Right Attitudes

Good Boss in a Bad Company or Bad Boss in a Good Company?

July 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Who would you work for: a good boss in a mediocre company or a bad boss in a good company?

Without a doubt, your boss matters more than you realize. Having a good boss is one of work-life’s greatest experiences. A good boss can make work fun and meaningful and enriching.

Alas, the system of finding jobs is designed to let bosses pick employees, not the other way. You can’t expect to work at all times under a good boss.

Neither will you always have a chance to choose your boss (or your subordinates for that matter.) You’ll need to learn to get along with all sorts of people.

The Surprising Benefits of a Bad Boss

There’re quite a few reasons you’ll be better off for having endured a boss who’s insensitive, moody, manipulative, bad-tempered, or just plain incompetent.

If the boss is very good at doing something that you aspire to become good at, it worth your while to learn from a master in action. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, portrayed brilliantly by actress Meryl Streep in the movie The Devil Wears Prada (2006,) may be a terrible pain to work for, but she knows more about the fashion business than just about anybody else. Working as her assistant is a priceless experience, not to mention the exposure to some of the most influential people in the world of fashion.
If you have your antennae up, you can learn a lot about good management by working under a bad manager.
A stint at a company with an excellent reputation will give you a precious career credential down the road.

A Bad Boss Doesn’t Last Forever

All bosses—good and bad—will leave in due course. They’ll move up, out, or sideways. Organizational changes are widespread in good companies, and personnel departments tend to identify bad bosses and move them around.

Most companies make it easy to move between teams and groups. You can network your way into a fresh opportunity—perhaps with a better boss—within the company.

Think in terms of short-term pains and long-term gains. For the time being, working for a bad boss can a nightmare even in a good company. But in the long-term, until you or your boss can move on, you’ll have to make the best of the learning and networking opportunities.

You Can’t Always Pick Your Own Boss

Be mindful of the organization’s perception of you—do not allow your rocky relationship with your boss to typecast you as a “can’t-get-along.”

One of the best things about working in good companies is networking and becoming known to the people who matter. You can seek doors to new worlds, look for mentors who can guide your career’s progress, and scout job opportunities in other departments. Managers tend to fill up many internal job openings with candidates they have in mind already.

Sometimes You Should Stop Believing // The Case Against Hope

July 6, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Hoping for outcomes that are almost unfeasible is misleading—for example, hoping that you’ll win the lottery or that the victims of some deadly accident have somehow survived.

There is something about giving up hope and accepting the reality that is comforting

Research has suggested that letting go of hope can often set you free. For example, folks who hope for a miraculous therapy for a terminal disease are less happy than those who accept the hopelessness of the situation.

The life of the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl is particularly illustrative of the difference between false and realistic hope. When confronted by the reality of the Auschwitz and Kaufering concentration camps, Frankl did not wish to dig his way out of his prison. Instead, he acknowledged the bleak reality of the concentration camps, and hoped vaguely for something feasible and sensible—that the war could end and he may be set free. Frankl, who later established logotherapy, famously helped his fellow prisoners bear the horror around them by urging them to contemplate the lives they may lead after the war.

False Hope is Delusional, Realistic Hope is Worthwhile

Yes, hope can be life-affirming. It can give you the impetus to keep on in the face of struggle and disappointment. Hope—underpinned by hard work—is what made many a great achievement possible, from inventing life-changing drugs to dismantling racial segregation.

But false hope is deadly. It can shackle you to an outcome you long for but cannot achieve.

False hopes lead to disappointment. If you hope to become an eminent actor or a great chess player, your expectations are bound to be dashed. It’s much better to hope that you’ll enjoy acting or playing basketball and acknowledge the inadequacies you can’t overcome.

Don’t rehash false hope as optimism. Characterize it for what it is: the sweet illusion of denial. Don’t be fooled by the unbridled optimism espoused by our hope-obsessed culture.

