Oktoberfest episode 31. Getting to know people.

I don’t know about you but in my lifetime I have been introduced to so many different human resource paradigms about categorising and grouping people. Myer Briggs was one great example. Categorising people is an obsession for those wanting to sell or communicate.

When you characterise the difference between people really wise not to base it on their ego. Because ultimately the ego has a purpose and therefore that categorisation can change overnight. It is also on wise to categorise people by their childhood heritage. For example a child brought up in a relatively constructive home, morally, will in the later years struggle with creativity. And those things can be changed too.

One categorisation I really enjoyed what’s the Hindu concept of Docha. In this process you are categorised by your body type. This body type can be observed at birth. You are either a predominant water, earth, fire, air or ether person. What is fascinating about this is that when I went to teach it, people have been so indoctrinated into the idea that our character defines us, that they would take the characteristics of the body type and then reverse engineered to see what sort of Constitution they had. No matter how many times I run this workshop in so many different ways I would say a fire type has an insatiable appetite for change, and people would say I must be a fire type because I have an insatiable appetite for change. Rather than, look at their body shape and say oh, I am a fire type body therefore I must have an appetite for change.

But as we evolve into the future these types of categorisations of people become very clumsy because of the cross over of culture and race. Whether it’s the ego or the upbringing or the body type it’s becoming rather ridiculous to categorise people by what was once culturally isolated body types and characters. With cultural and national boundaries being removed so to have marriages been able to integrate such diversity that these old definitions become insulting.

But there is one definition of human conditions that will forever stand the test of time. And that is the definition of a person by their consciousness. Human consciousness is a constantly changing thing. A person who runs a business can function in the lowest consciousness while a person who is living on the street in poverty may exhibit the highest. And therefore the definitions are never permanent.

By that mechanism you can know a person today and understand what they want in the near future, but you can also adapt that knowledge of a person to their changing circumstances. For example, a team member might come to work for the first 12 months after they are married in a really good headspace but after three years of marriage if things are not going well, they will be highly affected by the consciousness of their partner. And so we get a real definition of where that person is at as a team member.

Consciousness also takes into account ageing. A person who is older can sometimes be wiser but not always. Sometimes an older person loses their vision. And when they lose division their consciousness drops into survival mode. And even though this person who is older and theoretically wiser may carry a massive body of experience, and therefore be considered to be of great value to the business, their consciousness may drop and therefore the application of that knowledge will be corrupted

In contrast, a person with very little experience may be able to operate at a high consciousness state and therefore make wise decisions in spite of the fact that they have, not a lot of experience and therefore not be carrying what is called wisdom. Wisdom can be gained through books, experience doesn’t always lead to wisdom, the consciousness of a person will determine what they do with active got and what they do with their roles in a business or family.

Over the past 40 years I have seen some people very very high places with very high responsibility in the world with absolutely low consciousness. They are operating at what we call a got to space. And in spite of the height of their responsibility and the number of people they Govan, they are able to escape accountability because of the measures that we clumsily use to measure performance. We might even use engagement as some form of measure of performance.

At any one particular time you can measure the engagement of your children. It doesn’t matter what their age. On one day leading up to Christmas engagement might be through the roof, on another day leading up to Easter when you are taking them camping and they don’t want to go there engagement will be zero. Engagement varies by whether people are being fed like chickens. Especially at the lowest consciousness. A person in got to state of mind who gets a little bit of relief from whatever is stressing them outside of their work will rise in engagement. For some people it’s a boozy night at the pub that rises their engagement. And that reveals the level of consciousness they are operating at

And so, although you cannot fight the current trend of using these rather ridiculous notions of satisfaction at work you might want to also have your own metric of where you are at. This I think is the future. Are you in a got to state of mind? Are you walking around telling people what they should and shouldn’t do? Are you thinking what do I need or what do they need? Are you thinking and expressing what you want and giving people what they want in order to try to achieve something? If the answer to any of those questions is yes then you are operating at state which is in an attempt to cause an engagement but at the lowest possible consciousness of the human condition. It may be worth having a second look.

The metric by which you measure others with your language of consciousness is the exact same one you used to measure yourself. And if you don’t have a measure you use for yourself you will use the measures of others such as their engagement with you, the number of likes you get on your Facebook, the number of compliments you get and you will become weak.

The word week is something that has both benefits and drawbacks. A weak person will possibly make a great family member cause they will kowtow to the needs and demands of others and therefore be working very hard to cause engagement with other family members. So that would be the benefit and the drawback will be regret. At the end of the day, all engagement is temporary. And what we might sacrifice in order to gain engagement we will in the long-term considered to be a waste if it doesn’t lead to the best for ourselves. There doesn’t have to be a compromise.

If we ignore this temporary ambition to get likes and compliments and to engage others by causing them to like us, in other words if we decide not to be weak, we will lead by example. And although this may not cause immediate engagement on a day-to-day basis it will stand the test of time. Temporary engagement which is bending day and night to make other people compliant with our wishes, to make them go in the direction we think is best, to connect with people for the purpose of manipulating them, is very rarely in the same direction as our vision for ourselves for the future and for the contribution that vision can make to the world at large and our family.

Ultimately here we are talking about the difference between motivation and inspiration, motivation coming from the bottom of the consciousness comb and inspiration from the top.

If any of this is confusing and you need to address it during your coaching session today all this week please bring it. It is a very important aspect of great leadership, life satisfaction, and love in a relationship.

That’s the end of this episode. Live with spirit. Chris