C a r e e r Z e n
by Larry Daly, 'The JOB DOC'
Chapter 13. Those "Awful People - At - Work" Problems
One major key to career success is the ability to talk to another person in terms he or she can best understand, and best accept and deal with, most quickly and easily.For instance, we all think in terms of words, things, other people, and relationships. But if we simply listen to other people, we will soon discover that some of them deal with the work mostly in terms of relationships, for instance, and only secondarily in terms of things or words, while other people deal with the work primarily as things and secondarily as people and feelings. That distinction can be critical.
A musician, for instance, might have more than half of all of his conversation about sounds, and in terms of sounds, his instruments and voice, and the feelings they generate in others, as his work. To other people, sounds are a smaller part of their lives, but buying and having cars, driving, going places and doing things with other people, is and takes up perhaps half of all their conversation.
If we listen carefully to most women, either talking among themselves or to men, more than half of their conversation is about other people and relationships with them, and of being beautiful and loved and other feelings. Most men want to go, have, get, and do. Most women want to be, as mothers, wives, career women, etc. (The appearance may often be more important than the actual tasks being done.) To the woman, the home or working career is the end, the significant part itself, while to men the career or job is only the means to getting something else of more importance. (Even the relative importance to each gender of the salary and perks versus appearance and functions may differ.)
That ‘do' and ‘be' gender difference in orientation may be significant to you in your career dealing with that person, and others like them. While we are all both process - and result - oriented, women, as a very general rule, are more process - oriented and men more result - oriented.
So, in discussing the job, this generality has a very practical aspect when talking to a particular man or woman: You would talk to a woman in terms of her career and the process of being a career woman. But with a man you would discuss his career or job not as the end but as a step or stage or tool to be used to get or have or go someplace else, and that else as the final result, such as buying and owning a piece of land, or new car, or the salary or title and power the particular position gives him, and so forth.
But note that people are not always as open and honest about these things as they could be, hesitating to expose what others might consider improper, so you must be as observant about what people do as well as what they say, and do not say.
You must use your observation and listening to discover those preferences of each and every one of your subjects, not just as the generalities described above, and then talk to him or her in terms of those processes and results, and from their viewpoint more than your viewpoint.
This difference between men and women is rooted very deeply in our species, and any and every species. We want to think we are special and different from all other creatures, but that is not a fact. We are perpetuating a lie, when we think like that. We share 99.999 of our lives and bodies in common with all other creatures. The day we can do without eating and sleeping, breathing and elimination, and all the other animal necessity things, then we will truly be different and unique. We still have a long way to go.
Proof? Background.
The first stages of life on earth, two billion years ago, were very simple cellular things which soon differentiated into molds and lichen and plant and animal, then, in millions of more years into swimming creatures, and then, when there was oxygen, into land plants and animals, then separating into fish and birds and reptiles and amphibians, and thence to mammals and non-mammals, and so on, until one kind of mammal branched off into primate species, from which the human eventually evolved. In all those last half billion years, the 'thinking' process, lodged at the forward end of the spine, was very small, only a few hundred cells dedicated to sensing the heat and color and other environmental factors which helped it capture and eat prey, or avoid being another creature's lunch. The primates from which humans descended were the hunters and eaters, not the prey and eaten. Or not as often, anyway. That hunter or prey configuration is still situated in the basic limbic system of our minds, deep in those few thousand cells that make up our brain stem. These are determined before birth, before your parents, before their great great grandparents. It is in the basic genetic makeup of every species, and the genetic configuration common to all species. The reptiles and amphibians have been around for over 500 million years, mammals for 200 million, and we humans came along only 35 thousand years ago, and we inherited that same half - billion - year - old reptile brain stem structure that determines many of our instinctive fight - or - flight reactions. Hunting, killing, and eating is a basic and necessary part of human makeup, whether we like it or not, and whether we would prefer to deny or reject or even remove it if we could. We cannot. It can be triggered in a split second in the mildest human male or female, as can be proved beyond dispute by experiment.
This process is half a billion years old, and not about to change much now, and certainly not for us. It may be different for some other species which might evolve half a billion years in the future, but for right now, we are stuck with being what we are, the product of our common pasts.
And, shortly after conception, some of those first cellular divisions are bathed in chemicals and hormones that determine which sex the individuals will grow up to be. In other words, it is not because males have a penis and testicles that they become male, but because the embryo got male - making hormones that the basic undifferentiated form is altered one way instead of the other and they grow up with penises and testicles and can produce semen which can fertilize female eggs. Females are not females because they have breasts and vaginas, but because those pre-sexual embryos were bathed in female - making hormones, so they then grow breasts and have vaginas, and can bear children.
