If you have not done so already, please read the foundation post The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us before reading this one.
When merchants find themselves feeling disregarded, embarrassed by criticism or feeling unappreciated and unloved, they can find themselves sliding down the slippery slope toward manipulation. This is often caused by their strong commitment to being the love in the room. They have a deep emotional sense that they should be able to make things better for themselves and others through development of relationships and strong positive communication.
They are required by their value structure to maintain their belief in fundamental truth about the way things are. This is based first upon their intuition supported by their collection of facts and reason through conversation and listening. They have a strong need to believe in the sufficiency of their love energy to cause people to be loyal, motivated and fully commissioned to want to serve the mission of the group.
The Achilles Heel is activated by circumstances in which the merchant finds himself left out of the decision loop, or when his own performance is less than desired and he feels judged as being unworthy of appreciation and approval. The shift to manipulation happens when someone important in the merchant’s life is being critical or is deemed to be unsupportive. When the merchant feels unloved or unappreciated by others it is difficult for him to continue interacting and doing his work.
When the merchant’s love is not sufficient to inspire others to rise to their highest potential, when the team is not functioning due to conflict, or any sign that love is not needed or wanted, his faith in his own capacity to be the love in the situation begins to be diminished. He starts feeling anxious that maybe his love is insufficient, that his view of the truth about the way things are might be faulty, that he cannot trust his intuition. This causes increasing anxiety. The anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.
When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the love energy is free to flow into the room and bring light to the darkness. When the anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of the love Core Value Energy into the situation is restricted, causing further failure to make the ideal contribution of relationships and positive inspiring vision into the room.
This causes an escalation of human love energy, trying to force it into stronger influence and fuller participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting and denying the love agenda. They begin to feel manipulated and actually feel unloved by the person who is now trying to force his love into the situation. They get the sense that they have no room for error with the person who is escalating the love energy when love is not what is needed. They tend to believe the power person is not interested in knowledge, wisdom or power. Love people (and anyone who is operating in their love mode) tend to become highly judgmental, feeling that people are not showing the truth about themselves, or that others cannot tolerate and be trusted with the truth about me.
The tendency is to continue to try to be the love in the situation, long past the time then they would have benefitted and been more effective by shifting into one of their lower capacity Core Value Energies.
Note: Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels.
When the merchant love person has failed to listen to his anxiety, he finds himself judging others as being deceitful and not worthy of trust. The merchant may become very mawkish and overly accommodating, judging others to be unworthy to have a meaningful relationship with. This judgment of others and manipulation of situations and people can become very controlling, causing others to give in for the moment, looking for chances to undermine the merchant’s future effectiveness. This causes a fear based response in the merchant that is either total rage (one form of manipulation—How can you treat me like this?) or total control through manipulation of everything that is being said or done.
The best response for a merchant who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most unloving thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of love in a situation that needs more knowledge, power or wisdom.
The smart (awake and conscious) love person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode.
This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.
- Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
- The Achilles Heel of Merchants
- The Achilles Heel of Builders
- The Achilles Heel of Innovators
- The Achilles Heel of Bankers
