Assertiveness

How to … Know When it’s Time to Quit Your Job

September 1, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If there’s an acid test for how to know when it’s time to stop and do something different, it’s this.

When you come home from work, and pretty much all you want to do is slouch on the sofa, order takeout, and watch silly videos on TikTok, it’s time to find something else that meshes with your interests and aspirations more closely.

For many people, the central challenge of work-life should be, “How do I bring more of myself to my work?” Your job should make you sweat a little bit, in a good way.

So, when you start to believe you can’t do better, when you start to feel pretty indifferent about what you’re doing, and it’s sapping you of all energy, it’s time to evaluate whether you have the right job at the right company and whether you’re doing the right thing.

Idea for Impact: Above all, whatever you do, work should add energy to your life, not sift it away. Work at a personal plan, and periodically follow up with those who may be able to open doors for you.

Competitive vs Cooperative Negotiation

August 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Does a competitive person make a better negotiator than a cooperative person? Wharton professor G. Richard Shell’s insightful Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (2006) contends there isn’t a straightforward answer.

Competitive people don’t mind interpersonal friction and thus initially have the upper hand over less aggressive personalities with little appetite for friction. However, competitive people generally lack skills in managing relationships, which gives cooperative people an advantage in situations where interpersonal trust over the long term is crucial. It’s easier to negotiate against someone who has a similar personality. Negotiation gets dicier when different personality types mix.

How to improve your results? Practice. Prepare through information-gathering and setting achievable but optimistic targets for the negotiation process.

The Great Resignation, The Great Awakening

July 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Great Resignation hasn’t been just about burnout. It’s about a “Great Awakening,” notably for many folks in middle management.

Obliged to stay in their homes during COVID, they’ve reevaluated their lives while cherishing the extra time with their families and engaging in other interests. Discussions of work-life balance came into renewed focus.

As part of this great rethink, people are unwilling to sacrifice as much for a work-life balance. Some middle managers are increasingly disinclined to take the next step in their careers because “onward and upward” isn’t as appealing as it used to be, and the price to climb the corporate ladder is too high. These people are keener on setting career paths based on their own values and definitions of success.

Not that their ambitions have changed, though. But they aren’t driving for the same things they were driving for ten years ago. But they’re reconsidering how they can keep contributing to their organizations—on their own terms. They’re willing to come to terms with “career plateauing,” unhooking from the pressure to pursue an upward path someone else has set.

They may still derive a certain sense of identity from their jobs, but they’re seeking other ways to seek a more fulfilling life. They’re no longer pushing for the more prestigious title, the broader responsibility, the bigger raise, and a larger team. Instead, they’re taking energy that had been directed primarily on goals defined by the employer and focusing it elsewhere.

Idea for Impact: As part of this great rethink, reassess your options. Set clear boundaries on your willingness to sacrifice to strike a better work-life balance. Think strategically not only about the work you enjoy but also about the life you want to lead.

Is The Customer Always Right?

July 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

No matter how finicky or rude a customer is, many businesses make employees treat bad customers with unquestioned respect or risk reprobation—even getting sacked.

Per the well-worn business adage, is “the customer is always right?” No, they’re not. Sometimes they’re wrong, and they need to be told so.

Your goal should be to do business with people that you enjoy doing business with. Some customers simply aren’t good customers. They don’t follow directions and complain irrationally. They have unreasonable expectations, and they treat your people rudely.

Idea for Impact: A prudent maxim is, “the customer is usually right.” Put the customer first, but don’t get mistreated by them. Putting the customer first doesn’t mean putting employees second. As a business, you must let customers be wrong with respect and dignity; but employees should be authorized to caution some customers, “After due consideration, we believe your actions are unacceptable. Persist, and we’d choose to lose your business.” Some bad customers are just bad for your business.

Almost always, though, unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning; they can especially offer an honest assessment of the expectations you’re setting. Customer satisfaction with a transaction depends on their expectations going into it.