Actually, the female is the default gender -- an extra x-chromosome is required to make a male. And the mitochondrial DNA in the nucleus of every body cell of both genders is passed from mother to daughter more faithfully than the other two - sex DNA we all carry. So, if women ever figure out how to trigger the reproductive process without sex (fancy name: 'parthenogenetics'), men can be dispensed with and become obsolete. Biology is fascinating!
And when those hormones flow through the mother's womb, determining the development of the enbryo and fetus, and the sex of the infant and child and teen and adult, they also determine all of the other sex - related characteristics, such as aggressiveness and size and strength and bone and organ configuration, etc. Some, or many, of those characteristics can be modified by climate and diet and exercise and other environmental factors, increased or decreased or altered in some other way, but the basic configuration itself is determined only a few hours after the conception of that new life.
That new life has a half billion years of development behind it, and leading up to it, all summed up in the genetic code it has received from it's parents, they from their parents, and they from our human ancestors all the way back 35,000 years, and the human species from those primate and earlier mammalian species from which we have descended, stage by stage, all the way back to the original amphibians, reptiles, fish, and even back to the first single - celled living organisms floating in the warm seas of this marine planet. All of that past history is encoded in every cell as it divides over and over and the individual human grows up. The individual can not alter it after that. (Not yet, anyway, though future technology may be able to, when we learn enough.)
So, a few hours after the sperm penetrates the egg and the growth process begins, and the sex is fixed, all of the other sex - related characteristics are also determined, including the above mentioned process- or result - orientation, and whether the resulting person will be more or less aggressive, more or less thing- or relationship - oriented, more or less 'do-' or 'be-' oriented, and so forth.
For almost five hundred million years the primates and pre - primate mammals lived in an "eat or be eaten" environment, and they survived by being eaters (hunters) rather than eaten (prey). If they had not survived we would not be here, or not as we are. Life was war. Life is still war. We city dwellers may forget that because we are so cosseted and comfortable and so safe from most violence, but once you leave the city, and keep your eyes and ears open, you will be reminded of it again and again, hour after hour, day after day. We survived because we were very good at that war.
We can not get that war - cultivated part of us out of our makeup. It is so basic, so much a part of our original reptile limbic system, deep in the center of the brain, with roots and branches into every other part of our bodies and minds and emotions, that to attempt to surgically remove it, even if we could, would be fatal. Or would leave us as little more than unfeeling machines or plants. We are what we are. The medula and cerebrum and cortex and other parts of the brain later grew on, in layers, around that first tiny reptile limbic brainstem, millions of years ago. How that was done is encoded in our species' genes, and every new life gets and follows that coding as it grows from egg to embryo to fetus to infant and child to adult. We are a violent primate, and there is no getting around it, and no way to get away from it, period.
Study of basic mental biological functions shows that even as all of our sensory intake is routed to the other parts of the brain, ALL of it goes FIRST to that limbic center, for priority survival (fight - or - flight) evaluation.
Whether you agree or disagree with this has no effect upon it. It is fact. Like it or not, you can not change it. You can not hide from it. Any person who has ever experienced that red haze of rage knows that this is the truth. Any person who has ever been startled by a sudden noise and gone tense with that fight or flight readiness, and been angry with another for causing it, has been touched by that limbic system savage within, ready to get out and take control.
Now you can understand why humans fight, maim, and kill each other. We really do not need any excuse. It is in our genetic makeup, and it can not be gotten out or eliminated or removed or overridden or changed in any way.
All of our written laws and legal system and education and training can not change this fact. Human law cannot override nature's law. All humans are basically dangerous savages, ready, willing, and able to kill at a moment's notice. Education and the law does help us (as individuals) control ourselves and our urges and emotional reactions. So do our other cultural, religious, and other institutions. But only up to a point. And only if we want it to. If we are intelligent and understand that we are safe and secure, and sure that nobody is about to attack us, no huge bird about to swoop and snatch us up, no tree snake or leopard about to drop on us from above, we are relaxed. (This is not exaggeration -- we are out of the dangerous jungles and wild country only a few thousand years. And after all that much longer half billion years of survival ability cultivation. So all that self - defense and hunter aggression still is very active in every one of us.) If we perceive no danger to us, and we get what we want, without too much effort, then we do not have to even try to control this urge to go out and hunt and kill, and fight off other predators to protect our dinner, or our property, or our territory, or mate, or family. It simply will not be triggered. Never exercised. And sports and other activities safely vent any residual urge to hunt and kill. But I guarantee you, scratch the most placid human in the right way, and you trigger one of the most violent creatures in the world. The terrified scream of a little child will bring its mother running to save it just as quickly as a mother bear to defend its cub. Every human has a savage predator hidden in his heart and soul, ready to escape and wreak havoc on anything or anyone around him, at the least excuse, real or perceived.
