What The Word Concede Means
What Is The Meaning Of Concede?
The question ‘what does concede mean?’ is a very common one. It crops up in many questions we ask our candidates for instance; ‘What do you believe is your greatest strength?’
In this article, I will not focus on the definition of the word ‘concession’ itself, rather what are the advantages it in the context of your career.
Many of my students ask me why they should concede meaning to others, especially in the context of their professional life. I always tell them that each candidate is unique.
What you might consider a great weakness or flaw in the candidate may be their greatest asset. What you might consider a huge strength could be their greatest weakness.
Your job as a tutor is to help your candidate understand how to both balance these two sets of strengths and weaknesses and how to develop a positive mindset so that they can overcome the potential pitfalls.
One of the most important things to know about a candidate is what are the defining moments of their professional career that might lead them to concede defeat.
For example in the Kannada State Election this year; candidates were caught in a trap set up by the incumbent.
They were running on platforms of change and transparency but when the truth dawned, they compromised those platforms and voted with the incumbent parties.
Once they realized that they would have to concede meaning to the ruling party in Kannada they never stood a chance of coming back to power.
There are times that a candidate will not necessarily concede meaning to the opposition.
In the case of the Punjabi/GERD-related riots in Germany last year there were a clear winner and loser, the innocent (Christian) victims of the violence and how the society views them.
On the one hand, the Christian Germans who was torched to death or maimed and forced to leave their home and suffer in camps and cold streets are trying to put themselves forward as respectable human beings.
On the other hand, the Punjabi/GERD community who rioted are seen as cowards for not standing up and taking orders from the police and society.
The police arrested more than 500 people, but still, there are many who have not even been charged or are under investigation.
Many politicians who lose are known to say that they lost because the message they were trying to convey was lost along the way. This is a valid point and yet it is not the point at all.
The point is that there should have been an exit strategy from the beginning.
Why did the leader not have a way out that could have been planned well?
It shows the lack of planning and discipline in the party that a simple exit was not foreseen and hence it happened anyway.
One must concede that words do matter.
They matter a great deal in this election where the contest is so tight and there are so many voters.
What one needs to understand is that words do have meaning and it is important to remember this when using them. One cannot just decide a phrase and leave it at that, there has to be some thought process involved.
The candidates that lose by using “concede” as their exit strategy should have had a plan B and C for how to handle the word “concede” in the final moments.
