How aggressive are you?

This blog is inspired by an event that happened during a review meeting that I was a part of at office. The Managing Director of the company was very vociferously reprimanding the sales team (read: breathing fire and spitting venom) for the decline in sales and fall in market share during the just ended quarter. The Operations director explained to her that he had appointed a new Sales head to improve the situation, which was met with another litre of venom and a comment “How can you give that responsibility to him? He is not aggressive enough!” 

‘Not aggressive enough’. The word Aggression was coined somewhere in the early 17^th century from the Latin word Aggressio which in turn lends its origin to the word Aggredi which means ‘to attack’. That way, English is a very tolerant language with words adapted from various other languages like Ginger from the old French Gingivre, Juggernaut from the Hindi Jagannath, Anaconda from the Sinhalese Henakandaya or Sugar from the Arabic Sukkar.  Anyways, though the word aggression was initially used to represent an overt behaviour with intent to inflict harm or unpleasantness upon another, these days it is used indiscriminately irrespective of context.

‘Polish minister says Russia preparing aggression against NATO’.

‘Liverpool manager Klopp wants a new type of aggression in the Merseyside derby’.

‘The mother bison aggressively defended her calves from a grizzly’.

‘The new CEO of ABC Pvt Ltd is not aggressive enough to push through the merger with XYZ Ltd.’

Let us try and understand the above four quoted sentences. The first one talks about an outright attack or physical aggression and takes the form of the primary definition of the word. The second sentence talks about a goal oriented or instrumental aggression. The football team’s manager wants the team to perform better and hence his need for his players to be more efficient on the field. The third sentence refers to a defensive behaviour on the part of the mother bison triggered by maternal instincts which doesn’t exactly fall within the definition of aggression. If it did, then all mothers would be called aggressors and that would sound really weird. The fourth sentence shouldn’t have been in this discussion at all because the word assertive should replace aggressive in the said sentence. The poor tolerant English language!

Psychologists say that aggression can be physical or mental. They also say that aggression can be goal oriented or reactive/impulsive, though I personally don’t agree to the latter. This is simply because I consider aggression to be a predominantly negative behaviour and a far cry from creative tendencies of a person. Aggression usually sprouts out from a feeling of insecurity, despair, anger or insufficiency. Curiously, the human mind tends to send signals to the sensory organs that reflect the exact opposite of how we feel. If we feel insecure, we behave aggressive and controlling and when we feel confident, we behave calm and composed. That is why wise people sometimes ask us to stop thinking and start feeling so that we behave right in circumstances and take apt decisions.

Therefore, aggressive tendencies need to be curbed and its alter ego assertiveness nurtured.

I summarize by saying aggression is not all about shouting at the top of your voice at everybody in the room, it is about taking tough decisions at the right time in a calm and composed manner!

How much do we know after all that education?

Education is defined as the process of facilitating acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits.  From the time we hit the age of five or even earlier, we are pushed into the grind of getting educated starting with the kids’ day care facility to primary school to high school to college and even further sometimes. During all those years of growth from infancy to adulthood, we spend at the least 6 to 8 hours of our daily lives on an average at an educational institution. We are taught a wide gamut of subjects there ranging from physics, chemistry, biology, arts, history, geography, sports, political science, mathematics, computers, economics, law, social sciences, food technology, astronomy and many others; in the initial years probably all of the above and in the later stages some of those, as we specialize in specific disciplines in preparation for our graduation to the job seeking or job creating phases of our life.

As there is no limit to the skills, values and beliefs that we can assimilate in a lifetime, this process of learning continues until the time we kick the bucket. However, one question that pleads to be asked is whether we know how to use all this education. The crux of the question is as simple as the difference between raw data and information. Just like raw data is a combination of variables in its primary form while information is the refined data that can be used for a specific purpose, education in its raw form becomes useful only if the user has the knowledge of how and when to apply the same. Otherwise, it will just be theory.

Unfortunately, this subtle distinction seems to have lost its importance. College degrees or educational qualifications are treated like pegs of social status or the stripes on an army officer’s collar rather than a means to enlighten once self or use in a fruitful manner. Students are pushed to the brink of their physical and mental endurance to accumulate degrees and come out ‘first’ in their class. In this bargain, some lose their focus in life, others lose interest in their true passion and in extreme cases some lose their life when put under too much pressure in said mindless pursuit. It is a very common sight where highly qualified persons fail to perform when faced with real life challenges. It is just like a pilot who has done 500 hours on the simulator but flounders when struck with a precarious situation mid-flight. We should not pursue a discipline because the discipline is popular, we should pursue a discipline which we have a passion for. The education that we obtain also needs to be to further our passion for it.

A fresher right out of college is like a baby bird which is ignorant of flight and snug up in the nest waiting for its momma to feed it. It needs to be coaxed and pushed to discover its latent talent to fly. This coaxing and pushing can be given only by a good teacher or a coach. The coach helps us establish a link between all the education that we have obtained and the challenges that we face in our life. The coach knows that a fish needn’t be taught to swim in the same way he/she knows that it shouldn’t be asked to climb a tree. Therefore, it is imperative that some point in life we find that coach who can direct our education and talent in the right direction. The coach need not always be a person. It can be a situation or event that helps us learn and mature. Thus, the ability to use the right education in the right situation is true knowledge. Some of this comes from training, the rest comes from experience. 

Therefore, we need to remember that the ability of what to say comes from education, however the ability of when to say what comes from knowledge. Then there is the ability to shut your mouth and keep quiet, which comes from wisdom. Well that comes with age!