What makes people tick - no really..

Besides managing Knutsson Consulting, I also work in a Financial Services company. The culture of the firm has been a very unhappy one in the last couple of months. Many employees like myself felt like we are stuck in a rut - confused, frustrated and most of all unhappy. 

Yesterday, our Operations Manager (also a very close friend of mine) was asked to leave. All of us I believe are still shaken up over the whole fiesco. For weeks, I haven't been sleeping well, tossing and turning - trying to understand or rationalise my way through this unhappy episode. 

I boiled the reasons down to the different type of behaviors and personalities we all have. And perhaps sometimes it is just impossible for the different group of people to work with one another no matter how they try. 

But what happens if we all try to understand the different type of personalities and learn how to work around them. Perhaps then we can all work in peace and harmony (or am I just being naive?).

Today I spent some time on the net researching about human behaviors, trying to understand what really makes people tick. I came across a few great articles which explained and described these rules. And the rules are:

Rule One: People Mostly Care About Themselves
People aren’t thinking about you. A damaging myth to buy into is believing the amount of time you think of yourself compares to the amount of time others think of you. In reality they are nowhere close. Take a look at this chart which I found on the net (It is too bad I did not save the url for this site).

Have a look at the different slices of this chart. The biggest slice is apparently the time you spend thinking about yourself. The second is the time spent thinking about relationships, but how they affect you. What does John think of me? Will my boss give me a raise or fire me? Do my friends respect me or just tolerate me?

Only a tiny sliver is devoted to empathy. Empathy is the rare occasion where you think through the perspective of another person. This means that you occupy only a tiny percentage of a persons thoughts. Waiting for people to invite you, becoming embarrassed at something really stupid or emphasizing what others think of you come from failing to use this rule. Almost all people are far too self-absorbed to notice.
 

Rule Two: People are Motivated by Selfish Altruism
To say all behavior is strictly selfish would be misleading. It fails to account for acts of charity, ethics and why people don’t just cheat, swindle and lie all the time. Selfish altruism is a broader category that covers why people do nice things as a way to get what they want.

Viewing people as completely uncaring or selfish is incomplete. But expecting people to think of you constantly and do nice things for free is stupid.

Rule Three: People Don’t Think Much
I believe we drastically overestimate what we do intentionally. If someone asks you to be unbiased in making a decision, it is probably best to just laugh. The implication of this is that appealing entirely to thoughts won’t work. Since a bulk of decision making is made in the background, you need to target that background if you want to be influential. You don’t need to be manipulative, just smart enough to recognize that snap judgments mean a lot and your communication is more than just words.

Rule Four: Conformity is the Norm
You become your environment. Uniqueness and individuality tend to warp to fit the people around you. This is true of other people as it is for yourself. It means you should be careful who you pick as friends, partners and colleagues.

This is why I believe it is important to keep a varied social group. When you interact with people from completely different backgrounds, beliefs and behaviors on a regular basis you are more likely to see different perspectives. This also means you have more control in picking who you want to be.