‘Social’ Intelligence: On Bearing the Fruits of Sharing

I haven’t been able to sleep properly for about five days now and have, yet again woke up late which is, of course, incredibly frustrating as I have quite a lot of things to do over the weekend.

I would really like to share the reason for my sleepless nights or the type of work that needs doing over the weekend with your kind selves but I shan't.

Care to know why?

Well, honestly, even if you don’t, today’s entry is all about sharing and how you need to be very careful about what you are  sharing and whom you sharing it with.

Let us adopt a rather silly (and yet real...) example of what I mean by the above.

Say you and I are colleagues at work. One day you call in sick and email me that you have only done that so that you can search for your cat which, you believe, has ran away.

Now...why would you tell me that...?

Even though very few of you reading this article know me in person, I can guarantee that I am an overall nice chap. Thus, I shall never go to my boss and report the above occurrence.

But what if I include it in an article because it fits my Saturday column and my boss just happens to stumble upon my blog and find out about what has happened? (see what I did there?)

That’s when it all starts getting ugly; the reason for that is that you cannot blame me for what has happened because it was you who decided to share a rather silly bit of information with me.

If you think about, there is absolutely NOTHING that you could have gained when you shared the above with me. The only thing that you might have possibly got out of it is consolation and a the sweet satisfaction of just being able to tell someone.

But would it not have been more rational to tell your boyfriend? Or your mom? Or, Hell, even your neighbours whom you have not spoken to since their dog tried to eat your cat alive?

Also (and that might sound as fiction), what if your emails are monitored? Yes, yes, fine it’s hyper immoral and immensely unfair but I bet you that you have seen a lot more immoral and unfair things in this life (and others...).

Further, what is to say that if you get on my nerves one day, I won’t tell on you?

So, to conclude then, the only thing that you have done by sharing the above bit of information with me is that you have exposed yourself to some serious damage without thinking of a better defence mechanism than ‘No, that’s not true.’

When sharing, several things need to be taken into consideration:

• Is sharing this particular piece of information with the person going to help you out in any way, i.e., can the said person do anything about it?
• Is this particular piece of information personal and do I know the person that I want to share it with well enough, i.e. is there a chance of him using that information against me?
• Is sharing this particular piece of information going to bolster or damage the relationship between you and the person that you want to share it with, i.e. is it revealing anything that the other person might find inappropriate?
• Is sharing this particular piece of information of utmost importance to you or is it a mere temporary fancy, i.e. can you not keep it to yourself?
• Is sharing this particular piece of information with the person going to help you out more than it will help him out or damage you, i.e. can you strike a fair balance?

Sharing unnecessary information that does not, in any way or form, concern others can make you look like a fool who is simply looking to make himself interesting through a rather inappropriate medium. Furthermore, as discussed above, sharing information that could potentially damage your image, career or even health could prove to be immensely deleterious to your overall well- being.

To conclude, you must, at all times, be incredibly careful about the nature of the information that you are sharing as well as the traits of the person whom you are sharing it with.

To phrase it more dramatically, providing the enemy intelligence with the blueprints for your newest assault machine can, in the long term, have draconian consequences which can turn the tide of war against you (veeery poetic, I know.)