Conflict

Fight Ignorance, Not Each Other

November 24, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Demonization in the Era of Hyper-polarization and Hyper-politicization

We live in a era of hyper-polarization and hyper-politicization. Studies suggest that we Americans have mostly devolved to two political groups that fervently believe that all wisdom resides in their particular standpoints and therefore care less and less to empathize with the other side.

People loathe the “other” ideological group with such visceral obsession that their hate pollutes their minds. Thanks partly to social media, self-organized tribes are isolating themselves into geographic, religious, ideological, educational, ethnic, and media bubbles of like-minded crusaders.

As I wrote previously, studies have shown that hanging around a group of likeminded folks can make people even more scornful of differing viewpoints, than they are as individuals. They demonize anyone who disagrees with them. They neither account for the case against their positions, nor find middle ground.

In the wake of the 2011 Tucson shooting (where perpetrator Jared Loughner shot and killed six individuals, and injured 14 others at a political gathering,) meditation teacher James Baraz of wrote a Huffington Post essay underscoring the ignorance that brings about the aforesaid demonization:

The real villain is in this story is not Jared Loughner. It’s not the media. And it’s not the gun rights advocates. The real villain is ignorance. Because of ignorance, people project their fear and turn those who are different into enemies—both in their minds and in actuality. Once you demonize the “other” they become less than human and you can inflict pain on them without guilt or shame.

Stop Trying to Prove Yourself to the World

October 9, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When you assess your life and become conscious of how you look at the world and how you look at yourself, you may realize that you often obsess about what people think of you.

In the delightful and poignant Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart, the Soto Zen teacher Blanche Hartman (1926–2016) explains that freeing yourself from being controlled by what other people think is the key to living life with a composed and peaceful mind:

I noticed somewhere in the early years of my [Buddhist] practice that my big effort was to get people to love me. I really wanted people to love me. And what I discovered in practice was that it really didn’t matter what other people thought. The one whose love and appreciation and approval I wanted was right here, and I wouldn’t give it to myself. What I found out was that no matter how much approval I got from outside, it didn’t count if I was not able to appreciate myself and be willing to be who I am. Whatever this is, it has becomes this over an accumulation of the actions of body, speech, and mind of more than eighty years. It’s my creation in a way. And yet it’s really helpful if I acknowledge it and befriend this being that I have created with the help of all the beings with whom I have shared my life.

Be Your Own Person

Stop trying to prove yourself to the naysayers and critics. Avoid assertive behavior and insubordinate conduct that intends to prove you’re worthy to others. You don’t need others’ approval.

Idea for Impact: Don’t fritter away precious time and energy seeking to prove your worth and worrying that you could fall short. The right people will love you for who you are.

Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire

September 20, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire People tend to have contempt for ideas that they disagree with. What’s worse is the possibility that some people, when presented with information that goes against their beliefs, may not only snub their challengers, but also double down on their original viewpoints. Cognitive psychologists call this the backfire effect.

For instance, voters have been shown to judge the political candidate they support even more favorably after the candidate is attacked by the other party. In the same way, parents opposed to vaccinations have been shown to become more convinced of their alleged apprehension that vaccination causes autism after reviewing studies showing that vaccinating their kids is the best course of action.

The backfire effect explains why, when people argue against conflicting information strongly enough, they wind up with more supportive arguments for their cause, which further aligns them with their preexisting positions.

The backfire effect is related to confirmation bias—the rampant propensity to seek, interpret, synthesize, and recall information in a way that substantiates one’s preconceptions. For instance, when people read an article that describes both sides of an issue, they tend to select that side that they happen to agree with—thus reinforcing their viewpoints.

See also: the phenomenon of group polarization explains why people who share opinions and beliefs get together in groups, they tend to be even more persuaded in their beliefs.

One of the Tests of Leadership is the Ability to Sniff out a Fire Quickly

July 18, 2017 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes a disaster

I’ve previously stressed the importance of problem-finding as an intellectual skill. I’ve also highlighted why risk analysis and risk reduction should be one of the primary goals of any intellectual process. In this article, I’ll write about being proactive in identifying problems before they evolve into crises.

How Wells Fargo Failed to Recognize a Problem and Address it before it Became a Bigger Problem

As the Wells Fargo accounts scandal unfolded, it was clear that Wells Fargo’s leadership was well aware of the burgeoning problems early on, but failed to act decisively and nip the problem in the bud.

Given impossible sales quotas to reach, Wells Fargo’s “high pressure sales culture” opened as many as two million bank and credit card accounts on behalf of its customers without their consent. Employees were rebuked or even fired for not meeting aggressive cross-selling targets.

