It's Not Will Smith - It's Us

Why Are We So Surprised This Happened?

Why are we so shocked this happened? In a culture that glorifies violence - and I'm mainly talking about the American culture - Will Smith is not to blame for his actions. We are all to blame. Our leaders and celebrities are simply a reflection of society. In America all the big heroes are violent - everywhere from the NBA, the WWF, not to mention Hollywood - all the top entertainment is based on smacking the crap out of someone.

So let's be honest for once - all this political correctness and politeness is a big act. We learn from examples, and Americans are exposed to thousands of examples of violence every single day in everything from rap music to commercials, to video games - the list goes on and on. This is why American kids are conditioned from a very young age to be aggressive - and not being aware of this does not take anyone off the hook. When your kid gets in trouble for beating someone up in school, who is to blame? The parents. It doesn't matter if they were there when it happened or not - the parents are complicit. Just like all of us are responsible to a certain extent for what happened at the Oscars.

Nothing Can Stop The Ego Going on a Rampage

Why am I always talking about the growing human ego? Because if it's not restrained in any way through proper development and learning programs, we shouldn't be surprised when it erupts like this. If kids are allowed to play violent video games for hours on end and there are weapons in their home, we shouldn't be surprised when they walk into a public place and shoot everyone. Based on everything they see around them, that's how to be a hero. If we're not teaching youngsters - and adults - about the significance of our interdependence in 2022; if we're not investing in teaching people how to connect in an optimal way; if we're not talking about being conscious that we have this ego growing inside us more each day - let's not pretend to be shocked and outraged when it erupts this way. This is such a primitive way for us to communicate, by using force - exactly like we did hundreds or even thousands of years ago. We let the ego run wild and then we cry when people get hurt.

Nothing Can Restrain The Human Ego

Especially in such a liberal-minded democratic country where everyone can do whatever they want - god forbid Americans should restrict their ego in any manner. Everyone wants the freedom to make their own decisions regardless of the cost. So why is everyone getting so excited about this incident at the Oscars - where have you been up till now?

No More Flying Solo

Ashton Kutcher learned the hard way that there's a price to pay for tweeting out your unfiltered and unresearched thoughts to millions of followers. He got the message and immediately put his team in charge of approving his tweets before they go out. We can no longer rely on the individual ego to do the right thing. To be on the safe side, always do important things with a group. Because the ego can self-destruct in a second.

In today's fickle world, no matter how much we love a brand or persona, one bad move can change everything in an instant. We need to become aware that we have this thing inside us that needs to be tamed. Every single one of us. We need to be conscious of it and learn how to use it for the collective good. Otherwise it will be the end of us.

How One Slap Can Derail Decades of  Positive Branding

Will Smith is one of our top stars but this post isn't really about him. It's about any brand or persona that's invested decades of hard work building their image piece by piece over the years into something of tremendous value. In heated moments like this, it can all disappear in a second.

That slap reverberated around the world and gave millions of people the exact wrong example of how to solve issues between us. Not only did we adults get the wrong example, but all the millions of kids watching and talking about it on social media also did.

There's been thousands of posts and articles about the slap, and thousands more about the apology. I just saw a post about how the apology is a masterclass in how to manage things when you mess up badly - own it and apologize, blah blah blah. I don't care about any of that because it doesn't matter and won't fix anything.

The only thing I care about is understanding the reason why we feel the need to erupt like this suddenly. It's our growing human ego and we need to be aware that we have this excess of negative energy. If we don't want it to blow up in our faces we need to learn to use that extra energy for the good of the collective.

And did you see how Will Smith literally swaggered back to his seat? He was totally high on himself. He got a huge rush of adrenaline from letting his ego take the driver's seat, and didn't even bother trying to reign it in. So why do we suddenly erupt like this and make brash moves or statements that can derail decades of hard work? It's simply due to a lack of awareness of our inherent human flaws that we all have. And since we live in an interdependent world, I don't only need to be concerned about my own ego erupting, I need to be concerned about everyone's ego erupting It's impossible for me to reign my ego in on my own, but it is possible to transform the toxic energy of the ego into good by going through a human bonding experience in a group. This is why I'm always talking about the need to invest in human connection in general, and my Connection Workshops in particular.

A Self Ethics Check-Up Won't Stop Us

As I was writing this I came across a post by author / leadership expert Ken Blanchard, called Give Yourself an Ethics Check-Up. With all due respect to the thought leaders around me on LinkedIn - no human can evaluate the behavior of their ego in an objective way. It's really impossible. The goal is to see what things we can control such as our attitude. And I can see from the comments that people love this stuff! Instead of acknowledging that we have a serious problem to deal with we're always looking for the easy way out. I'll be posting about that tomorrow too. When do we wake up a bit? Whenever there's a huge crisis we start to understand that these things we do to make us feel better, to make us feel like we're doing something to improve our human behavior, are not going to cut it.

To be perfectly honest it's impossible to control our attitude or anything about our behavior on our own. We can only do this in a group of people all focused on the same goal, consciously rising above their egos together. It may sound like a big waste of time and energy right now, but trust me - from now on it's the only way to keep your brand safe.