False hope locks you into a concept—of people, situation, job, culture—that has little bearing on the reality. False hope will bind you to the idea of what could be, instead of what is.

Idea for Impact: Sometimes you should stop believing. Giving up hope and embracing reality can set you free. False hope is futile.

Inspirational Quotations #848

July 5, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.
—Saul Bellow (Canadian-born American Novelist)

Homesickness is… absolutely nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time… You don’t really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find.
—John Cheever (American Novelist)

My main point today is that usually one gets what one expects, but very rarely in the way one expected it.
—Charles F. Richter (American Physicist, Geologist)

That’s how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.
—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Indian-born American Novelist)

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Humanity is not the last rung of the terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each individual to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of this new species.
—Mirra Alfassa (French-Born Indian Spiritual Guru)

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing; yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.
—Zoroaster (Persian Religious Leader, Prophet)

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
—Karl Barth (Swiss Protestant Theologian)

We all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.
—Pope Francis (Religious Leader)

Friendships aren’t perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (American Writer)

We Live in a Lookist Society

July 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Irmgard Schlögl’s The Wisdom of the Zen Masters (1976,)

Wealthy donors invited Master Ikkyū to a banquet.

The Master arrived there dressed in beggar’s robes. His host, not recognizing him in this garb, hustled him away: “We cannot have you here at the doorstep. We are expecting the famous Master Ikkyū any moment.”

The Master went home, there changed into his ceremonial robe of purple brocade, and again presented himself at his host’s doorstep.

He was received with due respect, and ushered into the banquet room. There, he put his stiff robe on the cushion, saying, “I expect you invited the robe since you showed me away a little while ago,” and left.

That what you wear affects how others will perceive you is well-known empirically and has been established in scientific literature. People dressed conservatively, for example, are seen as more composed and trustworthy, whereas those dressed bold and suave are viewed as more attractive and self-assured. Women who wear menswear-inspired dress suits are more likely to be perceived well in job interviews. Men are shown to misperceive women’s friendliness as sexual intent, particularly when the women are dressed suggestively.

In the Second Quarto (1604) of Hamlet, Shakespeare, in the voice of the Polonius, declares, “For the apparrell oft proclaimes the man.” Mark Twain seemingly pronounced, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Several maxims remark about the notion that an individual’s clothing is confirmation for his/her personal, professional, and social identity:

In Egypt: “لبس البوصة، تبقى عروسة” or “Dressing up a stick turns it into a doll”

In China: “我们在外面判断这件衣服, 在家里我们判断这个人” or “Abroad we judge the dress; at home we judge the man”

In Japan: “馬子にも衣装” or “Even a packhorse driver would look great in fine clothes”

In Korea: “옷이 날개다” or “Clothes are wings”

Idea for Impact: We live in a lookist society. Always dress the part. Ignore this at your own peril.

Don’t Let the Latecomers Ruin Your Meeting

June 29, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Latecomers not only demoralize and disrespect those who turn up on time and have to wait around but also hurt the meeting’s productivity—especially if you have a tight and structured schedule.

Always start and end your meeting at the appointed time. Are your attendees tardy because they know that you don’t start the meeting promptly? Do you tend to wander off-topic?
Confirm that there’re enough chairs in the meeting room. A latecomer can disrupt a discussion by dragging chairs over from other meeting rooms.
Don’t reprimand or embarrass a latecomer during the meeting. Speak to her later. Does she understand that she has a clearly defined role in this meeting? (People are often late to events because they’re not entirely convinced about whether they really want—or need—to be there.)
Don’t go over an agenda item to help a latecomer catch up. Recapitulate the key points only if the latecomer’s inputs are necessary to what’s left on the agenda.
If you have a chronic latecomer, check if he has a schedule-conflict. Confirm that his participation is still relevant. If he doesn’t want to—or need not—attend the entire meeting, pull him to the top of the agenda. Let him contribute and leave.
Try to corral the chronic latecomers by stopping by their desks en route to the meeting.
Could you make the meeting more beneficial for all your attendees? Invite suggestions for mutual gain so that everyone feels more productive.

