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Are you feeling frustrated in dealing with someone who is controlling and rigid?
Or someone who is sloppy and unreliable?
Tune into today’s episode to understand these opposite sides in terms of their conscientiousness level. You will also learn how to optimize these personal, as well as professional relationships.
For our spiritual section, we will be discussing the one action that can really prevent us from succeeding. Even if the effects manifest themselves after some time. Even if the action was actively done by others, our complacency can get us into trouble.
Bismillah. Alhumdulillah. Wa Salat Al al-Salam wa rasulullah. This is breakthrough coach, Zubair.
This is our eleventh episode. To recap; what we have started with was to help you define where you are in life and which areas you would like to grow in. What kind of identity you want to carry and adopt. This may be a good time to review those plans and see the progress. We also encourage you to take a look at what needs to be adjusted, tweaked, added or removed.
Going back to the first few episodes and doing the suggested exercises would be a great idea at this time.
What we have been doing is sharing ideas, thoughts and experiences to improve various relationships in your life. We have also been sharing ideas around improving our relationship with the creator and to use it to excel your progress towards your goals
Last week, we started talking about personality types. To help you better understand various people you interact with in personal and professional setting. How to understand your own as well as their preferences and how to optimize the interactions. We talked about the trait of openness last time.
And this week we’ll discuss the trait of conscientiousness.
This describes how organized, detailed, well-planned one is as opposed to being more easy going and more about the big ideas. This is the trait that describes your approach to getting things done. It measures your self discipline, organization and reliability.
Someone who is at a higher level, or higher side of this trait is someone who
- loves to have to-do lists, organization, schedules,
- enjoys digging into the details and making things perfect.
Somebody on the low side of this trait would typically
- prefer big ideas and strategy and
- might find lists and scheduling boring and overwhelming.
This involves the way you love to get things done. Notice that this can be different in different settings, different relationships and different projects. To check out your, or someone else’s, preference for a specific project or a specific relationship, consider the following questions:
These have been taken from the book “Captivate”
If you are high in conscientiousness you
1. Are typically organized and detail oriented, love to do lists, plan and schedules
2. You are a perfectionist
3. You can be seen as controlling and rigid
Take a look at this and observe and be aware that sometimes, because of this trait, you may appear to be controlling and rigid. We’ll talk about how to deal and prevent this sort of action from happening.
On the other hand if you are low on this trait,
- You would typically love broad ideas and you typically don’t want to get bogged down in details.
- You’re very flexible, you hate being boxed with a plan or a schedule and
- You can be seen as sloppy and unreliable.
I hope now you are able to relate the title of the podcast with what we are discussing here.
Once you’ve realized this, you know your own preferences, and you know the preferences of the person you are dealing with.
You can actually take advantage by this understanding.
If you’re dealing with someone who is about big ideas, and depending on what kind of relationship you have with that person. If you are in a managerial relationship or a leadership relationship you may not want to bog down the person with detailed plans but rather focus on the big idea and discuss the immediate step, or the next three immediate steps. Without going into a lot of details.
On the other, hand if you are pitching the idea to someone who is very detail oriented you should be ready to answer many questions, you should be able to demonstrate that you’ve really thought this well and you have a detailed plan.
Once you understand who you are pitching the idea to, who you are managing. Or who you are reporting to and what is their preference, you can adjust your output to meet their needs.
As you think about presenting or reporting or managing someone and they have a different preference or level of this train of conscientiousness, you have to consider adjusting and going beyond your comfort level, beyond your comfort zone to be able to develop and optimize that relationship
On the other hand when you are high or low on conscientiousness remember that on one extreme you can actually be seen as controlling or rigid. And on the other extreme you can also be seen sloppy and unreliable. So make sure that you address these concerns during your communication and get feedback about how people are feeling.
