A subject that has grown in interest in the west is the study of Psychology and Psychoanalysis; they have been of particular importance in the field of Social Science in attempting to understand Human behaviour to the benefit of many different groups, particularly in the workforce. Psychoanalysis of the Freudian school of thought revolutionized the field of Public relations theory through Freud’s nephew Eddie Bernays and has paved the way for new approaches to succeeding in the professions of Marketing, Advertising and the Media. Psychology has been a critical element to developing good business practice in Management and Organisation theory. It has become one of the subjects that people choose to study even if they do not know what they wish to do and has aroused an interest from the general public, I’m sure we all start trying to psychoanalyze people we know when they are behaving out of the ordinary or in an undesirable way.
I would like to focus on how psychology is used for the benefit of running a business. My experience with this primarily has been that of through having supervision with a line manager. The basic assumption is that whenever something does not succeed it is always because of something you did wrong. Which perhaps is the case in most instances. We all know the rule that “the customer is always right”, this is a very annoying rule for the businessman, because it is not without the consent of the customer that they will pay you for trying to help them with giving them what they want. But often giving the client what they want is not actually what they need. This was at one stage where I was going wrong with my business as a Personal Trainer.
A potential client who I had a consultation with told me that his goal was to get bigger; he mentioned that he had never done any work on his legs. Little did he know that he would eventually not get any bigger elsewhere if he didn’t work on them, as the body essentially works as one unit, the upper body will slow down and wait for the lower body to catch up. One cannot say, even though most clients I have will, that they aren’t interested in one body part, only another, a typical example is men who pay no attention to their back, but too much on their chest. So off I went, giving him a complimentary session, working on his legs. He found it a revelation on how his legs were aching for about a week afterwards until they fully recovered. That was selling him what he needed, and of course it did not sell, he has not become a client and has now gone back to working on his upper body only on his own. What I should have done was what I did with one of my current clients, who at first told me she wanted a smaller bum, so our session focused on what she told me she wanted, working on her lower body. Of course as I mentioned you can’t only work on one body part even if there is an area that bothers you, but since then she has mentioned she wants to work on her triceps so she will look good in a dress she wants to wear and we are beginning to develop a proper workout that will eventually get her to what she wanted and needs and she is a regular paying client now. This is how I overcame one factor in how convert people into paying clients, by ‘selling them what they want and then giving them what they need.’
I could have blamed it on the client, that he wouldn’t listen to me, that he gave me loads of excuses for not wanting to do what I suggested. Or I could have blamed it on circumstances; at the moment he doesn’t have the money, or he doesn’t have the time… The generally accepted approach to failure in a task is that it is you that is responsible and that you take accountability for it, learn from it and improve your practice by taking action points for when it occurs again. You will begin by asking, where did I go wrong?
When running my business, I find that the majority of the time this is the best way to approach issues and many business and management books would agree. Because if one business succeeds and yours didn’t, it is always going to be your fault, whether it was in the quality of your service, a poorly thought out business strategy, bad time management, not putting in enough effort, the wrong attitude or work ethic, not enough investment of capital in the business, failure to adapt to changing trends, or any other reason but it is not the customers fault that he or any other customer did not buy your product and therefore your business closed down, it is almost always to do with something that you did wrong.
However, sometimes when my line manager will tell me when talking about an issue I am having, that that it is me that is doing something wrong, there have been instances where I have felt that it isn’t only me that is doing something wrong, particularly if the issue in the business doesn’t involve a client. For example, I was told that if I did something for my manager that he would give me ten members for me to call and train who could become new clients, what we call leads. But he didn’t give them to me, but rather than recognize that he was at fault, I was again at fault because I didn’t chase him up about it. It is rare that something is always entirely the fault of one side; it often comes as a result of a misunderstanding or a breakdown in communication or another reason.
