Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

June 20, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Confidence is generally a respectable and necessary workplace trait.

However, there is a darker side to confidence.

People who display overconfidence, hubris, and narcissism engage in self-destructive behaviors at work because their self-aggrandizement blinds them from their personal judgment and their managerial and leadership performance.

If you believe you may be displaying any of the following signs of excessive confidence, you need some coaching and feedback. Ask a trusted friend, colleague, or mentor for some honest feedback. Work to change your attitude—promptly.

You tend to believe that your ideas are the only ones worth acting on. When others contribute ideas and suggestions, you tend to turn them off while promoting only the ideas that you come up with. You tend to get angry with others for their unwise and impractical suggestions. You are resistant to learning from others or from previous experiences.
You tend to act on solutions without input from others. You believe that it is up to only you to supply new ideas and solve problems. You are convinced that you are the only one who knows as much as necessary to do the right thing. When others summon up ideas and suggest watch-outs, you tend to brush them off with “I know that” statements.
You tend to express an opinion on everything—even when the topic of interest is outside your area of expertise. You act as if you’ve accepted the reality that you have to work with less-qualified people who just can’t get the right things the right way (i.e. your way.) If only your opinions were considered and if you had your way, your team and company would do “so much better.”
You tend to defend your mistakes and your failures. You don’t recognize your limitations and the mistakes of your ways. You can’t take help. You are closed off to others’ feedback and suggestions for change.
You tend to externalize blame. You’re often a victim of everyone else’s failures or a victim of external circumstances. You gripe that others just don’t understand you or they aren’t qualified enough to see the wisdom of your ways.

If you can’t recognize and accept the problems related to how your behavior comes across to other people, you may be derailing your managerial and leadership potential.

Idea for Impact: Greatness lies in balancing self-assurance with self-effacement.

I recommend leadership coach extraordinaire Marshall Goldsmith‘s outstanding What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Addressing already-successful people, Goldsmith describes how personality traits that bring you initial career success could hold you back from going further!

Inspirational Quotations #689

June 18, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power if within, and it is available to you now.
—Eckhart Tolle

Nothing is so common as unsuccessful men with talent. They lack only determination.
—Chuck Swindoll

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
—John Cage

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.
—Max Beerbohm

A whipping never hurts so much as the thought that you are being whipped.
—E. W. Howe

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It’s just that the others are behind the time.
—Martha Graham

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.
—Orson Scott Card

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.
—Jim Carrey

There are wounds of self-love which one does not confess to one’s dearest friends.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
—Anonymous

There is strength in numbers and unity. That is the way you can kill an enemy. Just look at the collection of straws that make the roof of the hut. They protect us from even the heavy rains, alone none of those straws can do the same.
—Subhashita Manjari

Wisdom is the assimilated knowledge in us, gained from an intelligent estimation and close study of our own direct and indirect experience in the world.
—Swami Chinmayananda

The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
—Cecil B. DeMille

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.
—Charles Dudley Warner

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. If all of us think for the society and the country, all our problems will be solved.
—Swami Vivekananda

Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively

June 16, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, philosopher Daniel Dennett lists Anatol Rapoport‘s rules of constructive argument and debate:

Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent? If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent’s case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view—and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harboring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack. But such easy targets are typically irrelevant to the real issues at stake and simply waste everybody’s time and patience, even if they give amusement to your supporters. The best antidote I know for this tendency to caricature one’s opponent is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport (creator of the winning Tit-for-Tat strategy in Robert Axelrod’s legendary prisoner’s dilemma tournament).

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

One immediate effect of following these rules is that your targets will be a receptive audience for your criticism: you have already shown that you understand their positions as well as they do, and have demonstrated good judgment (you agree with them on some important matters and have even been persuaded by something they said).

This comports with the following sage advice gentle art of criticizing people effectivity:

“If you disagree with somebody, you want to be able to state their case better than they can. And at that point you’ve earned the right to disagree with them. Otherwise you should keep quiet.”
—Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner (see this article)
“The man who can hold forth on every matter under debate in two contradictory ways of pleading, or can argue for and against every proposition that can be laid down—such a man is the true, the complete, and the only orator.”
—Roman Orator Cicero (see this article)
“I have yet to find a more efficient and reliable way to probe the depths of a person’s knowledge and seriousness about an issue than asking them to explain the other side’s perspective.”
—Entrepreneur Ben Casnocha (see this article)
“If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.”
—Philosopher Anthony Weston in Rulebook for Arguments (see this article)
“When you think you can nail someone with your argument, take a breath & see if you can phrase it as a face-saving question.”
—Career Coach Marty Nemko

