Günümüzün Yitiği: “Ustalık Meyli”

Extended Summary

The It is seen that people can remain superficial rather than penetrating deeply in the way they think, do business, approach facts and events. They can prefer quantity to quality. It may be enough for them to meet the expected competencies rather than focus on the best they can do. They may prioritize comparing themselves with others instead of comparing themselves with their own. Instead of perseverance and patience, their ambitions can prevail. In brief, their life goals can be focusing on passing, beating, winning to others instead of being useful to others, developing and learning. Considered within the scope of goal orientations in the literature, mastery / performance distinction is an attitude / style distinction that shapes both the process and the result and the way of doing business.

It seems that the mastery orientation sacrificed to the standard, ordinary performance expectations is gradually decreasing. The speed awaited by the age, the paradigm of scarcity and the fear of missing out; constantly supports comparison and competition. People have been on the make and patience and hurriedness have been increasing. People often prefer more, although the results are superficial. Everyone neither can reach the level of self-actualization, nor has anxiety about depth. The desire to keep up with everything or do many things at the same time leads to sloppy work. The attitude of not valuing people and things has been developing. Worthlessness gradually corrupts people. Being superficial can gradually become a character. In this case, man sees everything as a commodity. He cannot see the core, value and wisdom. Instead of having a mastery orientation, performance-oriented thinking is to sacrifice depth and uniqueness for standard and ordinary performances.

Mastery oriented person tries to describe, explain and understand the existing in the most accurate way. Performance oriented people have weaker sensitivity about this. It’s satisfying to have enough results. Our minds are often caught in the dilemma of whether it is a life with the paradigm of mastery or a life related to performance / result orientation. When this question is asked to our conscience and the meaning of life is questioned again; answers are received beyond the performances. Along with the question of what we are doing or how we do it, initially the question of why we do it should be answered. What do we represent or serve for? How accurate are our descriptions of success or competence? Could we actually limit ourselves by focusing on our ordinary descriptions of success? Do we find our work meaningful?

Being mastery oriented or living with constant performance pressure is also related to human upbringing. With the parent who praises, compares, or even acts conditionally on the result; Parents who praise effort, pay attention to diligence, and care about the process greatly influence the individual’s tendency for mastery or performance. Parents who ‘praise the result’, ‘compare’, ‘act conditionally’ cause a performance-oriented individual to grow up. But parents who praise effort, pay attention to care and care about the process greatly affect the individual’s mastery orientation. Besides; The context in which the individual grows up, climate and environmental factors are also effective in the formation of this tendency. Like soil, air and water that are necessary for the growth of the plant; it is a basic determinant in the ‘neighborhood’ where the person is raised and located. The neighborhood’s value to principles and procedures will shape the way people interpret work/task and the value attributed to work/task. Therefore, people should have the will to choose the environment in which they live and the people with whom they will do working.

In this article, we wanted to present a principled attitude, based on rational logic, conscience and scientific research, about the way of doing business in life, by means of the paradigm of mastery. In order not to be abstract, we have made comparisons performance orientation with mastery orientation. With various research findings, we have supported the disadvantage of working to achieve or blowing off by thinking not to achieve. While criticizing performance orientation, we have handled the philosophy that supports the mastery orientation. By prioritizing the mastery orientation existing in every job, whether it is intellectual or physical, we have stated that performance is just the result of mastery thinking and work. We wanted to be source of inspiration to many works that are on the right axis in the dilemma of purpose-result.