Sometimes others do what we want. Sometimes they don’t.
We’ll accept that readily as a normal situation.
Things become complicated when people become attached to their idea of how things should happen. It generates the idea that their idea might need some help to be put in place, but also that they can do the necessary to make it happen.
And then they set out to make it happen. The starting point usually is to either do it by oneself or to tell the other how to do it.
As time passes by, the different efforts to persuade others to do it like that don’t work out. It is the time for these people to reflect on other ways to make it happen.
And what they see seems to be so obvious. They imagine that people need to be motivated. They assume that if others do as expected, they will be rewarded, and if not, they will be punished.
To a certain extent such incentives do work, especially if those being threatened or cajoled understand it as a motivation to do what they are asked to do.
But that isn’t always the case. The day then arrives when one notices that none of the efforts worked out.
With some luck, the person now starts to realize that another person’s behavior is beyond one’s control. It becomes clear that punishment and rewards are tools used by society to guide towards an understanding of what is expected. Society knows that it never works for everyone, which is how some people get rejected. It happens for the benefit of the whole, that is of society.
It hasn’t anything to do with the individual.
And yet, rewards and punishment become consequences of one’s behavior. Sometimes consciously accepted and expected.
Steve Jobs learned it the hard way and yet found a way to grab his second chance.
But not everyone can become Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, or Rosa Parks.
Those who need to learn to understand the rules will hopefully encounter leaders who are curious and willing to consider that they have not been understood. Leaders are those who search for how they can be understood and how they can reach their goals with others supporting them.
