beliefs and emotions first interprets the 'people-reality' after which thinking mind has the chance of correcting the error if error is spotted. If your mind cannot spot the error in people-interaction, then your thinking mind cannot correct the error. Results are therefore not generated. You therefore have to learn to Pause and notice your emotions to produce results in people-interactions.   

Rajesh, for instance, does not produce relationship-results in his work because he does not notice the emotion of ‘embarrassment’ in his people whenever he corrects them publicly. He does not notice that he is ‘disrespecting’ them when he does not ‘acknowledge’ their explanations of errors. Instead he further insults them by labeling their explanations as ‘justifications’. Ignorance of emotions causes errors in his people-interactions. Without spotting these emotions, his brilliant thinking mind is unable to correct the errors. Rajesh is blissfully unaware of the errors he is making in 'reading' the people-reality because he is unaware of his emotions. 

To produce results in people-world, you must learn to spot and process emotions. Rajesh must first learn to 'spot' the emotional signal of 'embarrassment' of his subordinates, when he is correcting them. Most of the individuals like Rajesh cannot spot the emotional signals, because they intellectualise them ( until i show the mistakes of subordinates how will they learn). Or they use positive thinking to ignore emotional signal ( For instance, i have learnt everything by acknowledging my mistakes). 

Many entrepreneurs like Rajesh achieve a lot by shaping physical reality through sheer willpower, untiring effort and dogged persistence. But whenever they encounter bottlenecks in shaping people-reality, they are clueless. They blame people for lack of commitment. Or they blame people for their ‘selfish’ intentions. Some entrepreneurs give up their dreams and settle for less. But some entrepreneurs are also smart to join hands with a ‘partner’ who knows how to negotiate people-reality.  

Version 1.0 of achievement in industrial age primarily involved shaping physical reality. Version 2.0 of achievement involves shaping people-reality. We spend years in colleges to gain the skills of understanding physical reality; but we rely on homilies and grandmother-talks to understand people reality. Either we use the tools of understanding people from our mentors, or we just struggle. We are novices in shaping people-reality. Sooner or later, our progress in producing results gets blocked like Rajesh.

Pausetive model of achievement will help professionals adopt psychological tools of emotion-spotting and resolution to unclutter emotions/feelings. This will help them produce results in current work. 

But this is not enough for professionals to shape their career. What else is required?