Human nature is such that high-pressure demands can deplete the willpower people need to act morally and resist temptations. And such demanding circumstances encourage people to go into defensive mode, engage in self-interested behaviors, and consider only short term benefits and dangers.

Leadership Lessons from the Wells Fargo Accounts Scandal: “A Stitch in Time Indeed Saves Nine”

Leadership Lessons from the Wells Fargo Accounts Scandal Wells Fargo’s leadership reportedly had data about ethical breaches, but they ignored or misjudged the impact of the problem. Wells Fargo even held a two-day ethics workshop in 2014 unequivocally telling their employees not to do that. As per an internal review, managers knew that 1% of employees had been fired for “sales integrity” violations.

Wells Fargo’s leadership didn’t act quickly and decisively to mitigate the effects of the crisis. Warren Buffett, one of the Wells Fargo’s biggest investors, summarized this leadership inaction at the 2017 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting:

There were three very significant mistakes, but there was one that was worse than all the others … The main problem was that they didn’t act when they learned about it … at some point if there’s a major problem, the CEO will get wind of it. And at that moment, that’s the key to everything, because the CEO has to act. It was a huge, huge, huge error if they were getting, and I’m sure they were getting, some communications and they ignored them or they just sent them back down to somebody down below.

Leadership: “Only the Paranoid Survive”

Andy Grove (1936–2016,) the illustrious cofounder and CEO of Intel, was a famous worrier. At Intel, the focal point of Grove’s leadership style was worry and skepticism. He believed that business success contains the seeds of its own destruction, and that in order for an organization to have longevity, it needs to continue to worry about the future.

Grove’s principle was immortalized in his famous proclamation, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” He eloquently explained his worrisome mantra in his bestselling corporate memoir, Only the Paranoid Survive (1996.) He wrote in the preface:

The things I tend to be paranoid about vary. I worry about products getting screwed up, and I worry about products getting introduced prematurely. I worry about factories not performing well, and I worry about having too many factories. I worry about hiring the right people, and I worry about morale slacking off. And, of course, I worry about competitors. I worry about other people figuring out how to do what we do better or cheaper, and displacing us with our customers.

At Intel, worrying about the future created a culture of triumph that propelled change and innovation. Grove never let Intel rest on its laurels and led the company to break boundaries in microprocessor innovation. During his tenure as CEO from 1987—98, Intel’s stock price rose 32% a year. Grove also said, “A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.”

Idea for Impact: Learn to Sniff out a Fire Better than Anyone Does

The principal tasks of leadership are (1) identifying the biggest risks and opportunities, and (2) allocating organizational resources. Therefore, one of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes a disaster. If identified and addressed early, nearly any problem can be resolved in a way that is beneficial for everyone involved.

Many leaders tend to be reactionary—they claim, “why fix something that isn’t broken.” Even when they see an impending problem, they may assume that the problem “isn’t that big of a deal” and wish the problem will just go away. Alas, many problems never go away; they only get worse.

To become a good leader, be paranoid—always assume that “there’s no smoke without fire.” If, according to Murphy’s Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, the paranoid leader has an advantage.

Whenever you are doing anything, have your eyes on the possibility of potential problems and actively mitigate those risks. Never allow a problem to reach gigantic proportions because you can and must recognize and fix it in its early stages.

As the medieval French philosopher and logician Peter Abelard (1079–1142) wrote, “The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.”

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 effectively:

“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

How to Handle Employees who Moonlight

September 27, 2016 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Handle Employees who Moonlight Moonlighting—working a part-time job or having a business “on the side”—can pose a challenge for employers. Moonlighting can lead to divided allegiance, conflicts of interest, and poor job performance.

Employers expect employees to be present and prompt at their jobs. If employees are hustling to attend to multiple commitments, fatigue, lack of sleep, poor attentiveness, tardiness, and absenteeism can become problems. When an employees’ moonlighting hurts their on-the-job performance, employers are within their rights to discipline and terminate employees. For these reasons, some employers limit or prohibit moonlighting.

The proactive approach to moonlighting

One way to head off moonlighting problems is to have a policy about part-time jobs and running side businesses. Institute a policy that sets performance expectations, protects proprietary information, avoids conflicts of interest, and averts divided allegiance. Your moonlighting policy cannot regulate employees’ off-duty activities or prohibit employees from having other jobs. But it may expect employees to disclose and get approval for supplementary employment. A moonlighting policy may also require senior managers and leaders to disclose directorships and financial interests in other companies.