This applies to professional as well as personal relationships
As a leader who is high on organization and details, you should consider resetting your approach so that you are not viewed by your staff and your team as someone who is too rigid. Also, as a leader if you get too detailed, what can happen is that you spend all of your time planning and detailing the job of someone else. That would limit your capacity to be able to be a leader for greater team and to focus on things that you need to focus on,
Consider that your scope as a leader has changed and perhaps the amount of details that you have to get into is to assign tasks, assign ownership, set metrics, set expectations and to let people ruin the show.
Then you check in with them at regular intervals and then advise and coach them accordingly, instead of giving them a full detailed plan.
Doing this will help them feel the ownership of their tasks and will give you more flexibility and more time to focus on other issues.
On the other hand, if you are low on this skill. If you are low on your organization and details and you tend towards big ideas, then some of the challenges could be actually getting the things done. This would mean that you need to have some sort of an operator, an implementer that would implement your ides at specific and accepted intervals and accepted timelines
Or if you don’t have that sort of flexibility you don’t have those resources then you wold have to roll up your sleeves and get down and get the work done. Which would require planning and scheduling and management.
Now when we come to personal relationships this becomes really really important as well. Because we have seen a lot of cases in which you have couples coming in and then they are at totally opposite levels of this trait.
So this comes down to keeping your clothes organized, keeping your socks organized, planning your weekend trips, planning your weekend activities, sending kids to school, picking them up, all sorts of different things.
Different things come in like your spouse might want you to be reliable , may want you to be predictable and at the same time may want you to be unpredictable. So having the sort of always balanced is very very important. And communications and regular check-ins come in very handy.
If you are very aware of these traits, and you know which side of the skill your spouse’s preference is, then you can actually adjust yourself or help yourself also understand your preference. In some scenarios you’d have to step up, you’d have to step into your side of you’d have to tap into your side, a passionate lover, or a giver, a nourisher and you’d have to go outside of your comfort zone and met the need of your spouse. By either being more detail oriented, setting commitments, setting goals, setting deadlines, making a list and being more organized.
Or on the other hand, letting your spouse be about higher level things and you take care of the detailed side of things. In an ideal scenario, both spouses, both parties would actually come closer on this skill and would compromise their comfort level and come to a point where they can each accommodate each other and be optimized in their relationship.
Sometimes it can also be taken care of by having separate spaces.
Having a separate drawer for each so your drawer can be messy and your spouses drawer can be more organized. And vice versa.
Some spaces or some projects or some areas you can do things in your own way and the spouse can let the other party do the things in the way they’re comfortable with.
Let’s move on to the part where we focus on strengthening our relationship with the Creator.
We discussed last week about how to distinguish between false hopes that deceives one into feeling safe and secure and encourages one to be lazy and disobedient to the creator. And the true and sincere hope in which one does his best and expects the best. We also shared about how to know which kind of hope one is having. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about realizing how sins and disobedience to the Creator harm the heart like the poison harms the body.
This is mostly taken from the corresponding chapter in the book, The Disease and the Cure by Ibn Qayyim (rahimahullah) So consider this;
All sins, have evil consequences. If you take a look at what happened to our father, Adam (AS) and his wife. They were expelled from paradise because of a sin. Because of an act of disobedience. Absolutely, they were forgiven, but the sin had a consequence.
Likewise, if you think about what happened at the battle of Uhud. The companions of the Prophet of Allah ﷺ, how this obedience lead to turning a victory into some sort of a defeat. Obviously, on the greater scale of things there was a wisdom behind it, there was a lesson behind it and things turned out well for them. But, that disobedience resulted into facing a short term loss.
It has been reported by the Prophet of Allah ﷺ that
A man is deprived of blessing because of a sin he commits.
Let me also take the opportunity to also describe our approach to narrating or quoting the reports of the Prophet of Allah ﷺ. Usually, if we are following text from the book, such as the book by Ibn Qayyim (rahimullah), we may narrate it as this without going into details about the Hadith or qualification because that is outside the scope of this podcast. If we bring in such Hadith, we would always bring in something that the meaning of the Hadith is supported by various other narrations. Without going into details about the actual chain of narration.
