J. N. N. Ng’ang’a – Meditations for October 17 – 23, 2011: If you can Make Friends at Work then you can Influence others to Christ

 

Day 1

 

Job 5:12

He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success

 

2 Corinthians 5:14

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died God gives us ability to succeed in the mission he has sent us .

 

You cannot success in any job or career if you have inadequate relational skills. I know several friends of mine who believed veterinary science had no need for relational skills! But a vet with right capacity and drive yet has no ability to relate well with others will fail. Pets belong to human beings and they are the ones who pay the bill. If I bring my cat and you do not want to explain to me what’s wrong with my cat, the first time I will bring it , the cat will get well , but next time I come and you ignore me again, I will look for another veterinary doctor. Soon, no one will bring their cat to your clinic. It will be  nothing to do with your abilities to treat, but because every cat owner wants to be treated well.

 

Day 2

 

1 Corinthians 13:3

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing

 

Think of another career where we say one does not need to be a people-person. Pick Accountancy.

 

But even accountants need good relational skills. Accountants are not dealing just with figures. Figures represent people. So if somebody brings a voucher, and you are rude to him, thinking it is only a voucher you are dealing with, you may soon lose your job! You may know how to calculate, but still lose your job.

 

It reminds me of someone who worked under me as an accountant, a full graduate and CPA. I remember inviting the staff of the department he was heading for lunch. During lunch, he started talking about his academic prowess and he said, “I had a very high GPA in my BCom in the university and subsequently finished CPA exams within a year. No woman has ever beaten me in an exam.” Then he went on and on, saying he doesn’t understand why women even work in professions. I don’t know why he had a quarrel with women, and remember a number of his important staff were women. Now once he said that, the women, (there were two or three of them at the lunch) started asking him, “What’s wrong with you?’

 

The guy insisted, “Women should be in the kitchen, and not in the industry where we work.” I tried to cool the ladies down, but they were very hurt. Do you know, after that incident, and because of his consistent bad attitude towards the ladies, those ladies who reported to him, undermined him!

There was a computerization project we were introducing in the department. I would visit and find that the guy would still be working midnight. Those ladies would leave dead on time, saying, “Five o’clock is what I am paid for.” They left him to struggle on his own .The project could not succeed.

 

Finally we were left with no alternative but to transfer him out of the section .The organization could not go on with this lack of teamwork affecting progress of the project. Remember the staff had done nothing wrong we could pin them down on. The women were doing the bare minimum required of them.

 

Day 3

 

Galatians 5:14

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

 

Have you ever heard of malicious obedience? Where you are obeying maliciously? It means that there is nothing wrong you are doing wrong, yet you hurt your boss. You cannot be fired, since you are simply doing only what you have been asked to do. That’s what the ladies in the Day 2 above were doing and we realized this project would fail unless we removed the boss from there.

 

We removed him even though there was no appropriate vacancy we could give him, so we gave him a junior job. This so annoyed him that after a short while he resigned. Of course the women felt it was ‘good riddance’. By the way the guy was not cheating when he said that he had a high GPA in the university, when he said he got CPA in less than a year. When he said he was a good accountant, it was true. But he didn’t know how to say it in a way that allowed him to continue to  relate well  with the ladies. Those ladies did such a research on the guy that one time I was going to the department they told me, “Do you know that guy does not allow his wife even to drive their car?”

 

I said, “How would you know and why do you get involved in another personal life?” But they were provoked enough to want to hurt the boss.

 

Day 4

 

Proverbs 18:24

One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother

 

It's important to understand that if you do not have relational skills, even your performance of the job will be affected. For you to actually get results you need to know that no job is done without team work. For you to get good results, it will be important that you know how to relate with others in the team whether below you or above you or across departments.

 

Every task is done either for others or with others .You therefore must know, not just how to do the job, but how to relate with those who are working with you or for whom you are producing the service or product. This is even more important if you are leading the team. How will you communicate your vision so that the team knows where you are going? How will you motivate them to higher performance unless you have influence on them and you can clearly communicate, and they are willing to listen?

 

Day 5

 

Job 31

 

21 if I have raised my hand against the fatherless,

knowing that I had influence in court,

 

If you will not influence anyone then you cannot get good results.  My argument is that for you to influence your environment, you need to set an example by your performance, the way Timothy was told by Paul in the bible to be.

 

Yes, for you to influence your market place it will be important for you to be a good performer.

 

When we talk of a good performer, we mean someone who uses his time and other resources, well enough to realize his goal. We cannot call you a good performer if you evangelize very well during office hours and end up failing to do the task for which the job exists.

 

Good performance is meeting all you key performance indicators. But is also means reaching these key performance indicators in way that will sustain the organization into the future. If you hurt others in reaching your goals you might end up with losing staff so that the organization may not survive into the future. You will then win the battle but loose the war

 

Day 6

 

Malachi 2:6

True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin

 

But good performance without clarity of why you do what you give you influence but the influence will may not necessarily translate to souls won into the kingdom of God.

 

As we saw earlier you must finally dive and swim, rather than just swing at the diving board. Good performance makes your drive better but you must dive. You therefore must look for opportunities to tell those you have influenced why you act the way you do. They need to know that if they want to be like you they need to have your master as their master.

 

But again, let me say that they will not be interested in your talk if they do not admire the way you work.

 

Day 7

 

Ezra 5:8

The king should know that we went to the district of Judah, to the temple of the great God. The people are building it with large stones and placing the timbers in the walls. The work is being carried on with diligence and is making rapid progress under their direction

 

So to be a good performer, you need all the three skills, and not just one .You must have capacity, drive to achieve or self-motivation and also interpersonal skill.

All of them are important if you are to improve your performance.

 

Capacity is critical if what you produce will be excellent. Look for ways to improve your capacity. It might mean going for an MBA, but it may require other methods to develop yourself, your analytical skills, your problem solving skills, etc.

Drive to achieve is much related to whether you are doing something for which you feel you were created to do. When you are operating within your life’s mission, you tend to do the tasks with passion, whether the task is well paid or just a voluntary service .When you feel what you are doing is answering to what you consider God’s call on your life you tend to do it with a passion .in such a job, you do not require any external motivation to burn the midnight oil.

 

Also you tend to do your very best, take as long as reasonably possible on it and produce an excellent product or service, in honor to God.

 

The relationship skill is also paramount in getting you to achieve whatever task you have set yourself to do .Most tasks are done through others or with others and for others .Do you know how to communicate and motivate others to do a task? How are your organizational skills? Are you doing anything to improve them?