When your car is on the pavement, you are not in control!
“Power is nothing without Control” That was the tagline for a Pirelli advertising campaign many years ago that featured Carl Lewis, the then fastest man on the planet. While the campaign itself caused a lot of racial controversy in its days, it means something different to performance analysts. For the latter it is a question of power being useless or even destructive if it cannot be managed effectively to meet a specific need.
The philosophy of Peak Performance requires that all assets must come together and be united towards the ultimate output of the individual organism; a car must fire on all cylinders. A leaking fuel tank or low pressure tires will work against the car’s performance instead of working for it; in real life so will one person’s behavior or perhaps utterance affect the performance of a whole organization.
The story of Hon. Kennedy Agyepong and his recent arrest on the charge of treason is a case in point. But before we get to that let me give you a small hypothesis with the bugatti veyron at the Center. In case you did not know, The Bugatti veyron is the world’s fastest production car at the moment and cost something in the region of $2 million. It can reach a maximum speed of almost 430 km/h. Now that is a lot of speed but imagine what will happen if you are driving at that kind of speed and do not have an effective breaking system. Damage control will be an obsolete concept indeed.
Most people who drive a car will have a destination in mind. Even if they are driving around for fun they will want to stop somewhere at some point. Maybe even to buy a drink- or perhaps go to the bathroom- what ever the case there will be an object, a goal to be reached. That is where a breaking system comes in handy. The fastest car in the world is as useful as the efficacy of its breaking system. This will be the reason why the manufacturers of super cars make sure super cars are equipped with advanced breaking system so they can stop as effectively as they can move.
The steering system is one of the most important and the car with all its power will be an instrument of death without it as it ensures the car stays on course and continues to fire in the chosen direction. Then there are lights for night driving and even fog lights for a foggy day. The buggati runs on special tyres and rims. There is also the safety system and the many different systems that come together to make the worlds fastest car on the road. They are all assets that must work in favour of the car in order for it to be a car. When any of these assets starts working against the car, it starts to move in the wrong direction and ultimately the self destruction.
Well… believe it or not, human beings are the same. All persons have enormous power at their disposal. The trouble is most people do not know this- but the effective management of this power is what decides if they we make progress or not. Making progress means gaining more power. It’s like having 10 GHC and turning it into 20 GHC. It is a question of the decision you made and the action you took. It makes all the difference between rich and poor, negative and positive- desired result and it’s very opposite.
When the Hon. Kennedy Agyepong was reacting to the alleged Nii Lantey Vanderpuye incident in Odododiodio, the last thing on his mind was a treason charge. So how did he end up with one? __________________________________________________________________
"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."- DR. Daniel Goleman __________________________________________________________________
First of all it is important to understand that there is difference between a reaction and a response with the latter being the more positive of the two. The great Dr. Daniel Goleman; an American psychologist and author of the book Emotional Intelligence asserts that emotional intelligence makes success more predictable and more certain than the other intelligences. But what is emotional intelligence anyway?
Simply put; Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.
I have to add here that the idea itself being fairly new has many approaches to understanding it as many psychologists continue to explore it in different ways. One school of thought holds that a person has several intelligence systems and
emotional intelligence as defined above is one of them, there is also Social intelligence; how a person navigates his or her way around life especially in dealing with people, then technical intelligence; which has to do with talents and gift a person has which might help determine a trade or profession. Finally there is your normal intelligent quotient (IQ) or general intelligence which is accountable for how smart you are as person. In fact other theories have more intelligent systems than I can discuss here. But of all these Dr. Goleman and other psychologist insist that emotional intelligence is the most important and this happened to be the school of thought I belong to as a performance advocate and coach.
You see, what we think determines how we feel (emotion) and how we feel determine what we say and do. And that is what takes us back to the reaction and response issue. To respond to something implies taking your time and reflecting on the issues at hand and the desired out come. Reaction on the other hand is re –acting. i.e. reproducing what other people have done. It does not require much reflection. When a person brings negative action towards you, you just simple re-act it and create more negativity.
This whole thing is actually more complicated than I can make it sound but of course with awareness and training one can develop a high level of emotional intelligence. To put effort into EI training is however a very valuable thing because in the end it protects all of one’s effort and ensures security on the way to success. It grows what ever power we have to a higher level.
To attain peak performance, absolutely all of one’s assets have to work in their favour and in unison. Lack of emotional intelligence means your emotions are not organized and coordinated and they control you instead of you them; hence you will do and say things that you will regret later including ethno-sensitive statements that could lead to a genocide. Now while that is something that happens to all of us every now and then in our own small ways; things are more magnified when we are in a leadership position and have a lot of money at our disposal, which means you have a lot of followers. The symptoms of this deficiency can be extremely expensive and this is the unfortunate case of the Hon. Kennedy Agyepong.
