There is an interesting observation that is reportedly very common among children that gives us insight to a behavior or even a possible personality trait that may perhaps explain how people act in a social or workplace setting.
Working through the years as a direct report to many different managers and even interacting with senior leadership of a large corporation, who also come and go through time, there is something that is always in abundance, and that is individuals taking credit for all the “good results or performance” and deflecting or mitigating the “poor results”.
Watching or participating in award speeches after award speeches, and even though lip service is given to those who “helped” make it possible, but at the end, they brag to others how they were number one or how they won. Nothing wrong with this, but you can spot it out quickly based on one word a person uses with any accolades. Those that begin with an “I” and those that begin with “We”.
Going back to the behaviors of young children and we can even go far back as preschool age that this is observed. Kids want to be known to be first or recognize as the one that completed a task. You get a group of school age children to do a jigsaw puzzle, one will hide the last piece of the puzzle till the end when they reveal it to be the last piece. Kids when putting away toys, one would hold the lid of the box and make sure that they are the last kid to place the last toy in the box and be the last one that would close the lid and be seen by others as the kid who did that. Kids would work fast on projects or other school work as to be known to be first to be done or that they completed it faster than their rivals. There is just a whole host of different scenarios, but recognition is a fought after asset in children.
I then ask, which child doesn’t exhibit behavior like this? The response would be, not really any of them. They all compete for this recognition and they use scrupulous tactics to obtain it. Translated to adults? Age, experience or education does nothing to change that. I then realize that we all have this innate “I”.
Adults fight for recognition as much as children. There are many different forms of recognition; i.e. beauty, intelligence, success, athleticism, altruism and many others. This is a human trait that we all have different levels of. There may not be a true selfless human being who doesn’t care of one form of recognition they covet to gain or display. I say take it and use it. It is OK to be the one with the last piece of the puzzle from time to time.
R
