Hi everyone! Welcome to another edition of the #Hivelearners Weekly Featured Contents. Week 123:- Edition 03:-. With the theme "Power And Influence."
Tell us about the time when you encountered someone with more power and influence than you and they used it to their advantage in a way that affected you.
Well, I don't think I've had such personal experiences so far, but then, I can discuss a common scenario that happened to a close friend of mine that year that affected him badly.
He was a junior employee at his workplace. He had lots of creative ideas that could benefit the company, but then had to go through the senior colleagues to be able to present them to the management.
And then, whenever he presents this idea of his to his senior manager, who has significant influence and power, the manager buys the ideas and then takes them to the higher authority and presents them as his own ideas to pursue his own agenda. This encounter had always had a way of leaving the junior employee feeling disheartened and used.
But he couldn't do anything because he didn't want to lose his job, and he also didn't have a direct connection with the higher authority at his workplace. So that always had a way of affecting him in some way or another.
This guy felt so down when he eventually found out this was what his senior colleague did to him just to be able to attain his own goal, leaving him halfway through because he had no access to the higher authority.
I got to learn some lessons from this scenario shared by my friend with me, which I'll be stating below:
Advocacy: I felt like if he had someone who could help support his new ideas and help him build more in his creative ideas, it would have helped him attain some levels of success within his workplace.
Building Relationships:
He was more like a person who was always in a hurry to go home after work and was lacking in the aspect of building relationships and networks within his workplace.
Because if he was the kind of person who builds relationships in his workplace with influential individuals, they would have helped him by connecting him directly to the higher bosses in his workplace, rather than him going to meet his senior colleagues. Which could have helped ensure his ideas were also considered.
- Understanding the Dynamics of Power: If only he knew that most rich and influential people with power only buy the ideas of those with less privilege to help attain their own goals, he would have done what he did with a better understanding of either striking a deal or something.
Such encounters can be discouraging and disheartening at the same time. I can literally tell how pained he was, but then, it can only serve as experiences that foster personal development. Because, as they say, experience is the best teacher.
I'm so sure he would have learned lots of lessons from this thing that happened to him, including being aware of the influence others hold and knowing how to approach situations like this strategically when they come up again. It's being street-wise, which is popularly known as #STREETOT.
Thank you for taking the time to go through my content, and I hope you've learned lots of lessons from the community's weekly prompt. This post is in response to the #Hivelearners weekly contest.
N.B.: All images used in this post are mine.