Many of our criminals are simply those who do not feel safe, and are subject to their own innate predator drives, and unaware of or uncaring about the law, and education seen as only words and not applying to them. A few do understand that they can be caught by a bigger and more predatory force seen as the police, but few realize the real power of forty thousand cops (in NYC) united by radio and contact network, and able to actually kill them, in fact. And do, and will, as some find out every year. Purse - snatcher or car thief or rapist, they prey upon the vulnerable or absent, and flee like cockroaches when the bright light is turned on them.
So the male human is the more aggressive, and the female the more passive, though still very dangerous. He had to go and bring back food, and she had to stay at the cave or nest and protect her young. He went out alone or in a pack from his clan or village, developing his lone or hunting pack killing skills over the millennia. She dealt with the other clan or village females, also over the millennia, developing relationship abilities of a different kind.
So, today, we do have males more oriented toward going and doing and having and getting, and his 'hunting pack' of buddies, and his weapons and tools and gadgets, and action and results, whether he goes to the office and hunts sales over the phone, or on the farm and uses tractors and grows food. And we do have females more oriented toward the family, her young, the home, and other people, and the community. Half a billion years of evolution for survival, and a few million years of pack and tribal and clan survival methods, skills, and habits, that all worked very well, are all not going to evaporate the moment they are not needed. We have built a complex civilized culture around us in the past few hundred years, but our savage beast still lurks within, ready to spring out should things revert to what they were, and we need to survive again, for we instinctively and well understand the cyclic patterns of nature.
Nature long ago determined the environment in which we all live, and either a species developed the particular skills and orientation to continue to exist in that environment, or that species died off. That environment determined that two sexes were necessary to propagate, and that one sex would nurture the young and the other go out and kill and bring back food for the other two. Birds do the same. Fish do the same. Most other species have a similar survival partnership and abilities division. We are not unique. We are animals. The most dangerous animal of all.
Yes, we have tried to hide this from ourselves, and complicated it all by wearing clothing and speaking languages, and a few other fancy tricks, but at the most basic stage, we are just exactly as subject as every other animal to those laws of nature that require basic survival strategies, and violence. Just like every other creature. We are animal. Savage animal. Whether we like it or not, and whether we want to admit it or not, each and every one of us is an animal, physically and emotionally and mentally, and at heart. We can lie to each other about this, and temporize and cavil, but it is still the truth, and when the situation demands recourse to those innate survival basics, they will come out and be used by each and every one of us.
Today the company is the tribe and clan. The boss is the witch doctor and pack leader. The rites and ceremonies are still magical in essence. Watch the buyer smell the melon in the supermarket, and observe the monkey smell the melon given him. Exactly the same. Attack a commuter or a baboon, and the result will be exactly the same.
In your career, remember these basics and observe the rules and you will succeed.
Dealing with others, understanding them, their needs and drives, as humans built over the original primate design, should now be easier.
[ Technical later notes; corrections to prehistory above:
h sap 2 mil yrs least to 5 mil possible, though oldest real bones only 120,000 yrs old, in s Africa. (Others are not really the orig bone but petrified, mineral material replacements.) H erectus went extinct in Asia 200,000 yrs ago, after 2 mil yr hist, and neanderthals extinct in Europe about 35,000 y ago, from inability to fight off h sap and glaciers, leaving h sap the territory, and expansion to whole globe without competition or threat. H. Sap today has no neanderthal or H. Erectus DNA, showing they were and remained a separate and different species, though they lived in overlapping times and locations, maybe any hybrid offspring stillborn, infertile, etc., if attempt to mate. Neanderthals were cave - bound, unable to move about extensively and quickly, while h sap were nomads, explorers, curious, communicated with each other, learned of better areas, went there, got through the ice age winters. H. Sap very aggressive, active, predator, omnivorous; others were gentle plant - eaters same as shy gorillas today? Neanderthals are estimated to have only 27 significant DNA differences from h. sap DNA, but apparently these are in critical areas, like the lack of a larynx, voice box, or slighter communication ability, etc. Cro - mag 65 to 35,000 y ago. All three were cousins, from an orig stock now too long gone to determine (the missing link?), and who maybe existed only very shortly, temporary, in flux, maybe much earlier.
Have students / clients continue this research to update, verify, sort out, and clarify for themselves from latest findings, on the basis that knowing our genesis and environmental context can help explain and understand our behavior, perhaps help predict future human evolution. ]
From my Private Notes, before I publish them, or they are published posthumorously.