20 Reasons People Don’t Change

June 13, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

They Don't Want to Change

If you have trouble getting people to change, perhaps one—or more—of the following reasons are to blame:

They don’t want to change … they find reassurance in the status quo
Their environment is holding them back
They’ve tried to change in the past, failed, and have given up
Your coaching / feedback is garbled … the benefits of change are unclear
They don’t react well to criticism
They’re suspicious of your motives (i.e. fear of manipulation)
They see little incentive to change
They don’t know how to change
They have no role models
There’s no support (or resources) for change
Change threatens their self-image
They can’t tell what’s really important
They don’t feel courageous enough … i.e. they fear failure
They don’t feel enough pain yet
They’re overconfident or arrogant
They fear their weaknesses will be exposed
They’re too lazy and undisciplined
Change requires giving up something they presently value
They resist change that’s imposed from outside … i.e. they’re not intrinsically motivated for change
Change undermines their self-confidence

Idea for Impact: Temper your expectations of others. Old habits die hard. Even Einstein’s doctor couldn’t get the great physicist to quit smoking despite his deteriorating health.

Be realistic about changing others’ hearts and minds. If you can learn to accept them for who they are and let go of your conceptions of their perfection, your relationships become more richer.

Inspirational Quotations #688

June 11, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A closed mind is a good thing to lose.
—Muriel Strode

A noble deed is a step toward God.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland

An honor is not diminished for being shared.
—Lois McMaster Bujold

Courtesy is the oil that greases the wheels of life.
—Unknown

From tonight onwards, take complete control of your life. Decide, once and for all, to be the master of your fate. Run your own race. Discover your calling and you will start to experience the ecstasy of an inspired life.
—Robin Sharma

Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today and it will set the pace tomorrow.
—Frank Lane

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
—E. E. Cummings

Don’t confuse tact with cowardice. Sometimes, it’s wise to speak up boldly.
—Marty Nemko

Excessive anger is a great harm, but greater still is the unmindfulness born of excessive pleasure. Just as perpetual poverty slowly slays one’s knowledge, so does frequent forgetfulness destroy one’s prestige.
—Thirukkural

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.
—Coco Chanel

Of all vanities and fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Titles, indeed, may be purchased; but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.
—Richard Burton

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
—Luther Burbank

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
—Colin Powell

Great minds think alike.
—Common Proverb

We tell lies when we are afraid. Afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what other might think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But, everytime we tell a lie, that thing we fear grows stronger.
—Unknown

If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.
—Ben Casnocha

Release Your Cows … Be Happy

June 9, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

In response to my article on tempering our expectations and avoiding disappointments, a dear friend inquired,

I follow the idea that when one has no control over a situation, one should not have their desired outcome be their expectations or it will lead to disappointment. Ex: I want my favorite sports team to win, but I am not a player who can change the outcome.

But where does this leave someone with a grand vision or a 10-year plan? We all start out having to learn, having to grow, not having the answers, having to “figure it out”. Do you tell a young doctor “you can’t cure cancer”?

How do you bridge from this idea of expectations to one that explains how one can navigate through life and achieve great accomplishments, like finding a cure for cancer?

Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

We Suffer—and Make Our Loved Ones Suffer—when We Try to Hold on to Things

Life is enjoyable, joyful, fascinating, and purposeful because of the attachments we form. Nevertheless, Buddhism teaches us, the loss of these very attachments is the root cause of the worst pains in life. Even the realization of the prospective loss of a cherished attachment—a person, pet, feeling, hope, ambition, or an inanimate object—can make us suffer.

The Buddha taught that all conditioned phenomena (everything we can know through our senses) are impermanent and transient. Everything we come across and all our “encounters” end in eventual separation. Expounding this foremost ingredient of the Buddhist thinking, the renowned Vietnamese-French Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (b.1926) narrates a Buddhist parable in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

One day, after the Buddha and a group of monks finished eating lunch mindfully together, a farmer, very agitated, came by and asked, “Monks, have you seen my cows? I don’t think I can survive so much misfortune.” The Buddha asked him, “What happened” and the man said, “Monks, this morning all twelve of my cows ran away. And this year my whole crop of sesame plants was eaten by insects!” The Buddha said, “Sir, we have not seen your cows. Perhaps they have gone in the other direction.” After the farmer went off in that direction, the Buddha turned to his Sangha and said, “Dear friends, do you know you are the happiest people on Earth? You have no cows or sesame plants to lose.” We always try to accumulate more and more, and we think these ‘cows’ are essential for our existence. In fact, they may be the obstacles that prevent us from being happy. Release your cows and become a free person. Release your cows so you can be truly happy.

