Are you serious? Are you just condoning retaliation? Did you just say that?
Well, yes!
If you treat people well, why should you be worried?
You will get the same good treatment you dish out.
“What is good for the goose is good for the gander”
“Do unto others as you will have them do unto you” Luke 6:31
And I am sure there are many more quotes out there, on treating others with respect, kindness and consideration.
CONSIDERERATION is a big word, says Sis. Solamen Ott (Fmr. Headmistress of my Alma Matta, St. Roses’ Secondary School) of blessed memory. We used to giggle like silly girls about this, mainly because of how she said it brandishing her fist while saying it with her Ghanaian affected German accent.
Today, I understand more than ever how Consideration should be the most important word in our lives. It comes to play in the simplest aspects of life. When you live with others and you drink all the water in the fridge without replenishing it, are you being considerate? When you order a service or product and choose to delay payment or even refuse to make payment, are you being considerate? When you are inconsiderate of people’s time, are you considerate? When you carelessly throw rubbish out of your car window, are you being considerate? When you cross the red light and almost crash into me, are you being considerate? When because of your power, you can build on a storm drain, causing floods elsewhere, are you considerate? When you come early to work but spend most of the working hours on social media, are you being considerate? When you spend more time with others than you do with your spouse, are you being considerate?……eish am I treading dangerously? Ok No more examples…. you get my drift !!!
Simple questions? Should I do the same to you?
Well then, What has Consideration, Tit-for-tat and etiquette got to do with each other?
If you are considerate, it means you think of the impact your words and actions will have on others. You are sensitive to how you make people feel and will therefore speak and act in a manner that you will like to be spoken and acted towards. This is good etiquette!
As part of our personal branding, it is important to deliberately develop the art of speaking and treating people well. In truth the more impactful personal brand we could ever build of ourselves is the positive impression we leave in the minds of people who interact with us. Who wants to deal with a sharp-tongued beautiful woman or an arrogant handsome hunk or a cute but rude child or an intelligent but disrespectful boss. Somehow our character over-rides anything else and all those other beautiful values pale in the light of your real brand.
In Business etiquette, your respect for people’s time, the good of the business for which you work, having decent stakeholder engagement are all signs that you are considerate. If you are an employee and you one day aspire to become an employer, will you hire and keep “the current you”. If you cannot answer this positively, we have work to do. If you are proud of how considerate you are, well done, keep it up and pull others along.
Some people are a lot careless with other people’s property. If you had paid for and owned that same property, will you treat it that way. This starts from a simple pen all the way to the rented property in which you live or run your business. Let’s learn to put ourselves in our neighbour’s shoes.
Once again, as you seek to carve a personal or business image of yourself, let’s just go back to the basics of etiquette: How do I treat people? How do I handle other people’s property? And how do I make people around me feel? If the same was done to me, will I be happy?
Let’s just remember that “tit-for-tat” won’t be bad at all, if the “tat” is based on my good “tit” (behave !!! focus on what we are talking about now 😊)
