Overview
This piece provides the reader an overview regarding the nexus between honesty, trust and emotional intelligence. It will also provide the reader insight the impacts have on the workplace, job performance, as well as provide corrective action should organizational trust be broken.
What is it?
The expert assessment is that emotional intelligence is just as important as the traditional perspective of cognitive intelligence in terms of achieving success in life.
Every living being spends their life conducting three basic types of activities: productive activities, maintenance activities and self-destructive, or wasteful, activities. We conduct these activities at the conscious level, at least in the beginning. Over time however, we make these activities a matter of routine and they become a part of our subconscious self. This is important to understand because this is where we can begin to lose control over our lives or businesses. Therefore, it is the management of these activities that will determine the quality of one’s life, or businesses. We either manage the activities we do, or our activities will manage us.
Productive Activities
Productive activities are those activities that improve the quality of our lives or businesses. Sadly however, very few of us actually spend much time doing such activities. Productive activities can bring knowledge, wealth and meaning to our lives or businesses. Productive activities can be scalable, meaning such activities can shape future opportunities for further growth and/or profit.
One productive activity is investing money in opportunities that will grow and lead to new opportunities. One example is education, education that can be applied to real issues to obtain real gains such as project management or other leadership roles where pay, responsibility and growth are highest. Another related activity may be learning computer programming to create software to meet a variety of needs within industry. Better yet- begin with computer programming, but reinvest the profits to turn programming into a scalable business, thus making you an entrepreneur.
A productive activity promotes growth, sets the stage for long-term wealth and forms a foundation of a positive sense of well-being.
Maintenance Activities
Maintenance activities consist of actions we need to survive on a daily basis. Some of those activities are working for a living, Taking care of the home, raising crops, hunting, running a business, etc. etc. people spend approximately 8 to 12 hours a day on such activities. And, I'm only talking about the work aspect. I'm not talking about time one takes to drive, use the bathroom, brush their teeth, talk to the kids, and maintain relationships with their families. Understanding this is vitally important, because if you only spend your life maintaining basic functions then you have nothing ahead for the future. As you get older, you may come to realize you have not been able to save anything for yourself, or your family. You find yourself a slave, never able to stop and rest to enjoy your golden years. This too applies to businesses.
Self-Destructive/Wasteful Activities
Self-destructive activities are those sustained activities that are basically brainless and provide you no return. Sustained activities meaning, anything outside a normal vacation or needed short break.
Self-destructive activities could be watching TV on a routine basis, going out to party all the time; spending money, time and resources on activities that are short-lived, but require resources to support; playing videos games with no targeted gain outside of simple pleasure comes to mind.
Ultimately…
There are 24 hours in a day; 7-8 of which are used for sleep, while 8 are used for work…typically to profit someone other than yourself; where do you account for your remaining 8 hours? The activities that dominate your day will determine your personal, or business, life; days become weeks, weeks become years, years become decades. Your actions may help determine if you will be rich or poor. Your actions may determine if you're going to be smart or not so smart, or educated or an uneducated. Though time is one of those few things life gives to us freely, we pay heavy price for misusing it. If we do not take our time and invest it wisely then we will find ourselves empty and unfulfilled.
Before anyone can consider how Mexico can rid itself of the current cartel/criminal insurgency plague, one has to try to understand the drivers feeding the conflict. An obvious driver is the desire for drugs in the US and elsewhere, but feeding the US and other countries drugs requires a set of conditions to affect that ability. The information below leads people to understanding what some of those conditions are.
Assessing the Status of the Mexican Drug War – Observations and Considerations
These 2010 links are of value for multiple reasons. One of them is that these 2010 video links provide observers of the Mexican Drug War a baseline/start point from which to make some judgments; one of those judgments is to try and assess if the situation has improved since then.
The Mexican Drug War is not something new. The drug war actually began decades ago, in the 1980s. The baseline infrastructure supporting today’s drug war began in the 1800s with the Chinese and La Nacha. Those interested in really learning about the drug conflict should read Ioan Grillo’s work El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.
"Cold Revolutionary Warfare" Mexico Style Here is the political face one must watch for...indicating a greater threat to the established government...similar indicators may emerge in other parts of Mexico at the local level...these very activities pose a threat to the long term survival of a legal Mexican state.
General Stanley McChrystal understood this…
Video regarding some of the key elements in counterinsurgency thinking, compliments of 60 Minutes
