Recently I attended a workshop and at the end I went to introduce myself to one of the speaker, the head of an international agency working in Nepal.
I introduced myself explaining a bit about ENGAGE and informing the person concerned that ENGAGE had done some work together with his agency in the past. Dealing with a senior officer I tried to be as polite and diplomatic as possible.
I introduced sharing4good and I told him that I would love to publish his speech on it saying I would follow up with his colleagues at the communication team with whom I had worked before.
At the end I gave him my business card. He did not exchange his. He just took my card, said ‘thanks’ and left. Few minutes earlier I had seen him exchanging his business cards with other people that I guess were more important and respected than me or maybe he had run out of his cards.
I do not want to make a big deal out of a minor situation. It was not the first time actually, it happened even before when, approaching other senior people, I did not receive much of their attention.
Other times people had arranged a little excuse like “sorry I ran out of my cards” or at least they smiled and pretended to be thankful for receiving my card.
Now I am thinking about the reverse situation when for some reasons I was considered to be the “big guy” and locals were giving me lots of attention and respect, probably too much. We all know the local culture that praises seniority, respect and formalities.
Oftentimes I am at odds with all of these procedures but it often happened in the past especially when visiting local communities with my former employer that I was the “rock star” and when you are in it, you need to play the role.
I am thinking now, when others who perceived themselves as “inferior” in relation to me, how were they treated? Was I as polite as possible? Did I show respect even if I was not interested? Did I always return the polite act of giving my business card?
When I was considered “big” did I always try my best to show respect, accepting people’s request to meet me at my office?
Did I ever say “no” to anyone willing to meet me for a good or legitimate reasons ( see asking for funding)?
What actually made me “big”? The fact that I am a foreigner? The fact that I used to work for an international NGO therefore I was perceived as a powerful person deserving all these attentions?
At the end of the day people’s relationships are all about power or better the perception of power.
People who are not “big” at all can behave ‘big” by showing certain attitudes, there are quite a lot of these folks around being good at showing who they are.
The ironic thing with the senior officer who recently denied his card is that, when I approached him, I even tried to impress him with the traditional greeting of his own native country. Naïve me
Probably he is a good guy, probably he is surrounded by too many people showing too much respect towards him simply because they know he has power. This places a person, even the nicest one on the defensive and as it happens you cannot give cards everywhere to everyone.
How rating the importance of a person and therefore the “economic value” of giving or not your card?
Do we really need to assess or judge a person before deciding to give our cards?
Technically speaking we are all equals. Especially in the development sector, we should not have “big” or “small” guys.
The fact that the exact opposite happens might be an indicator that there is something indeed wrong going on in the sector and possibly within the society at large.
ps
By the way i have never been big, only 1.63 meter...
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