I know the first thing that came to your mind when you saw the title is manipulating or hurting people to achieve one’s goals. YOU ARE WRONG. Being cunning is an art form. A tool that every career person or entrepreneur must possess to rise in their endeavour. It doesn’t necessarily mean being evil, although just like anything, it can be used for evil purposes. See it like this, advertising is not bad unless you’re selling a bad product, as such, cunning isn’t evil until your intentions are evil.
To protect what he loves, a man owes it to himself to be cunning. All men who wish to be strong and good and head a home must master the art of cunning, for cunning is merely a tool, not an instrument of evil, and when employed righteously – it serves the good.
Any man that has held a leadership position, e.g a father/husband, CEO, politician, cleric, lecturer, etc, will agree with me that it takes a level of cunning to rise to that position. The game is the game bro, whether you want to play or not is immaterial. The game is being played with or without your enthusiasm.
Opting not to play out of sensibility is tantamount to refusing to defend yourself. Low cunning is the reason why many people do not excel in office environments and therefore lose out on favours and promotions. If you can’t play the game, you will get fucked over, and if you think being able to strategize is unethical or beneath you, realize you sacrifice success to hold on to this belief.
Understand that cunning or “street smarts” is not tantamount to being unethical, or a shady evil. Many people also want what you have or gunning for and being cunning will help you to use enemies to your advantage and form stronger bonds with allies. It is the art of concealing your intent and methods whilst being able to understand other’s intentions and methods and planning your moves accordingly.
Before we continue, here’s a video of a doctor using the skill of cunning to inject a child.
THE GAME IS THE GAME
Many guys think the game is about getting girls into bed, that’s the most primitive form of the game. The game is a STRATEGY. The ability to optimize social outcomes in relationships, business, or career. Dissect how a pastor moves a church to tears by his preaching and they willingly bring out their wallet to sow seeds and offerings. Dissect how a politician reads out his manifesto and people vote for him. Dissect how a successful family man can manage his wife and kids and live happily. I can go on and on, but I’m sure you get my point.
If you don’t possess this trait naturally, it can be learned and the first step is to have the WILL to want to rise in life and make something meaningful out of your life. The second step is to play to your strengths, intellect, or physical features. You can check www.menstyleplug.com/leverage to get a better understanding of this. If you’re low IQ, you have a lot of work to do to be cunning, because you’re likely to undersell yourself or be vulnerable to exploitation by a cunning adversary. The generally dangerous people are the high IQ and cunning folks, they will wreck you. avoid them.
APPLICATION OF CUNNING
We already established that being cunning is not evil unless you decide to make it so, also it’s your ability to optimize social outcomes to your advantage. So, I’ll be talking about the application majorly for business and career.
CUNNING IN BUSINESS
The main critical tools here are charm and persuasion. Let’s touch on each component that makes up many businesses.
CUSTOMERS: Always make your proposition around FAST, EASY, and BETTER. Fast because human nature wants things now. Easy because people are generally lazy. Better because people feel they are entitled to ‘better’. Depending on the kind of industry you are in, these 3 items can be varied and applied. You just have to tailor it to your customer base.
SUPPLIERS: Always have options and make them know you have OPTIONS. A businessman with no option will be made to settle and have no leverage. Making them know you have options is to give you a discount and better deals, plus you make them work to retain you as a customer.
STAFF: Make them buy into the vision of your organisation. Create a dynamic of competition amongst them and reward the optimum performers. It’s ok to fire those that don’t meet expectations. The big idea is to get them to that point of believing they’re part of a family and it’s their business.
CUNNING IN CAREER
It is not news that there is a lot of politics that go on in corporate organisations. Who gets recruited and who gets promoted, plus all the competition or favouritism that takes place between staff or superiors and subordinates. Competence and hard work is not enough especially if you find yourself in an environment like Africa. The skill of cunning comes in handy if you have any plans of rising to the top ranks in any organisation.
COLLEAGUES: It’s imperative to know who has your best interest at heart amongst your colleagues and you make them an ally. You must put your ear down to be abreast of the latest information in your company. Know who your biggest competition is and outperform them in all tasks.
SUPERIORS: Make yourself noticeable especially when you do an exceptional work. Don’t let a supervisor or someone else take the credit for your work. Get close to decision makers, notice what they like and gravitate towards that.
SUBORDINATES: Know when to come to their level and be empathetic towards them. The so-called subordinate might be the one that will take your file to your superior for appraisal. Plus, subordinates usually have information that you may not be aware of. So, having them as allies can increase you chances of succeeding in the organisation.
HOW TO BECOME CUNNING
Just like every skill, it takes lots of practice to master cunning. You must also understand human psychology to do well at it. Dissect the personal qualities and components of the strategy employed by cunning people you meet. Read books by Robert Green like The 48 Laws of Power and books by Cialdini. Above all, see the corporate environment and business world as a battleground and deploy your skill as required.
In conclusion, hard work is good, competence is good, to be intelligent is great, but without adding the skill of cunning to all these, you may not achieve much. Look at all the super achievers around you, study them properly and you will see how they use cunning to their advantage. The lion isn’t just called the king of the jungle for nothing, asides from brute force, he employs cunning to get its prey, otherwise, it goes hungry if he decides to be a Mr. nice guy. Best wishes bro.
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