For the last few days I’ve been obsessing over this video clip I came across on LinkedIn, where Obama discusses something that has been troubling me for years. Until now, I’ve always stayed as far away from politics as possible and therefore I hardly know anything about it or the people in it. However, after watching the clip, which was filmed during the Obama Foundation Summit, I have a new respect for this guy and for the first time ever I am genuinely impressed by a politician.
The nature of human dynamics does not change from level to level.
There are some things about my that I don’t think will ever change, those are my stubbornness, determination and motivation, three characteristics that don’t bode well for someone that grew up going to a strict (Christian) international school in Shanghai. The combination of these traits may have led to me being the occasional, excuse my language, a pain in the ass. I hate being told what to do or how to do something and if someone tries, I’ll probably do everything I can to prove them wrong or make a point that I can do it better., and I have to say I am undoubtedly not the only one. To get back to the point, it’s also what probably has triggered me to want to change everything, to an unreasonable extent. Anyways, what it comes down to is that I’ve always wanted things to be different and to be better and always felt that getting older and higher up was the way to go. Somewhere, I suppose I had created this ideal for myself that as I went from primary to secondary to university to getting my first job and getting better functions, I wouldn’t be facing the same silly problems I faced. That group work would get easier and more professional and decision making would happen with more structure.
Boy, was I wrong. As I left all the high school drama and moved on to university and got my first job, I started to realise I was constantly running into the same problems with group dynamics and all I could do was learn from them each time. Even as I got my first desk job at the university, hearing my colleagues, who were much older than I was, gossip and quarrelling was a shock. Also finding out about the way decisions were made at the university, behind the scenes, left me dumbfounded. You would assume a university with 20,000 students has everything quite well organised, and I guess I’d never really thought that much about what goes on behind the scenes, but au contraire. Currently, I’m working for the Green Office of the university as a part-time board member, and it is unbelievable how many obstacles we are running into. As I’ve gained quite a lot of experiences from case studies and challenges with companies, I have to say until now (from my perspective), its pretty much the same everywhere.
All-in-all, it’s been a long journey since then from primary student council, to high school and now after four years at uni, I’ve come to realise that ,no matter where I am, things don’t change. There’s a song called, “High School Never Ends”, by Bowling for Soup, that it really does have a truth to it. It’s even quite bizar to think that whether you’re in high school, university, your first job or working at a large corporate you run into the same problems anywhere. It’s actually only logical since we’re all humans and we all have our own ideas, tendencies and motivations, so why would things be any different as we get older or change jobs or functions?
Just to clarify, I’m not saying I dislike group work or hate humans or anything in that sense, I love it. It’s a new challenge everyday with new things to learn to take on to the next group work, because if you want to achieve something by going solo, well that’s not going to happen. At some point you’re going to need to understand group dynamics and work with them. Anyways, this is one of the topics that has always fascinated me and the reason that I love the clip, is that Obama talks about these patterns that are also present when you’re the president of the United States. In the end, I guess all I’m trying to say is that maybe we should be focusing on learning and teaching people more about group dynamics and to read more Dr. Seuss. (By the way, to me group and human dynamics are approximately the same thing.)
TTFN!