A fine gentleman by all standards, he also makes a very good attempt at telling it like it is (Something that’s rare in Ghanaian politics). Being a successful entrepreneur means he makes a significant contribution towards the economic welfare of this country and that is something that we really should be grateful for as we apparently never have enough jobs and enough tax revenue. The recent Woyome saga that took the whole country by storm and punched a major whole in the NDC objective of game-ing (getting Atta mills elected) was initiated by this same man. He had literally handed his party with a 50 caliber bullet with which they were set to destroy the NDC at the coming election. Not one single person n this country including members of the NDC was left un-angered by the Woyome issue. For several months it was the main issue in the media as citizens expressed their anger at the government and point us to the incompetence. The NDC struggled really hard to find something to make the Woyome thing go away and they couldn’t get it. In the end the Hon. Kennedy Agypong gave it to them with one simple sentence in a classic case of self destruction.
Make no mistake about it, a man of Kennedy Agyepongs caliber is a highly intelligent man- emotional intelligence on the other hand is a different issue all together and he is not the first nor will he be the last public figure who will suffer the symptoms of the lack of it. He is a very valuable asset to his and this country party but only to the extent that he learns to cultivate emotional intelligence and that is where training and coaching plays a major role. Many do not know that the likes of Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and many other successful public figures have employed the services of coaches.
Personally I have held that the problem facing a country like Ghana is not economic; which is why all our economic theories and programs have not and are still not working. It is a mind problem. It appears to me that we need some kind of a training program that all leaders will have to pass through in other to develop their minds in a different way. A program that affects the structural pat of their thinking and provides a deep self awareness and purpose.
On Hon. Agyepong’s part, a treason charge around your neck is not healthy for anyone’s political future. In case you haven’t understood my point, a treason charge is why a very intelligent man like Mr. Kwame Pianim was disqualified from running for president.
Scientists have discovered that one can reach a better understanding of anything if it is presented in a way that affects more than one sense. I recommend an audio visual representation of what it means to have power without control- Watch the movie Hancock featuring Will Smith. Let me know your thoughts when you have seen it.
Katey Akli
“Power is nothing without Control” That was the tagline for a Pirelli advertising campaign many years ago that featured Carl Lewis, the then fastest man on the planet. While the campaign itself caused a lot of racial controversy in its days, it means something different to performance analysts. For the latter it is a question of power being useless or even destructive if it cannot be managed effectively to meet a specific need.
The philosophy of Peak Performance requires that all assets must come together and be united towards the ultimate output of the individual organism; a car must fire on all cylinders. A leaking fuel tank or low pressure tires will work against the car’s performance instead of working for it; in real life so will one person’s behavior or perhaps utterance affect the performance of a whole organization.
The story of Hon. Kennedy Agyepong and his recent arrest on the charge of treason is a case in point. But before we get to that let me give you a small hypothesis with the bugatti veyron at the Center. In case you did not know, The Bugatti veyron is the world’s fastest production car at the moment and cost something in the region of $2 million. It can reach a maximum speed of almost 430 km/h. Now that is a lot of speed but imagine what will happen if you are driving at that kind of speed and do not have an effective breaking system. Damage control will be an obsolete concept indeed.
Most people who drive a car will have a destination in mind. Even if they are driving around for fun they will want to stop somewhere at some point. Maybe even to buy a drink- or perhaps go to the bathroom- what ever the case there will be an object, a goal to be reached. That is where a breaking system comes in handy. The fastest car in the world is as useful as the efficacy of its breaking system. This will be the reason why the manufacturers of super cars make sure super cars are equipped with advanced breaking system so they can stop as effectively as they can move.
The steering system is one of the most important and the car with all its power will be an instrument of death without it as it ensures the car stays on course and continues to fire in the chosen direction. Then there are lights for night driving and even fog lights for a foggy day. The buggati runs on special tyres and rims. There is also the safety system and the many different systems that come together to make the worlds fastest car on the road. They are all assets that must work in favour of the car in order for it to be a car. When any of these assets starts working against the car, it starts to move in the wrong direction and ultimately the self destruction.
Well… believe it or not, human beings are the same. All persons have enormous power at their disposal. The trouble is most people do not know this- but the effective management of this power is what decides if they we make progress or not. Making progress means gaining more power. It’s like having 10 GHC and turning it into 20 GHC. It is a question of the decision you made and the action you took. It makes all the difference between rich and poor, negative and positive- desired result and it’s very opposite.