In a Graceful State, There is No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire

Though somewhat pedestrian, there is a profound wisdom in developing a sense of nonattachment (Sanskrit: upādāna.) Take for example our personal relationships. They are always a challenge because we keep wanting others—family, friends, and colleagues, even pets—to be who we want them to be for us. But if we can learn to accept them for who they are and let go of our conceptions of their perfection for us, our relationships become more straightforward and richer.

Often, the Buddhist concept of nonattachment is misunderstood as “non-loving” and relinquishment. The “absence of craving” (alobha) is the opposite of “craving” or “greed” (lobha). Nonattachment is not to abandon our loved ones, but to dispose of tendencies of self-protective clinging that preclude us from treasuring our loved ones more unreservedly and unconditionally.

All conditioned phenomenon are subject to emerging and passing. The more we attach to things that will change and pass away, the more we will suffer. The more expectations we have—for material success, for comfort, for exclusively happy relationships—the greater our inevitable disappointments.

Idea for Impact: Let Go, Be Happy

Release Your Cows » No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire Learn to let go of your metaphorical cows—those things you’re attached to. Only when you can get out of your own way, you can allow the world and its riches to work their magic. Embrace that prosperity.

Remember, nonattachment is neither indifference nor self-denial. Accepting the nature of our clinging and attachments in their true and transient nature eases our fears, opens our hearts, and benefits others and ourselves. Letting go of attachments is the secret to really enjoying life and loving others. It is freedom. It is nirvāṇa.

Bad Customers Are Bad for Your Business

June 6, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Herb Kelleher: “Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you.”

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines is a paragon of superlative customer service. Southwest’s happy and engaged employees routinely go out of their way to delight their customers. In spite of such remarkable devotion to customer satisfaction, there have been times when Southwest had to decide that some customers were just wrong for their business.

In the very entertaining and enlightening Nuts!: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg narrate how Southwest had to let go of a customer who couldn’t be less satisfied with her travel experience. This customer relations-story is best appreciated in light of the fun-loving and gregarious nature of Southwest’s legendary founder and ex-Chairman/CEO Herb Kelleher.

A woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’

Bad Customers: Wrong for Your Business, Wrong for Your Employees

Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Customer satisfaction begets loyalty, and loyalty begets revenues and profits. Businesses can therefore never place too much emphasis on their customers.

However, with slogans like “the customer is always right,” many businesses fall into the trap—and the slippery slope—of trying to satisfy every customer’s every wish.

Although your business may need all its customers—even the irksome ones—the reality is that some customers can actually be bad for your business. You can’t sustainably run a business without trying to satisfy every customer—particularly those cranky, annoying, or unreasonable ones.

Be wary of customers that fall into these categories:

Customers who require high maintenance but cannot be charged more
Customers whose demand for price destroys your profitability
Customers who want a lot more (better product, better service, better schedule) but are tightfisted
Customers who require supplementary services or products (especially those that are not part of your business’s core competencies) and tailored solutions that you don’t provide and can’t profitably offer to the rest of your customer base
Customers who don’t subscribe into the future vision of your business or your industry, which they’ll need to strategically commit to as some point in the future
Customers who tend to be aggressive and hostile, and disrespectful to your employees, regardless of how well they serve the customers

Strategic Customer Management Involves Being Tough Minded with Some Customers

Strategic Customer Management Considering your long-term business goals, sifting through who should and who shouldn’t be your customers is an important element of strategic leadership.

With every product or service you offer, focus on who you want your customer to be, what expectations they have of you, and what you can profitably provide to them. Once you have figured that out, customers who don’t fit well need to be managed judiciously and decisively.

Without strategic customer management, you run a risk of disrupting your ability to converge around the needs of your principal customer base.

Remember the notion of opportunity cost—every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something important.

Idea for Impact: Let Go of Some of Your Troublesome Customers

Sometimes, it may be better to lose certain customers by turning them down than to dilute your ability to serve other valuable customers profitably. Stop trying to delight every customer. Take a hard look at the past, current, and future of every customer and prioritize whom you can going to serve better and more successfully.