Likewise, it is also reported on the authority of Yahya bin Abi Kathir from Abu Salama from Abu Huraira (ra) said that the Messenger of Allah said; ‘If a sin is discreetly committed, it only harms the doer. But when it is committed publicly, and it is not reprimanded, it will harm everyone. This is something of concern to us as well.
You might have people around you or committing sins or disobedience to Allah (swt). And we know, from the famous Hadith that if we have the ability to stop it, to advise against it, we should do that. But at the very least, we should have a distinction between what is a sin and what is not a sin. If you see a sin being committed, and nothing happens to you, you’re not disturbed, you don’t care about it, this may be a warning sign.
What effects do you feel in your heart when you see a disobedience being committed?
It’s a very interesting narration because it also explains; ‘if a sin is committed, then what?’
This narration as reported by Abu Huraira (ra) that the Prophet said; ‘When a believer sins, there is a black spot placed on his heart. If he repents, and asks forgiveness, asks pardoned then his heart is polished. But if he does more of that sin it increases until it gains completeness over his heart. That is the rust.
The prophet of Allah ﷺ is pointing out that rusting of the heart, the covering of the heart that is mentioned in the kitaab in the book of Allah (swt) where he says:
Nay, but on their heart is a rust
This is a covering. This is a rusting that is coming from the sins and the evil deeds because of what they’ve earned. If we fall into it, we have to seek forgiveness from Allah (swt) and to realizes that this was an act of disobedience that we should not have committed and to plan for it and to regret it and to move forward having a plan in place not to do it.
There’s another very important point here that people continue to underestimate. Because, when somebody commits a sin, they do not see any consequences right away, in general. They might not regard it as a big deal. But what can happen and does happen is sometimes, and many times
effects of the sins are delayed.
It’s not that you’ll see something happening right away. As if you do something and you see an effect. Sometimes the effects are delayed and that can be very misleading if you do not have the right understanding of the sins.
It’s a very interesting narration from Imam Ahmad; he said, on the authority of Abu Darbah (ra), who said worship Allah as if you could see him and know that a little wealth which makes you rich is better than which destroys you.
You should know that piety never decays and that sins are never forgotten. So they may act like a slow poisonous wall that you may not see the effects but over time, you see the effects.
This is something to keep in mind. Let’s review the action points and summarize what we’ve discussed in this episode.
Firstly, we recommend you go back to the previous episodes, especially he first two or three episodes and do the exercise you you can have a snapshot of where you are and where your stage is and where your relationship is and various areas of your life. Where you want to go. And what is the identity you need to carry to be able to get there.
Being aware of various personality types that we deal with inn personal or professional relationships. And to optimize those relationships and to understand peoples preferences around communication, organization, planning and details.
Is there any relationship that you have where you need to change your approach? Where you need to have a discussion so that you can both be operating at a level that is optimized and within your comfort zone. If not, then is there a relationship where you can go outside of your comfort zone and be a giver, be a nourisher in that relationship and provide and meet the needs of another person? To meet their specific needs and their specific traits? Are there sins that you have been accustomed to doing and not realizing the greatness of it?
As it is said ‘do not look at how minor the sins are but rather, look at how great is the one who you are sinning against. How great is the one that you are disobeying?’
Has it become the case that sins and disobedience can be happening around you and you do not reject it in your heart. You do not find it as a disobedience and you’ve become accustomed to it.
These things have consequences so let us fix our own self.
Let us fix our own self.
Let us fix our own understanding of the disobedience of Allah (swt) and
Let us seek the forgiveness from Allah (swt) for our own shortcomings.
Until the next time,
CLOSING DUA
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Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs is our weekly podcast series in which we share insights on how you can achieve breakthroughs in your life to unlock your spirituality, relationships, and mindset. You will get practical steps towards living a truly extraordinary and fulfilling life in sha Allah.
To check out previous episodes visit Breakthrough Podcast
Got questions or comments? Send us an email at breakthroughs at muslimmastery.com