It's all about the money...
Not!
I have a
client that has a saying (his dad's): "Men fight about two things: the one
is women..." And the other? Money, of course. As much as I do not
particularly want to talk about
financial or economic worth and the relation to self worth, we would be
ignoring the elephant in the room.
I mostly
work in the private sector, where shareholding (read dividends), directorship (read
status and power), bonuses and salaries are critical. Reward and recognition.
This is all just dandy - great basic motivational tools. Where I get my
knickers in a twist is when the remuneration stuff is directly linked to the
personal development stuff.
The reason?
People lie about their development needs, true feelings, real contribution and personal
aspirations when they know it is linked to da mulla. Please note: I do not
blame them at all. We all, always, want more money, whether in the form of dividends,
bonuses or salary increases. The more money, the merrier.
Over the
weekend I facilitated a workshop on self worth. What made this session
interesting was that this was a group of women, mostly unemployed, but
contributing tremendously to various communities and upliftment initiatives. In
this instance the value of their contribution had no economic value for them.
In my view their self value and self worth were mostly quite high, regardless
of the lack of remuneration.
On the other
side of the coin, in business or society, we often see people feeling inferior or
over confident/arrogant because of their financial standing. Status and often
power are being linked to financial wealth. The part that gets to me is when
poor self worth leads to poor economic worth. In other words, you are not being
paid fairly (market related, contribution related) because you, in essence,
think that this is what you deserve.
Please do
not storm into your manager's office after reading this and demand that
increase because, like the L'Oreal ladies, 'you are worth it'! You might well
be, my point is just that there could be a link between lack of self worth and
lack of appropriate financial reward. And if it needs fixing, it needs fixing.
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