This is not an instructional or teaching system, but a self - research and reporting system, in which the students do their own research, in small teams (three to five students). The students research about half of their assignments in whatever subjects they desire to know, and about half in assigned subjects we know they need, or will need in his career. For every successfully completed assigned subject, a self - chosen subject is given as a reward. The basic principle is that by doing their own research and writing they learn more, learn it better, and learn it faster than any teach - and - test or other instructional system can impart it. To write about something, someone has to learn it pretty well, as well as be an effective communicator, something that American companies today are greatly in need of. The literate worker appears to be a vanishing breed. We are going to stop, and reverse, that trend.
There is an awesome need for new private schools in NYC, and many parents will pay very good fees to get their kids into those schools. Right now (1998) the backlog is awful, and some private schools require pre - registration more than two years in advance. But no present school, public or private, is able to apply this concept.
There are several very large problems to be encountered, the most critical of which is the acceptance by teachers of a new system not requiring instruction. They equate teaching with learning, can not grasp that learning can happen without teaching, that a large percentage of youth can learn faster and better than they can be taught. The concept of 'directed learning', with the teacher getting out from between learner and his information, and simply guiding and directing and coaching that learning (intake) and application process, is too new and alien to them. Many teachers and educators can understand that traditional standardized instructional and teach - and - test systems cannot adequately prepare the student for the high - tech future we all realize is coming, but they can not get past that and realize that something entirely new is needed to do the job. They are stuck with the inadequate old tool kit, trying to fix a new kind of problem.
Methodology of my Career Coaching (and C.O.P. SASS Super Study Teams Discipline)
Q. Why do I make my clients do their own research? And so much of it?
A. Because I do not need that information. The client does. And because the information needed by one client is not necessarily what another needs. Each has different goals, ideals, means and methods, different abilities and talents, and lives in a different career context. Each must determine his own needs, accordingly, and become adept at finding what he needs, because nobody else can. He must live his own life, for his own reasons. He is unique. So he must become expert at doing his own research, so that he can do it all his life, easily, naturally, quickly, as all of the information around him changes in the constantly changing world, and as his goals and abilities grow, as he changes through the years, and his purposes change. And so that he can discover and keep up with the newer and better research and other tools and methods as they evolve, and not be stuck in his past with the obsolete. The old saying, practice makes perfect, is applicable here.
So, we start right from the beginning. First the client must begin an information file or portfolio on his present company, everything about it, as practice, and then one on his target company(s), chosen for his next job.
And an information file on everyone he knows, in order to begin thinking factually about each, not merely emotionally. (You don't forget or ignore emotions, just deal with hard facts also, and both in proportion appropriate to the situation at hand.)
Basically, the successful careerist must become part detective and researcher, until finding, gathering and sorting and evaluating information becomes natural and easy.
Then we go to the level of applying all that found information, turning it into useful knowledge. And onward from there, purposefully and effectively using that information and factual data to solve problems, deal with others, etc. Usually all of these happem more or less concurrently.
My main purpose is to enable each client to think for himself, make his own decisions, become independent and self - sufficient enough not to have to rely on others and their agendas, etc. He must become independent from me, also, since I will not be around to advise in his future. Each must develop his own tools and tricks and tactics and strategies, to fit his life and needs.
Up to 8/15/00 here. [Note, there was more, but lost in HD crash in 5/01 !]
End of Chapter Thirteen
Click HERE to go to the Introduction
Click HERE to go to Table of Contents
Click HERE to go to Chapter 1 Your Career, your Life Work
Click HERE to go to Chapter 2 People Study
Click HERE to go to Chapter 3 Your Career in Context
Click HERE to go to Chapter 4 Setting Your Career and Life Goals
Click HERE to go to Chapter 5 Long Term Career Development
Click HERE to go to Chapter 6 Career Strategies and Tactics
Click HERE to go to Chapter 7 Realistic Expectations
Click HERE to go to Chapter 8 Your Personal Career Support Team
Click HERE to go to Chapter 9 Team Management; Research and Writing
Click HERE to go to Chapter 10 How to become an Expert
Click HERE to go to Chapter 11 Miscellaneous, and Executive Summary
Click HERE to go to Chapter 12 Your Personal Career Research Resources
Click HERE to go to Chapter 13 Those 'Awful People At Work' Problems
Click HERE to go to Chapter 14 Assumptions and Expectations
Click HERE to go to Appendices
Click HERE to go to Bibliography
Click HERE to go to Index
Click HERE to go to Personal Career Coaching FAQ
Click HERE to return to my HomePage, to access COP and other documents
Careerists, please contact me directly to obtain your own personal printed copy of Career Zen, more complete and up to date, especially with the latest on Internet career information sources and research. Note that Career Zen is privately published, is only for my clients, and is not available in any bookstore or from any other source.
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