“…Those who preserve their lives will loose it, and those who loose their lives will gain it…” OR. “.. Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it…”

Luke 17:33 NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION

With this biblical allusion I invite you to join me on this voyage. Get a glass of cold water and sit down in front of me so that I can share my thought on pleasing our bosses at the work place with you even as the captains of this great boat of ideas bring their experience and expertise to bare and please read to the end.

My name is Bismark Sellally Lawson – a young man God is grooming for his assignment. To become a man of God? Not necessarily. To be given an assignment by God transcends being in the cathedral as a leader of a congregation.

In our individual capacities we are blessed each day with ideas or various view points of life which if shared with people can transform their lives for the better. Now! this is also a work of a servant of God and you must be called to do it.

Wisdom Capsule (the name I gave my write-ups) is to help young people as myself to look at events that unfolds in their lives from totally different angle and to be able to deduce or use wisdom in approaching what ever we wish to do and the steps needed to be taken.

Today, I am highly exited to be touching on a very sensitive aspect of our lives which is work. Work is important and aside being a form of security, work gives us hope about our dreams – the moment you find one, every other thing can be achieved. The moment you are working, you can start life, you can touch lives and you can save one also. With work, you can become the hope of a whole new generation especially, one that you start with your partner.

You can save and invest your earnings and through that, you could build an empire. So work is important.

…because work is important, many people device various means to protect and keep their jobs. They go all out just to maintain their jobs and extremely, people even kill those they find as threats just to remain working with an organization.

I can go on and on talking about such diabolical behaviors people ascribe to in order to keep working but let me talk to you about certain type of people who vilify others just to come clean before their employers so as to keep their work.

Right after my Junior High School I began working. Well, you can blame poverty for it but that was what it was and maybe because of what I am about to say. Over a decade I have worked with several people and have seen ways and means people adopt to keep their jobs. I would have loved to talk about all the six people who adopted the backstabbing strategy and how they ended up being victims of their set ups. but I will limit it to only one.

I was working at a certain eatery in Ho as a waiter. Beautiful people made up the service team except one lady who was battling with insecurity and so succumbed to vilification of colleagues, backstabbing, snitching, lying, creation of confusion, denigrating others, painting people black, setting up traps for colleagues and using them against unsuspecting ones, envy, jealousy and many of such wrong doings just to appear good before the boss. She just wanted to be in the good books of the employer and so she kept on. Many were sacked because of her attitude, People's salaries were seized because of her lies and atrocious acts, people resigned from the job because they could not stand her treacherous ways.

At this time, truly, she was the Boss's favorite. She was the teddy bare of the madam. She was the “only righteous worker at the time and the one who truly understood the vision of the company and so was ready to protect it” every other person is either against the madam or just came to destroy the company.

This lady kept on doing this for several years until one day when ” her cup run over” and every negativity she planted germinated, grew well and began bearing fruits. Every bad thing she did joined forces and came back to fight her. The tears of those who could not stand her lies, the agony of those who were sacked illegitimately and the grief of those who she back stabbed have all amalgamated to stir up confusions in her life. The workplace was becoming hotter for her than she thought. At that time, she was having her cake but could not eat it. Her true self was becoming vivid and the boss was becoming guilty for always judging and looking at things from her glasses.

One day, there was the last straw that broke the Carmel's back – this lady stole a colossal amount of money which led to her detention at the police station and subsequently her shameful dismissal.

This lady was only trying to protect her life. She was just protecting her work but unfortunately, used the wrong means to do that and at the end, she lost it all.

This kind of people are found at all offices. People trying so hard to be in the good books of their bosses. By so doing, they hurt so many people and stepped on quite a number of toes. They destroyed relationships and made many enemies and sadly at the end, they loose the love and the trust of those they were out there to please.

Look at the people you might have worked with who behaved like this and tell me they ended it well. Did they not exit with gallons of embarrassments? Were they not sacked or did they not resign themselves? That has always been the case.

Thank you for reading up to this stage. I am grateful but before you leave, take these nuggets along and make sure you infest others with them:

Please note, there is only one true way of pleasing your boss at the work place. Only one and not two and that is FINDING THE VISION AND MISSION OF THE COMPANY and working assiduously to contribute to the growth of the organization. This is like a magic. Never succumb to any of the things we discussed about my colleague at the eatery because those ones last but only for a little while. They will come back and fight you and you would not only loose the job you seek to protect, you will loose potential future partners, friends, helpers in the future and above all, the trust of your boss.

Please, this is also another wisdom capsule and usual, find a way to swallow it.

Have a lovely weekend