Understanding People

A Warrior’s View

There are 3 things that a Warrior Leader understands above all else:

1. The Way of the Sword[1]
2. The Way of Strategy
3. The Heart of man

In the area of growing, inspiring, motivating and leading people, understanding the inner workings of the heart of a person is vital. The Warrior Leader knows that once you’ve understood the heart of man, you can get them to move mountains.

This philosophy can be carried over into any walk of life, from corporate leadership to student tutoring. The nature of we, human beings is that we all have desires, aspirations and fears; the student wants to attain a quality degree classification, aspires to go into a good job, with an attractive salary and good career progression; the able employee wants to provide for his or her family, aspires to take up leadership positions within the organisation, the person that has chosen to pursue their dreams wants to succeed, aspires to self-actualise.
So how does all this pan out?

Taking a simplistic and primitive standpoint, we can presume that everything we do or don’t do is aligned to one of our 3 concerns, and as leaders, coaches, mentors, teachers, guardians we need to understand what makes the people in our care tick; if we don’t, how will we know what words will inspire them, how will we know what rewards to give that will incite them to act or what promises to make that will guarantee sustained effort, and in some instances what kind security and protection to provide.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in what we are doing or as the case may be in our own self importance that we begin to think, that the people around us or who work for us (work with us) or that we coach, mentor or tutor do the things that we’ve ask them to do because they like, respect or fear us. Conversely the truth is that they do theses things because it is connected to what they want to get out of their time with us, and once its done they’ll be off. The only way to gain sustainability in human relationship, (loyalty), is to understand the heart, and to do that you must love your people, and it is this love that the Warrior Leaders develops with their soldiers


[1] The word Sword is used to symbolise the fighting arts