These days not-like-me-o-phobia seems to be a common thread on the Oligarch-Bros sponsored social media, either is blatant posts or snide comments (tell me these are half-trained bots and people REALLY aren’t that uninformed!).
I’ve been lucky in my life, working with people from diverse sectors of the population. And if there is one common thread I have seen over way too many years it is that competence, keen-ness and a generally positive attitude have no boundaries -period. Conversely, the opposite traits are sadly boundary-less as well.
I think back on the people I have worked for and with, Shannon, Glo, Janet “Are you a Turtle?” Cottingham in the military, the Central African cohort at SSC, the trans people where I work now, all had the same characteristics – job to be done, job is done!. And in the meantime I learned a lot about how people ‘tick’, so I was a winner as well as the goal!
I have had a lifelong interest in how people think and learn, what motivates them, and how that relates to me and my job / goals. Perhaps there was a hint of that in my previous post.
Funny story… At work we have an engineer that no matter how hard I tried would just get under my skin. Smart, competent, efficient but a bit prickly and rough around the edges. For months I tried, but after about 15 minutes of contact I could feel my BP rising and I wanted to be anywhere but on that call. The engineer moved onto another client. prickly nature and all, leaving me scratching my head.
Then it dawned on me what was going on… The engineer was a 26 year old version of myself! I laughed inwardly and since then actually enjoy talking to him! We both share a dark sense of humour and both are fluent in sarcasm.
My point here is that instead of focussing on what is different between us, perhaps if we step back and look at what is common we can achieve our common and individual goals, and in the process learn a lot about others, and ourselves. Instead of focussing on such silliness as ‘immigrants are stealing our jobs’ let’s focus on ‘Job to do, Job is done’ and create a better world for ALL of us!
Max, I am still chuckling, was I really like that?
Mark