A number of people have expressed some confusion over how an Alpha can become a situational Delta or a Gamma can become a situational Alpha. They have a difficult time distinguishing between a man’s core behavioral pattern that defines his socio-sexual rank and his situational socio-sexual status at any given time. But this distinction shouldn’t be confusing, at least, not to anyone who is capable of describing themselves with two or more titles, such as father, nephew, friend, power forward, vice-principal, classroom teacher, and so on.
You don’t cease to be a father when you leave the house, drive to work, and sit down at your desk as the Southeast Regional Sales Director. It’s a different role in a different hierarchy, and the latter role has very different requirements than the former. But your role as a father is much more likely to influence your performance in your role as a Sales Director than the other way around.
What is more likely of the two following scenarios?
You’ve got to get your numbers up, son! Put that cookie down! Cookies are for A-students only! I don’t care what your Mommy said! You call yourself a student, you son of a bitch? I can go to your school tomorrow with the materials you got, and crush every class in two hours! Math, English, Social Studies, fucking Health and Gym! Can you? Can you? Go and do likewise!
Look, Johnson, I know you’re having a rough time with the BME account. You probably didn’t know, but I used to have that account back in the day. Is Linda still busting balls in receivables? Here’s the thing. You just have to be patient, reel them in carefully, like a trout on a six-pound line, once you get a nibble. I know you can do it! You just hang in there now, all right?
In like manner, the core pattern will always influence the situational performance. A Gamma is going to tend to gamma whether he’s a CEO or the low-man on the IT totem pole. An Alpha is going to alpha whether he’s the star quarterback or a gunner on the suicide squad covering kickoffs.
Now, people don’t know what a man’s behavioral pattern is before they meet him and have the chance to observe him and interact with him. But they usually know his situational status in the current context. And since certain behavioral patterns are correlated with various situational statuses, people tend to expect those behavioral patterns to be exhibited by people filling those roles. But, as we know, that’s not always the case.
The thing about situational status is that it’s always temporary. The high school quarterback can find himself going from an Alpha star player to an Omega who isn’t even on the team in nine months. But that won’t change who he is or how he tends to comports himself.
In high school, I went from star striker one season where I scored a goal in every single game to a pedestrian substitute with only six goals all season the very next. But at no point did it change who I was or my social status at my school; I didn’t show up for either homecoming or prom, and the only girl from my school I ever dated was one from another school I had already dated before she transferred to my school our senior year.
Make a Sigma a starter and a captain or leave him on the bench, it’s not going to change anything about him. In fact, my senior year, our varsity soccer team used to play gossip trivia while we stretched out; the game was to say something only you knew about someone else and the rest of the team would guess who it was. It actually turned out to be an excellent bonding exercise. I was always the answer to “this guy’s going out with a girl from [a different school]” which the guys came to find amusing since there were several different schools referenced over the course of the season.
I suppose it was particularly funny to the other seniors, because we had known each other for six years at that point and they knew perfectly well that I never, ever, went out with, or even asked out, any girl from our school. It’s hard to change the fixed perceptions of others, or imagine that they have been changed.
The one reason that being able to correctly identify your own SSH pattern is useful is because it allows you to seek appropriate situational roles and avoid those situational roles in which you are likely to fail. The situations will change, but the core behavioral pattern remains.
Situational. Can a man tire of being a leader, tire of being asked to head up another task force or committee, or serve on the church council again and again? Tire of being asked for his opinion all the freakin time? Is the role for life or do alphas move to delta status at periods in their life, maybe a decade here and there? Would this be considered situational yet your status is what it is, was and will always be?
On a vaguely related note, Tubcuddle's creepy-as-a-millipede Tumblr page makes me feel better about almost every woman I've ever dated. Nines pages of photos and all of them together don't add up to a 10.