We can’t ignore it. It’s everywhere and the impact it is
having is devastating. At the time of writing this, 10,000 people have lost
their lives to it.
Covid-19 or Coronavirus.
Globally, people have been told to stay at home, only leave
for essential journeys and then they must social distance. If they do not
follow this they can be fined, in some counties, jailed.
Why is it then that some people still go about their daily
lives like nothing is happening?
In my role as a facilitator, I’m an expert on nothing
really, but I know one thing; I do get lots of attention.
Stood in front of people, all listening to my every word,
doing the things I ask them to do. It’s a nice feeling. It’s a powerful
feeling.
Attention’s nice isn’t it?
So, how many followers do you have on Twitter? Instagram?
How many friends do you have on Facebook?
As soon as you assume the role of a leader, people take you far too seriously.
Bob Rubin, the one-time Secretary of the Treasury in the US Government, was touring the trading floor of Goldman Sachs, where he worked, and noticed there was hundreds of millions of dollars of gold on their books. When he asked why, he was told it was him. “Me!?” he replied. “Yes, you Sir. When you were last here,
We don’t like to admit that we are bias. But we are.
We prefer a particular brand, we prefer particular foods, colours, music, sports teams. But these aren’t really a problem.
It gets challenging when people are involved.
Subjects like gender, race, religion, age, these are sketchy territory. That’s why they are protected in businesses and rightly so. Companies have specific development programmes to raise awareness around them.
We’d struggle to openly admit that we have a bias in any of these areas.
I have a dig bick. You that read wrong. You read that wrong
too.
Shocking isn’t it?
Not the message, which after all makes no sense at all, but
the fact that we can get it so wrong. The reason, as you have probably guessed,
is all down to one simple thing: our brain’s persistent and hard-wired tendency
to take short cuts.
What you have just read comes directly from Professor Damian
Hughes book,
If I’m not in the best of moods, so what? Just because I’m having an off day or bad week, then as long as I don’t tell anybody, keep that stuff to myself, then who cares? It’s not as if it makes any difference, right?
I wonder how many of you reading this have had that conversation with yourself before?
It may be time to have a different conversation. In 2014 James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis carried out research into the power of happiness and sadness and the impact it has on others.