By BOSEDE OLUSOLA-OBASA
I am overtly excited that you chose to go through this piece; you must be one super intentional person and most likely growth-minded. I celebrate you! Now let’s conclude what we started last week Tuesday about taking charge of the remote control of your life as you relate with people, grow in people management, and do well. I trust you will find the following points useful:
- Decide to be a positive addition in people’s lives in spite of their inadequacies. Hmm, a lot of people won’t like this advice at all. Especially because the popular viewpoints encourage ‘treating people as they deserve’. While this is very correct, it only offers one side of the fact. In one of my sessions with a CEO sometime ago, I recall him telling me how he had stopped being nice and accessible because he had severally been taken for granted by people. While I could understand what he tried to do with that decision, I knew he couldn’t see the other side of his decision – he was gradually becoming someone of a lesser value and that’s a personality loss! Here is what to do to protect yourself from people who take advantage of your being good or nice… create boundaries and use sieves. With sieves, you can filter out the undeserving lots or keep them far from you with boundaries. Look, the benefits of being a positive, nice or good person to people is more for you than the other person! To change your great self to suit people who act undeserving. Understand this tilt and protect what you have, if it is great. That’s the character quality called emotional intelligence.
- Build and guard your personal values jealously. You probably know that saying, “Everybody has a price”. Your auto response to this as an intentional person should be to name your price (value)! Yes, name your value before someone asks to pay for it! Your price is measured by your personal values. Your values simply refer to what you value in life. Before you get into a space where offers would be thrown at you to go against your values, be sure about what you truly stand for! Values are never mere words. They are bonds. A popular quote says, “if you do not stand for something; you will fall for anything.” So the real reason people make you do wrong things you never thought you would do was because your values were too weak to resist the offers. You lack the qualities called intentionality, grit, and integrity.
- Take charge of your anger triggers. I mean, work on your anger and people or things that trigger it. No one will do that for you! Unfortunately, in matters such as this, we leave a lot to fate, believing we have no choice. There are fewer emotions that expose people’s weaknesses publicly, like anger. So, as a person of character, you must handle it deliberately. While anger is legitimate, especially when provoked, however, you have to decide how far you let it take you. Annoying people exist, so you have to decide how to manage them. Kindly note that people who have no stake in their own lives will hold no value for the stakes you have on your life. These are character qualities called wisdom, tact, and composure.
- Recognise your people opportunities. No matter how bad the narratives about people that you may have had or experienced, people are still a fundamental resource for getting you anywhere. The quality of the person that you are has a lot of role to play here. Learning to harness the people resource could mean a lot for your life’s journey. It is an open secret that growing emotional bank accounts with people precedes making withdrawals from them. For instance, understand when to provide a service on a relationship, and not just for profits.
- Be mature and take responsibility for the consequences of your actions when relating to people. If you still live life blaming others for what they did and never seeing your role in it, you may be wrong.
- Learn to read the room correctly wherever you are. It is great to be an assertive person. It is great to have a free-spirited personality. However, understand that you can lose opportunities to either overdoing things or doing them at the wrong time. It is essential to learn the rules of decorum guiding each space to avoid being deemed as socially unfit.
- Be wary of gossiping other persons with others. Gossiping does two things, among others – it may affect your sense of judgement about the person being discussed. It may also make you the next person on the gossip line. As much as possible, do not have ears itching to hear gossip. It is an uncultured nature to imbibe and seldom promotes healthy relationships with people. It also makes you lose respect. Live above it. Rid your space of Gossips.
- Aha! Finally, secrets! Did you know they don’t truly exist? Here’s the all-time truth, if you don’t want a matter to be known, don’t say it at all to anyone. Otherwise, live in the reality that it could eventually go out to others; wittingly or unwittingly. Secrets are one of the biggest issues affecting relationships, so be smarter and manage what you call a secret, by keeping it a secret.
This is the conclusion of this article. Next Tuesday, we move on to the next eye opener. I assure you that following this column will give you a 360-degree value-build up. If you love what you read today, let me know. Also reach out if you would love to book a corporate training session on: team best workplace attitudes, work mindset upgrade, sustainable leadership, exceptional customer service attitudes, corporate culture dynamics and business growth, among others.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
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