Working with industry professionals across specialised fields means I meet a lot of what would be considered smart people. Being Finland, likely 90% of my clients are masters degree and up as pieces of paper are considered vital here but, it also has a culture that is not conducive to social awareness.
While suitable within Finland, disregard of social environment doesn't work well internationally and as a result, Finns are often considered cold and uncaring. This is social convention dictating terms though as give them a drink, and the emotions are there, not very far below the surface.
Part of the training I am involved with is helping people get better with people as most of my clients are managers hired on field skill, not social ability. This means that while knowledgeable, they can lack effective tools to get their knowledge across or activate a group with it.
The other thing is that often their approach isn't of the sort that facilitates conversation or relationship development. In a social environment, being smart is not enough if no one is willing to listen to what you have to say, no matter how useful the information may be. This is something that people who are too combative I their approach willl likely find also.
As great add the internet is for sharing information, it has also become somewhat of a screaming match with many voices competing to be heard and without the face to face interaction, much of what is said is delivered as a scream into the void. With so much on offer, there is no need to listen to those who are aggressive or trolling, it is easy just to tune them out.
For the most part, these people don't add much of value to the conversation anyway and due to their approach, more and more ignore their words until they are irrelevant. It is quite sad in some respects as at done point they may have been able to bring value to conversations but due to their approach or personality, they risk being ostracized. Is this unfair?
If intelligence is the ability to adapt to ask environment for survival and one is looking to be heard in a social climate, is it the groups job to include the individual or the individuals responsibility to learn how to be effective in the group? Where are the limits of inclusion? What is acceptable for an individual to conform to?
What I find is that there are quite a number of people online who believe what they offer has value fitter the group but sound much more like the crazy homeless guy ringing a bell on the street corner. It is not that they were necessarily wrong but if the more of delivery is not conducive to developing conversation and action from the necessary people or groups, what is the point of speaking at all?
Well, it can satisfy the selfish desire to feel one is trying to do something. I say selfish because if someone wants change (action) but isn't willing to change the mode of delivery to something suitable for the target audience, are they truly trying or just filling that need to feel like they are? They may later say, "I told you so ", but that isn't the case at all if no one is listening to what they say.
To me, there is a difference between being smart and having the intelligence to effect change. For the most part, intelligence recognizes there is a process of alignment involved and if a group is required to change to get somewhere, it takes time to build the understanding to align the parts and make the shifts.
Smart people may know what needs to be done but can lack the understanding of the time it takes to align a group. Screaming and shouting rarely is a catalyst for faster change but that is often the approach taken on the internet. How smart are they?
It is an interesting problem as even though there maybe value in what is said, humans will rarely act positively to aggressive conversation and will instead build defences. Even though it perhaps shouldn't as much, the delivery of words matters especially in areas with social dynamics in play. To ignore these dynamics is to not understand the environment and therefore be less effective at influencing it.
Many seem to think that freedom of speech comes with the right to be listened to. No. There is consequence of speech and that isn't just on the words said, it is also on how those words are said. The consequence of some approaches means people can ignore the words completely by tuning out based on delivery. This is not just for aggressive presentation technique, boring gets ignored too.
If you are one of those people that is looking to get your information across but are unwilling to change your delivery methods for the audience, unless you are lucky to have inherent traits suitable for the audience culture, you are likely going to have to change your approach. Expecting the group to conform to you is not very smart at all. At least not now in the environment we have, but perhaps later when things align differently it will be okay.
There is so much information available from so many sources that there is no need to listen to people who do not consider their delivery. Disagreement and criticism doesn't require behind an asshole and for the most part, no one is so smart that what they say can't be found elsewhere in a more useful and effective package.
For many though and despite what they may say, they do not actually care about improvement, they just like the sound of their own words. This is lucky because, as they ignore their audience, there can come a time where their own voice is all that they will hear in their echo chamber of one.
No one likes to feel irrelevant to the conversation, but screaming and aggression rarely leads to inclusion.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
(posted from phone)