When the Hon. Kennedy Agyepong was reacting to the alleged Nii Lantey Vanderpuye incident in Odododiodio, the last thing on his mind was a treason charge. So how did he end up with one? __________________________________________________________________
"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."- DR. Daniel Goleman __________________________________________________________________
First of all it is important to understand that there is difference between a reaction and a response with the latter being the more positive of the two. The great Dr. Daniel Goleman; an American psychologist and author of the book Emotional Intelligence asserts that emotional intelligence makes success more predictable and more certain than the other intelligences. But what is emotional intelligence anyway?
Simply put; Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.
I have to add here that the idea itself being fairly new has many approaches to understanding it as many psychologists continue to explore it in different ways. One school of thought holds that a person has several intelligence systems and
emotional intelligence as defined above is one of them, there is also Social intelligence; how a person navigates his or her way around life especially in dealing with people, then technical intelligence; which has to do with talents and gift a person has which might help determine a trade or profession. Finally there is your normal intelligent quotient (IQ) or general intelligence which is accountable for how smart you are as person. In fact other theories have more intelligent systems than I can discuss here. But of all these Dr. Goleman and other psychologist insist that emotional intelligence is the most important and this happened to be the school of thought I belong to as a performance advocate and coach.
You see, what we think determines how we feel (emotion) and how we feel determine what we say and do. And that is what takes us back to the reaction and response issue. To respond to something implies taking your time and reflecting on the issues at hand and the desired out come. Reaction on the other hand is re –acting. i.e. reproducing what other people have done. It does not require much reflection. When a person brings negative action towards you, you just simple re-act it and create more negativity.
This whole thing is actually more complicated than I can make it sound but of course with awareness and training one can develop a high level of emotional intelligence. To put effort into EI training is however a very valuable thing because in the end it protects all of one’s effort and ensures security on the way to success. It grows what ever power we have to a higher level.
To attain peak performance, absolutely all of one’s assets have to work in their favour and in unison. Lack of emotional intelligence means your emotions are not organized and coordinated and they control you instead of you them; hence you will do and say things that you will regret later including ethno-sensitive statements that could lead to a genocide. Now while that is something that happens to all of us every now and then in our own small ways; things are more magnified when we are in a leadership position and have a lot of money at our disposal, which means you have a lot of followers. The symptoms of this deficiency can be extremely expensive and this is the unfortunate case of the Hon. Kennedy Agyepong.
A fine gentleman by all standards, he also makes a very good attempt at telling it like it is (Something that’s rare in Ghanaian politics). Being a successful entrepreneur means he makes a significant contribution towards the economic welfare of this country and that is something that we really should be grateful for as we apparently never have enough jobs and enough tax revenue. The recent Woyome saga that took the whole country by storm and punched a major whole in the NDC objective of game-ing (getting Atta mills elected) was initiated by this same man. He had literally handed his party with a 50 caliber bullet with which they were set to destroy the NDC at the coming election. Not one single person n this country including members of the NDC was left un-angered by the Woyome issue. For several months it was the main issue in the media as citizens expressed their anger at the government and point us to the incompetence. The NDC struggled really hard to find something to make the Woyome thing go away and they couldn’t get it. In the end the Hon. Kennedy Agypong gave it to them with one simple sentence in a classic case of self destruction.
Make no mistake about it, a man of Kennedy Agyepongs caliber is a highly intelligent man- emotional intelligence on the other hand is a different issue all together and he is not the first nor will he be the last public figure who will suffer the symptoms of the lack of it. He is a very valuable asset to his and this country party but only to the extent that he learns to cultivate emotional intelligence and that is where training and coaching plays a major role. Many do not know that the likes of Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and many other successful public figures have employed the services of coaches.
Personally I have held that the problem facing a country like Ghana is not economic; which is why all our economic theories and programs have not and are still not working. It is a mind problem. It appears to me that we need some kind of a training program that all leaders will have to pass through in other to develop their minds in a different way. A program that affects the structural pat of their thinking and provides a deep self awareness and purpose.
On Hon. Agyepong’s part, a treason charge around your neck is not healthy for anyone’s political future. In case you haven’t understood my point, a treason charge is why a very intelligent man like Mr. Kwame Pianim was disqualified from running for president.
Scientists have discovered that one can reach a better understanding of anything if it is presented in a way that affects more than one sense. I recommend an audio visual representation of what it means to have power without control- Watch the movie Hancock featuring Will Smith. Let me know your thoughts when you have seen it.
Katey Akli
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