The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle

July 11, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Art of War, Chinese strategist-philosopher Sun Tzu’s treatise on military strategy, is studied not so much for the advice it gives but for the state of mind it encourages. Developed in only six thousand Chinese characters and 25 pages of text, this way of thinking has held vast sway in such fields as military planning, strategic management, and negotiating. “Every battle is won or lost before it is fought.”

Something exceptional about the Art of War is the extent to which it’s devoted to methodically avoiding battle altogether. War isn’t something to be entered rashly or for petty reasons. “A sovereign should not start a war out of anger, nor should a general give battle out of rage. While anger can revert to happiness and rage to delight, a nation that has been destroyed cannot be restored, nor can the dead be brought back to life.”

Nor is war’s dominant purpose to cause physical destruction to an enemy. Instead, the pinnacle of military skill is to conquer one’s opponent strategically—by penetrating his alliances, rattling his plans, and coercing him diplomatically—without ever resorting to armed combat. “Why destroy,” Sun Tzu poses, “when you can win by stealth and cunning? To subdue the enemy’s forces without fighting is the summit of skill.”

Sun Tzu’s insistence that an enlightened strategist can attain victory without fighting echoes the foundational Taoist doctrine of “non-action (Wu-Wei.”) Armed conflict, therefore, is the last resort. War in itself represents a significant defeat. As a matter of course, Sun Tzu allocates a good chunk of the Art of War to the line of combat and attack. A savvy general must, however, take every accessible measure to gain victory swiftly, with minimal casualties and suffering for both sides. “The best approach is to attack the other side’s strategy; next best is to attack his alliances; next best is to attack his soldiers; the worst is to attack cities.”

Again and again, through implication, Sun-Tzu’s war document posits peace and restraint—the avoidance of battle—as the utmost victory. To fight at all, Sun-Tzu insists, is already a substantial loss, much worse than losing in war.

Idea for Impact: The Art of War is a worthy course on conflict management because avoiding confrontation requires more remarkable skill than winning on the battlefield.

Don’t Manage with Fear

June 16, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The ability to rouse fear has forever been an essential tool of management. Fear can be an effective mobilization tool in the short term. But fear breeds complicity, not commitment.

Instead of fear-based tactics, try soft power. Build trust and gain influence using these methods.

Develop an inspiring vision. Work hard to follow through on implementing that vision and celebrate even little accomplishments along the way.
Communicate expectations. Ask, “How can I help you do your job better?” Follow up. No need to keep everything too close to the vest. You needn’t tell everything you know, but what you say and do has to be true.
Solve problems quickly. Push for results. Set aside some time for review and create options or actions that are apt for your team’s situation. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be.

Idea for Impact: Don’t take the fear approach with employees. With motivation, fear works—up to a point. Understand how your people view your leadership style and ensure your behavior doesn’t cross the line between pushing them hard and pushing them away.

Great Jobs are Overwhelming, and Not Everybody Wants Them

June 13, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of my friends, a senior executive at a Fortune 500 firm, recently said, “no, thank you” when asked if he’d like to be considered for the post of CEO of his company.

My friend is an ideal CEO candidate: he’s accomplished and well-liked, he’s about 10 years from retirement, he’s been a company “lifer,” and he’s worked hard grabbing the gold ring.

When I asked what caused this change of mind, he reflected, “At what cost, however?”

Well, his response wasn’t unexpected. A successful corporate career demands a high level of performance for sustained periods.

Ambitious professionals, especially top performers, have started to think differently about the tradeoffs of a demanding job. They’re asking questions such as “How much is enough?” and “If I get that job, what is it that I’m giving up?”

Most new CEOs are overwhelmed, disclosing that their jobs are more demanding, complex, and stressful than expected. Little wonder, then, that the average CEO’s tenure has gotten shorter over the years.

The brutal reality is that CEOs have less time than ever to prove their worth. The tolerance for mistakes and short-term underperformance has really gone down.

