I might as well post something...

I've been busy lately. Not much time to sit around the office with nothing to do.

But I have been learning quite a few things. And one of them being how to handle difficult people. Sometimes, there are some who just refuse to listen, and they refuse to change. Some might see it as a good thing. But then others would rather kill themselves than to give way to such heresy.

I was in a conversation with a friend and both of us seriously come from both sides of the spectrum in terms of leadership theories and practices. But we enjoy sitting down and chatting about leadership and leading. To me, there's nothing more provoking than being able to sit down with a true friend who would be able to give you a totally different perspective in life!

And so we were chatting about how people have changed over time. Because this friend has been overseas for further studies, we talked about this certain character; She has a hard and focused mind. She knows what she needs to do and she knows that what she is doing is true to herself and her work. This is a very good attitude. However, this attitude also brings to her public life a little bit of a problem. Because her priorities aren't like everyone else's she gets into trouble with the authorities at work and with friends.

So I was thinking; Am I supposed to change according to what society deems best? Or should I remain focused on what I should do and don't care about how people think of me?

Then the other issue is how can you lead a person if you can't even garner the respect of the person? Although you might have better things to do and bigger priorities to follow-up on, you will still need to beat someone in his or her own game in order to win that someone's respect.

Let's just talk about punctuality.

This girl that we were talking about has a problem with time. She's always late and she delays a lot of things. Her reason being that she is doing something more important than that current job that needs to be done. Or even, sometimes, her priorities would be to sleep in because she's had a late night, so that she can do her job better today.

So instead of going to work on time, she'd sleep in, get sufficient rest, and take on the battle with a fresh mind.

But that is the exact opposite of what society expects! If you go to work at a bank or something, like it or not, whether you're performing at your optimum level or not, your boss needs to see you seated at your desk on the dot at 9am.

So the question is what if I sleep in and perform at an optimum level for the rest of the day, or I go to work on time but groggy and perform below par for the entire day?