Also, be alert to power trippers who get a small thrill in keeping others waiting, and then requiring you to start over or recapitulate when they arrive.

Inspirational Quotations #847

June 28, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

We like someone because, we love someone in spite of.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Be bold. If you’re going to make an error, make a doozy, and don’t be afraid to hit the ball.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

Fools are more to be feared than the wicked.
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

Psychoanalysis can unravel some of the forms of madness; it remains a stranger to the sovereign enterprise of unreason. It can neither limit nor transcribe, nor most certainly explain, what is essential in this enterprise.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
—Howard Gardner (American Psychologist)

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
—Teresa of Avila (Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist, Essayist)

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
—Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

You never find yourself until you face the truth.
—Pearl Bailey (American Singer, Actress)

Easy way to soften a piece of feedback or criticism: turn periods into question marks.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
—Lily Tomlin (American Comedy Actress)

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

Why Your Employees Don’t Trust You—and What to Do About it

June 25, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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

You don’t model what you say.
You make promises you can’t keep.
You guard and selectively disclose information.
You don’t allow your employees to exercise their judgment.
You ask for input from your employees and ignore them.
You seek to monitor everything—including time spent on social media.
You tend to shift the blame.
You avoid giving credit where credit is due.
You ignore workplace concerns and problems until they become more significant problems.
You have double standards (employees tend to be especially very alert to this.)

Management scholars have suggested that trustworthiness entails three attributes: competence to perform tasks reliably (your ability,) having benign intentions (your benevolence,) and acting consistently with sound ethical principles such as fairmindedness, sincerity, and honesty (your integrity.) If you can exhibit these three attributes credibly and dependably, all will trust you. Get any of these three attributes wrong, and your standing will suffer.

Here are a few actions you can take to rebuild trust within your organization:

Communicate openly. Listen. Value everyone’s opinions equally. Involve employees in decision-making. Be as transparent as possible.
Empower employees. Encourage them to use their best judgment to identify and solve problems. Don’t be unnecessarily rigid with enforcing rules.
Make everyone accountable. Take responsibility. Invite and listen to feedback. Communicate expectations. Invest in commitments.

Idea for Impact: Trust is reshaped—strengthened or undermined—in every encounter

If your employees don’t trust you, then they won’t do what you need them to, and they won’t stick around long.

Trust is a consequence of your actions, not merely an intention or message. Trust is truly behavioral; it is complicated and fragile. Trust must be hard-fought, hard-earned, and hard-won every day, through actions, not words.

How Can You Contribute?

June 22, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The celebrated management guru Peter Drucker urged folks to replace the pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution. To him, the existential question was not, “How can I achieve what’s been asked of me?” but “What can I contribute?”

Drucker wrote in his bestselling The Effective Executive (1967; my summary,)

The great majority of executives tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors “owe” them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they “should have.” As a result, they render themselves ineffectual. The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in a person’s own work—its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts; in his relations with others—his superiors, his associates, his subordinates; in his use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports. The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results.

Peter Drucker: Focus on Contribution - How Can You Contribute? Pursuing contribution versus—or as well as—success pivots you away from self-focus and helps engage in meaningful relationships with your employees, peers, and managers.

In his celebrated article on “Managing Oneself” in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, Drucker clarified,

Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself—as it was for the peasant or artisan—or by a master or a mistress—as it was for domestic servants.

There is no return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Focusing on contribution instead of efforts is empowering because it compels you to think through the results you need to deliver to make a difference and identify new skills to develop. “People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves,” as Drucker remarked in The Effective Executive.

