Behavioral competence, a function of emotional competence, which by itself, is a combination of personal competence and social competence, can only be improved by regular introspection.Every man has three characters- that which he exhibits, that which he has and that which he thinks he has.
Every human being thinks he is the best of the species on the surface of this globe, and he has every right to do so (till proven otherwise, of course!). Grant that every manager is very effective as he deems himself to be, then the question arises, why are we having Enrons and Worldcoms day in day out? Where is the room for negative emotions and actions, if everything is hunky-dory? The hard reality of life is that there is a beast in all of us which manifests itself in the form of human weaknesses. While tools like Johari Window (Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham) and FIRO-B (Will Schutz) help us compare our behavioral dimensions with those of others, we rarely look into the mirror to take a real close look at our inner selves. Alphonse Karr (quoted above) could not have been more right in describing the characters of a man, as quite often we notice that there is a lot of incongruity between what we mean to say and what we do. A father tells his son not to smoke, but he puffs away to glory; teaches him honesty, but he quietly indulges in corrupt practices back in the office. If our interpersonal relationships are to remain good, there is a dire necessity of keeping happy within ourselves, i.e., to have an effective intrapersonal relationship. We need to understand `self' first before trying to understand others. There is still a greater need to question ourselves and get into the self talk mode. This is what we may call "introspection" which will ultimately lead us to "self-discovery" and then to "self-mastery". It's a kind of "self-analysis" and a trip down the road "Know Thyself." |