CEOs have to perform or perish. The CEO job is no longer a tenured role, and the ground has shifted over the decades. Several factors have made the jobs of business chiefs much more complicated than in the past. There’s immense pressure to produce consistently excellent results and keep everybody satisfied. It’s so stressful just working hard to keep the job. Then there’s the unremitting pressure of walking a tightrope; managing the conflicting interests between various stakeholders is exhausting.

CEOs’ performance must be more transparent than ever due to the never-ending demands imposed by global competition, geopolitical volatility, technological disruptions, ever-watchful regulators, increasingly engaged boards, and the specter of activist shareholders. A job with such challenges can quickly overwhelm, and CEOs end up working days, nights, and weekends in a futile attempt to pull free. They feel guilty about sacrificing precious family time for their work.

Above all, CEOs feel lonely at the top—being “where the buck stops,” they don’t have anyone to confide in. CEOs tend to isolate themselves due to the overwhelming responsibilities and the pressure to appear calm to employees.

Idea for Impact: Not everybody wishes to climb the top of the ladder. A high-pressure climate is not for everybody. Remember, burnout happens not when you work too much but when you invest emotionally in work and don’t get a commensurate return.

What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

May 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Choose Wonder Over Worry (2018) self-help author Amber Rae recalls novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s interaction with a wise older lady who was helping Gilbert with her struggles as a writer:

Lady: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep saying you want?”

Gilbert: “You’re right—I need to start saying no to things I don’t want to do.”

Lady: “No, it’s much harder than that. You need to learn to start saying no to things you _do_ want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This anecdote is such a powerful illustration of how saying ‘no’ is so much easier when you’re clear about your priorities.

That’s what focus really is—saying ‘no’ to things you’d like to do so that you can free up your time to focus on the pursuits that truly matter—even tasks you have to do, even if they don’t energize and excite you.

Idea for Impact: Setting boundaries isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to establish an overall sense of well-being. Every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something else.

Don’t find any excuse to say ‘yes’ to what shouldn’t be done.
Don’t find any reason to say ‘no’ to what should be done.

The Rule of Three

February 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A familiar technique in rhetoric is to group in threes because people can hold only a few items in short-term “working” memory.

The Olympic motto: Faster, Higher, Stronger
Rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
Fire safety technique taught to children: Stop, Drop and Roll (should their clothes catch fire)

Three-part lists are particularly appealing because they suggest unity and wholeness. Lists comprising only two items seem inadequate. Lists of four or more are unlikely to be recalled entirely.

Idea for Impact: Follow the rule of three to create simple, concrete, and memorable messaging in persuasion—be it in arguing, storytelling, or advertising.

Plan Your Week, Not Your Whole Life

December 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t set unrealistic expectations for yourself. No matter how ambitious and eager you are, no matter how talented you are, there’s a limit to how much you can “produce” in a given time. Moreover, even if you get 24 hours to work, you’re restricted by the amount of energy you’ll have.

Much of long-term planning is guesswork or an expectation of the continuation of prevailing trends. The future can’t be predicted with absolute certainty. At the most, you can be somewhat confident about what might happen in the next few weeks or the upcoming months.

Idea for Impact: Plan Weekly, Review Daily

You can’t identify a precise point in the long-term future and then work yourself from here to there. You’ll be better off if you explore like the Italian navigator Columbus, and just head in a general westerly direction. In other words, have a long-term orientation but operate with medium-term plans. Restrict yourself to a few but significant quarterly goals.

Each week, develop weekly milestones that contribute to the quarterly goals. And each day, schedule 15 minutes to go over your progress and fractionate weekly objectives to daily working goals.

Life is unpredictable, and it is great to have some big things planned out, but not your whole life. A fine-grained approach to goals and planning can help you adapt quickly for survival and success.

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Assertiveness

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Idea for Impact: Plan Weekly, Review Daily

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