Influence – Good and Bad!

Influence! The word itself has been used in so many different situations for so many different purposes. Yet it has such profound effect on our life.

In our career, we look towards someone for inspiration and have a predefined plan in our minds as to how our career should pan out. But this depends on who influences us and how he/she influences us. The person we turn out to be depends on how we are being treated at our workplace.  For example, if your immediate reporting manager is a downright insecure person who has difficulty trusting and imparting the necessary knowledge that you might require to progress in your career, the odds are you might also become the same insecure person because that’s what you have seen and that way of working becomes a general impression about the corporate world for you.

You must have heard the popular saying,”Don’t chose a good job, chose a good boss.” It completely holds true in today's world as a good boss holds the key to your career where in you can not only develop yourself in a better way but also help in developing future young talent because the same was done to you. All depends on how you have been groomed. Some argue however, that inspite of being treated harshly, they still make sure they don’t treat their successors in the same way. This, of course, is quite unique and exceptional and should be done wherever possible.

Now going from career to relationships, even relationships in many ways depend on the kind of influence that someone had on us since our childhood. This influence happens at home through our parents and how they treat each other. My friend recently told me about her cousin who doesn’t get along with her mother well because she has seen her father abuse her mother so much that she has the idea in her mind that her mom deserves that kind of treatment. Thus, wouldn’t it be better if parents, old or new, could sort out their differences in a much mature way where in the integrity and respect for either parent doesn’t reduce in the child’s eyes?

This also effects the child’s perception of the outside world, as he/she is prone to treating the next person he/she is associated with, the same way. He/she will consider this the most appropriate course of action as that is the scenario he/she has witnessed throughout his/her life. Thus, what your child turns out to be is heavily dependent on how you treat your better half and others around you.

Finally, we come to company and associations. The company we keep decides what kind of person we will turn out to be. If your friends encourage you to be brave and make the right choices, your life will be full of calculated risks and good decisions while any bad influence will make sure you will learn many lessons. The right kind of company is very important as it has the power to raise you up or pull you down. And we as aspiring socializers, tend to fit in to a group by doing exactly what they do right from addictions to social media posts.

The best example for this would be the ALS ice bucket challenge. The premise behind the whole challenge was to build awareness among people about ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease and find a cure where in prominent celebrities would dump an ice bucket on themselves and encourage others in their social circle to do the same and at the same time, contribute an amount to ALS cure research.  If they refuse to take the challenge they would have to donate more than the prescribed minimal that was associated with the challenge. However, social media caught on to this in the absolute wrong way possible as people simply dumped ice buckets and tagged others just to show off and these people had no idea about the donations which need to be made in the challenge. So many videos were posted about this challenge that it was saddening to see how selective we are in hearing or knowing about things and how easily we catch up to doing something that makes us look ‘cool’ or normal in others eyes.

In conclusion, all that can be said is that a lot depends on how you behave and who you get influenced by. So, choose your role models, mentors carefully and treat your subordinates, life partners, juniors and children with respect and love because your behavior will ultimately impact their life and how it shapes up. And it also depends on you how they will remember you; as a person who should be followed or a person who should never ever be followed.