Inspirational Quotations #687

June 4, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Misery is a communicable disease.
—Martha Graham

He that lives long suffers much.
—Common Proverb

We are rich only through what we give; and poor only through what we refuse and keep.
—Sophie Swetchine

Where at all ethically possible, we must give others hope. Without it, a person figuratively or even literally dies.
—Marty Nemko

The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dare to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.
—Marian Anderson

A great deal more is known than has been proved.
—Richard Feynman

Yes, it’s better to suspend judgment rather than embrace error. But agnostic, neutral thinkers have little to say and less to teach.
—Ben Casnocha

Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
—Mark Twain

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
—Will Durant

It is a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.
—Steve Goodier

In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another.
—Richard Feynman

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—Helen Keller

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one’s own the suffering and joys of others.
—Andre Gide

Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles.
—Arabic Proverb

The milk fed to a snake only increases its venom. Similarly, the advice given to a fool leads to aggravation and not peace.
—Hitopadesha

The hardest type of criticism to take is about self-perceived strengths. Yet this is the most important to hear.
—Ben Casnocha

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
—Robert Fulghum

The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be

June 2, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You'll Be

Understanding the deep-rooted basis of our negative emotions and their destructive consequences can help us navigate the turmoil that sorrow, love, anger, greed, envy, pride, and fear can invoke in our lives.

American Philosopher William James on Emotions The pioneering American psychologist William James argued in his famous 1884 essay “What is an Emotion?” that emotions and their effects on our attitudes and our behaviors is bidirectional. That is to say, “bodily disturbances” are manifestations of our emotions and those reverberations are really the fount of the emotions themselves.

Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we could not actually feel afraid or angry.

“Geological Upheavals of Thought”

I’ve been reading American philosopher Martha Nussbaum‘s outstanding—albeit demanding—book Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. The initial chapters contemplate the power of emotions and the manifestation of emotions in all aspects of our thought stream.

One of the central positions of Nussbaum’s book is that our sentiments and emotions spring from internal narratives—the stories we ponder within ourselves about who we are and how we feel. Emotions are acknowledgments of our indigence and lack of self-reliance.

Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.

…

Emotions … involve judgments about important things, judgments in which, appraising an external object as salient for our own well-being, we acknowledge our own neediness and incompleteness before parts of the world that we do not fully control.

…

Emotions should be understood as “geological upheavals of thought”: as judgments in which people acknowledge the great importance, for their own flourishing, of things that they do not fully control—and acknowledge thereby their neediness before the world and its events.

…

Human beings … are the only emotional beings who wish not to be emotional, who wish to withhold these acknowledgments of neediness and to design for themselves a life in which these acknowledgments have no place. This means that they frequently learn to reject their own vulnerability and to suppress awareness of the attachments that entail it. We might also say … that they are the only animals for whom neediness is a source of shame, and who take pride in themselves to the extent to which they have allegedly gotten clear of vulnerability.

Nussbaum notes that our strong emotions stem from our intolerance and from the disruption to our internal narratives about what comprises perfection:

The emotions of the adult life sometimes feel as if they flood up out of nowhere, in ways that don’t match our present view of our objects or their value. This will be especially true of the person who maintains some kind of false self-defense, and who is in consequence out of touch with the emotions of neediness and dependence, or of anger and aggression, that characterize the true self.

Idea for Impact: People who lack the capacity to withstand psychological distresses such as anger, fear, frustration, and sadness are at a marked disadvantage in life. Learn to manage your negative emotions.

Right Attitudes

Tools for Personal and Professional Advancement

Top Blog Articles of 2017, H1

Inspirational Quotations #689

Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively

20 Reasons People Don’t Change

Inspirational Quotations #688

Release Your Cows … Be Happy

Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

We Suffer—and Make Our Loved Ones Suffer—when We Try to Hold on to Things

In a Graceful State, There is No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire

Idea for Impact: Let Go, Be Happy

Bad Customers Are Bad for Your Business

Herb Kelleher: “Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you.”

Bad Customers: Wrong for Your Business, Wrong for Your Employees

Strategic Customer Management Involves Being Tough Minded with Some Customers

Idea for Impact: Let Go of Some of Your Troublesome Customers

Inspirational Quotations #687

The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be

“Geological Upheavals of Thought”

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Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

We Suffer—and Make Our Loved Ones Suffer—when We Try to Hold on to Things

In a Graceful State, There is No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire

Idea for Impact: Let Go, Be Happy

Wondering what to read next?

Herb Kelleher: “Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you.”

Bad Customers: Wrong for Your Business, Wrong for Your Employees

Strategic Customer Management Involves Being Tough Minded with Some Customers

Idea for Impact: Let Go of Some of Your Troublesome Customers

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

“Geological Upheavals of Thought”

Wondering what to read next?

Archives

Shop at Amazon. Support a Noble Cause.