Inspirational Quotations #846

June 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
—F. H. Bradley (British Idealist Philosopher)

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

Sadness flies away on the wings of time.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

Love without friendship is like a shadow without the sun.
—Japanese Proverb

My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain—and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)

Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it—as long as you really believe 100 percent.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-American Actor, Politician)

Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion – what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Stains are not seen at night.
—Hebrew Proverb

Gifts make slaves as whips make dogs.
—Inuit Proverb

I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

Surrounded by Yes

June 18, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Social-Media Impose “Censorship” Through Recommendions and Filters

Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other media companies have built unbelievably powerful tools for collecting and organizing personal data. They’re developing and perfecting algorithms that track your activities and accumulate repositories of seemingly-trivial social media data.

They know whom you hang out with and what you like. And they can make extraordinarily good deductions about your demographics, social influences, political partisanship, social and economic preferences, and everything else. They’re influencing not just what content you see, but also which sites you visit in the first place.

These companies’ intentions are modest enough: to feed you the news you’re likely to want and to expose you to the kind of products and services you’re likely to respond to. The pages you’re shown are tailored for who you are, where you live, whom you interact with, and what you’ve previously clicked on.

The purveyors of the internet make money from advertising and paid subscriptions. Their goal is stickiness: they need traffic to thrive and prosper. Their success depends on their ability to draw you, keep you longer, and persuade you to return before you choose to leave.

Recommender systems have an enormous influence on the discourse you’re exposed to.

There’s a dangerous consequence here. What you should realize is that Google, Facebook, and Amazon have become gatekeepers of everything you see on the internet. Their content filtering and recommender systems are substituting editorial judgment. They’re not neutral and, given their economic objectives, often serve to amplify your biases.

The problem with filtering and recommender systems is that everybody likes them. The content you’re fed with is, in a sense, an endless stream of affirmations that you’re right—you’ll see more of what you’re interested in and associate with others who share your viewpoints. The consensus view is reinforced—the world seems to agree with you. Everything feels more normal!

On a broader scale, as people converge to likeminded people in virtual neighborhoods, you tend to operate in an intellectual bubble. Left to all these devices of today’s information-consumption patterns, much of your opinions and judgments are subjective, imprecise, incomplete, narrow-minded, or utterly unapprised.

All this has made it difficult for you to seek out contrasting views even if you feel so disposed. When you do venture out, all you’ll see are trolls who get offended by the slightest of disagreements—any attempt to challenge their beliefs is taken as a grievous insult. These trolls resort to bumper sticker-rhetoric, name-calling, demeaning attacks, and ill-informed declarations.

Idea for Impact: There’s Great Value in Listening Carefully and Charitably to Ideological Opponents.

Reach out. Consider alternative world-views that may cause you to philosophize differently. Find well-intentioned, respectful people who can challenge your viewpoints. Associate with ideological challengers who can help you improve your understanding of conflicting perspectives.

In On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not (2008,) neurologist and author Robert Burton argues that certainty is an emotion just like anger, passion, or sorrow. Once you develop a “that’s right” disposition about a subject matter, your brain subconsciously protects you from wasting its processing effort on problems for which it has already found a solution that you believe is good enough, and is continuously reinforced. In other words, your cerebral laziness could subconsciously lead you to “do less” by simply embracing a cast-iron certainty rather than re-examining your assumptions.

Don’t be lazy. Doggedly examine your biases and prejudices.

« Previous Page

The Surprising Benefits of a Bad Boss

A Bad Boss Doesn’t Last Forever

You Can’t Always Pick Your Own Boss

Wondering what to read next?

There is something about giving up hope and accepting the reality that is comforting

False Hope is Delusional, Realistic Hope is Worthwhile

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Trust is reshaped—strengthened or undermined—in every encounter

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Wondering what to read next?

Social-Media Impose “Censorship” Through Recommendions and Filters

Recommender systems have an enormous influence on the discourse you’re exposed to.

Idea for Impact: There’s Great Value in Listening Carefully and Charitably to Ideological Opponents.

Wondering what to read next?