But we often take our business thinking cap home with us, and apply it to all of our life situations, particularly in our relationships with others. There is the story of the case where a woman goes to her psychiatrist and tells him that her husband has been beating her, and then she tells herself “it must be something I did.” Critical thinking has led many of us in the west to no longer be able to see ourselves as victims in any situation, and what results is a culture of constantly blaming victims. Another example is how one often may hear on the news of a story of a girl who got raped, who was wearing a short dress because she had been out and then how some will say it was her fault for wearing the dress, or that she was asking for it. Somehow it is not the rapist’s fault at all. The other day a ‘charity collector’ came into a café I was in asking for donations and then without permission, stole in front of my eyes £7 that a friend of mine had left on the table for his bill for us to pay when we left, after arguing with her I told the owner, he was of course supportive but his immediate reaction was “why was the money on the table in the first place?”
We apply this thinking to foreign policy a lot, and it is this that will result in the downfall of our nations power and influence in the world as well as our prosperity and standard of living. The most prominent example of this is on the war on terror, when one looks at 9/11 and asks, “why would someone do such a thing? We must be doing something really bad to these people?” Or look at suicide bombings and say, “the conditions in the territories must be so bad if it can drive people to do such a despicable act.” Whilst I understand the logic to ask these questions, one cannot apply the business mode of thinking to politics nor relationships. I don’t think I recall hearing or reading any works written by any Palestinians or Arabs who ever thought to themselves that “we must have treated Jews really badly throughout our history and those suicide bombings and rockets must be devastating to their society to cause them to come in every so often showering us with missiles like in Operation Cast lead.” Or that maybe the invasion of Afghanistan was the Taliban’s fault, had 9/11 not happened then Afghans wouldn’t be suffering. These groups see themselves always as the victims who have done nothing wrong ever and blame the other side for everything.
In the west we have a decreasing sense of self worth and respect as we ask the question of “what are we doing wrong?” Even if one may find incidents or injustices in our nations foreign policies towards other nations or groups, like I said earlier, it is rare that a problem is 100% the fault of one side. In some instances it can be, I am not going to ascertain the blame for the arising of a particular problem onto any side here, but it is possible.
This is how a growing percentage of the western world approaches all aspects of life. But we are not always trying to sell something to someone like a business does. Or in some instances it is for both one party and the other to both have to up-sell themselves to each other such as in a friendship for example, it is not just important that one party likes the other it has to be mutual. In business at the very least, my clients must feel happy enough with me, even if the truth is that some clients if we had the choice we wouldn’t work with them because our personalities clash and they may annoy you. This is not the case when it comes to things like the war on terror, we do not need to seek the approval of Islamists, in fact we should see them as a rival competitor and boost us to reinforce our belief in our own product and promote it.
It’s success in business practice, but being misplaced elsewhere has become a contributing factor to self-hatred. Looking at the issue of anti-Semitism, the Jew asks the question “Why do they hate us?” And then looks at the possible causes of why, such as ignorance, an easy scapegoat, prejudice, fear of difference, jealousy or any other possible reason, depending on the approach and discipline used to address the issue. Anti-Semitism and its cause have not been discovered and is an ongoing study as its form seems to change as the situation of the Jews change over time and place, but then one asks the question “maybe we can’t find an answer to this question by looking at those who hate them but instead by looking at the Jews themselves. Maybe the accusations are true, that the Jews have given people reason to hate them.” The problem is now no longer the anti-Semite, but the Jew. The same is the case taken a step further to anti-Zionism; the issue is not that the Arabs are uncompromising, but that the hatred and conflict in the Middle East would somehow disappear if there were no Jewish state at all, which many Jews have come to believe.
It is not something that is specific to Jewish self-hatred but how we in the west are losing sight of what is in our best interest, our self respect, holding ourselves to a double standard, whilst our rivals and enemies abroad point their finger at us and attack our values and our culture (not that our culture is perfect) more of us are willing to take on board their grievances, blame our leaders and their policies and then look to justify crimes committed by our enemies on us or others because somehow it is justified and that we deserve it, because it was in response to something we did first.
Alex Carson
