Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Transaction vs. Transformation

Transactional Relationship vs. Transformational Relationship


An observation that I’ve made, is that people, in both their business and personal lives are engaging in transactional relationship as opposed to activities that would lead to a transformation in the relationship. The problem with transactional association is that although we might perform the required tasks and check off the necessary boxes, it does not lift the spirit within our.

There’s a feeling of being undervalued, when we walk into a shop expecting to be serviced or we go to our boss, guardians, teacher or spouse expecting to engage in conversation, only to be processed; they said all the right things, had the correct facial expressions and body language, however for some strange reason we don’t quite feel right with what just happened; we’ve just we transacted; we were involved in an activity devoid of both spiritual and emotional connection.

Transactionalism happens a lot in interpersonal relationship, where we try to be efficient and wonder why we are with our partner, families and living separate lives.

In all people to people dynamics constant evolution is the key to sustaining quality and substance. To establish a relationship that is constantly evolving we have to engage in transformational connection. To engage in Transformational type relationships, our spirit within needs to acknowledge the spirit within the person that we are dealing with; if we use this as our premise, then we must also accept that, the spirit we acknowledge today will not be the same spirit tomorrow, in that it would have learned and evolved from the activity of yesterday.

Transformational relationship necessitates that we treat each person in the way that their spirit dictates, which means that we need to connect with them mentally, emotional and spiritually, also that we create the space and time for the interaction with them. Creating the space and time is important, because, if it is inconvenient to talk at the moment, we can request that a new time be made; however, it is worth noting that some things have to be dealt with in the moment; you need to have the wisdom to decide on that.

As an example, if your son wants to talk with you (dad) just before you leave for work, what do you do? Your choices are: transact with him in an efficient manner, by being the consummate 1 minute manager, you say to him ‘we’ll talk later’, or be late for work.

Leadership and headship

Leadership & Headship

Leadership and Headship, theoretically speaking, not only are they similarly sounding words, what's more, if you were to look up there definitions in the thesaurus they’ll be similar too. Yet the fact of the matter is that in practicality, they both have different orientation.

Leadership is like Mother Nature, flexible and adaptable, always changing to suite the needs of the four seasons (winter, autumn, spring, & summer). Headship is like the shelter built for protection against the elements of the four seasons.

Leadership is like the ocean on which the ship travels, the ocean can either aid the ship on its journey or it can sink it. Headship is like the ship sailing on the ocean, correctly navigated, the ocean will aid the ship on its journey, incorrectly navigated then the ocean will sink the ship.

Headship, we can say exists for the purpose of maximising the needs of the entity (the company, organisation, and committee); Leadership exists for the purpose of helping individuals maximise on their potential, which will in turn leverage the cause of the Headship.


Francis