Life is about the paintings we choose to paint

Some people can be really annoying. In my career, dealing with people was the most difficult challenge I had to overcome.

All people have egos. Some people work hard to control their egos. Other people work hard to display and to feed their egos.

Corporations have clear lines of accountability. When the “boss” is in the room, people speak differently. When the “boss” decides, people follow.

Good leaders care deeply about how a goal is accomplished.

They know there is no point in winning a large contract if everyone who worked on it resigns because they hate the way the boss treated them while they slogged to win it.

Some bosses like to belittle people. They like to show how much more clever they are; they like to show how much more power they have; they like to show how many more connections they have.

Volunteers get paid nothing for what they do. They join NGOs because they want to work in the area the NGOs focus on; because they admire the NGO’s leader; and because they want to learn and contribute.

NGOs are not short of volunteers with large egos.

Perhaps because there are no “bosses” who can punish bad behaviour by awarding lower performance increments and bonuses, people with big egos are attracted to NGOs. They do and say what they like.

Once I found myself in a situation involving a fundraiser for an NGO. He took too much credit for the donations sent to the NGO; he told lies about the leader; he scoffed at the NGO’s volunteers and their leader.

He thought he was sent to the earth to criticise, teach and save everyone.

His behaviour made the volunteers very angry. They became angrier when their leader wouldn’t publicly deny his lies and refused to call him a bully.

In my corporate setting I would have sat everyone down and talked it through. I would have used structured exercises to bring out the poison and bring healing. I would have made it clear that I valued teamwork more than superstar behaviour.

But in an NGO, people “don’t have time” to attend such meetings. In an NGO, some volunteers who are unhappy go out and tell everyone “how bad the leader is.” When they do that, the leader has to spend time dealing with the fallout instead of doing the NGO’s work. (NGOs don’t threaten legal action against errant volunteers.)

I asked God to help me get over the fundraiser’s scoffing and the leader’s lack of response. Then I had a dream.

In my dream a wise man brought four persons into a room with one table and four chairs. One person was called Cleaner. Another person was called Superstar. I didn’t hear the names of the other two persons.

The wise man sat them down. Before each one was a copy of (the same) picture book and colour pencils. They were told to copy the pictures. They were told that at a set time the examiner would mark their work.

The two unnamed persons discussed how to decide which picture to copy. They considered the shapes and colours; they considered whether the original was a pencil sketch or an oil painting.

They went to ask Cleaner and Superstar for advice. Cleaner talked to them for hours. Superstar cursed them and shooed them away.

When their time was up, the examiner began marking. He had one pot of green ink, one pot of red ink and a brush.

Cleaner had copied only a few pictures; they were complicated pictures with many people working, eating, drinking, learning and singing. There were streams, vegetables, animals, houses. There were forests, roads, cars and factories. There were many colours.

Superstar had made hundreds of copies of a single picture. It had four large boxes and hundreds of small boxes, each containing either a tick mark or a cross. One of the large boxes had a green tick; all the other boxes had red crosses.

My dream ended before I could see whom the wise man marked with a green tick and whom he marked with a red cross.

Suddenly I recalled that scoffers are mentioned in the first verse in the Bible’s book of songs:

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers”. (Psalm 1:1)

Life is about the paintings we choose to paint. – August 27, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.