Tell employees they can’t mix their business with your company’s business

If you find an employee doing side work for pay from your office, tell him that this is a clear violation of office expectations; he should conduct no business other than your company’s during work hours. Tell your employee, “You can’t mix your other business with our business. Your time at this job should be exclusively for this job. Our company resources are for our company’s purposes only.”

If your employee gets occasional calls that he needs to attend to, reiterate the above expectation and encourage him to answer the calls during break time and away from his desk. Encourage him to respond to those calls with “I’m at my other job right now. Let me call you back later.”

Discourage employees from selling stuff to other employees

Problems from employees moonlighting in part-time jobs and running side businesses If you find an employee selling stuff to other employees or soliciting outside business during paid working time, discourage it as soon as you discover it. Explain how this interferes with your office’s work.

Discourage your employees from turning your office into a showroom and making customers of other employees. Selling merchandise could impair work relationships when a buyer is unhappy with a product or service. Worse yet, side-businesses can easily grow unmanageable in case of network marketing programs (e.g. Amway, Herbalife) that encourage upselling or getting others involved as salespeople.

Employees can involve their colleagues in side-businesses outside your office, as long as such activities don’t harm at-work relationships.

Idea for Impact: Managers can forestall many employee problems by being proactive and setting expectations

In general, moonlighting is neither unethical nor illegal. It may become an issue when the employer specifically prohibits it and/or where the other job is with a competitor, supplier, or customer and is therefore a potential conflict of interest. The only time you really need to challenge an employee’s moonlighting is when it can affect your business in terms of conflicts of interest and deficient work performance.

Bear in mind: don’t overlook or disregard such concerns until they become major problems.

Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing

September 23, 2016 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This spring, I attended the 2016 annual meeting of shareholders of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited in Toronto. Fairfax’s chief executive Prem Watsa opened his remarks with the following joke:

A young boy enters a barbershop.

The barber whispers to a customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other. He then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” says the barber to the customer. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves the barbershop, he sees the same young boy coming out of an ice cream store licking a wafer-style ice cream cone.

He summons the boy and asks, “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? … Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licks his cone and replies, “Sir, because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”

Although the barber sought to characterize the young boy foolish, the joke was really on the barber.

The barber never suspected the boy’s recurring motivation to seem stupid. Additionally, the barber never learned his lesson or questioned his own assumptions.

Idea for Impact: As the above joke attests, being underestimated, underrated, or misjudged can often have its benefits. Don’t sweat when others think less than you actually are. Don’t let them make you feel small. Embrace their misjudgments with equanimity. Believe in yourself with humble confidence. Then outthink, outsmart, and outperform. Surprise them.

How to Argue like the Wright Brothers

February 15, 2012 by Nagesh Belludi 2 Comments

Wright Brothers: Orville and Wilbur

The Wright brothers, most notable for inventing powered flight, also enjoyed developing their critical thinking by fiercely debating with each other.

Wilbur and Orville found debating and challenging each other’s viewpoints was a constructive way to identify solutions to a myriad of problems or resolve their interpersonal conflicts.

The Wright brothers often took two different sides of an argument, debated the subject, then switched sides and debated the opposing argument. Orville Wright once narrated, “Often, after an hour or so of heated argument, we would discover that we were as far from agreement as when we started, but that each had changed to the other’s original position.”

Idea for Impact: Only when you contrast your point of view with an opponent’s does your own make sense. Use the Wright Brothers’ technique of double-sided debate to question your own preconceptions about an issue and appreciate alternative perspectives.

Any Crisis Calls for Constant, Candid Communication

July 3, 2010 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

As the current crises at Toyota and BP highlight, how you respond to a problem or crisis is the ultimate test of your leadership character. Knowing how to step up your communications efforts to the right levels during disorder can be a powerful tool in managing a crisis. Here are seven key lessons for communicating during crises.

Be visible. Communicate and lead from the front. In a crisis, your key constituencies (your board, management, team, government, or the public) insist on hearing from the leader. Stay engaged and maintain consistency of purpose and action. Keep all the lines of communication open.
Communicate in real-time and explain your position. If you do not communicate frequently with your key constituents, somebody else will. In the absence of information, people will develop their own perceptions of the problem and its implications. Keeping your constituencies well informed diffuses many suspicions and uncertainties.
Be transparent and forthright right from the beginning. Face the realities of the problem and its potential consequences. Acknowledge what you know about the problem or crisis and go into detail about what steps you are taking in response. Proactive communication is reassuring and prevents perceptions of negligence and evasion from becoming realities.
Research thoroughly the challenges you face and your options for remedial actions. Be prepared to describe everything that matters at each moment. Carefully administer your communication plan with due consideration to possible litigations and penalties.
Be objective and calm. Avoid engaging in finger pointing and playing pass-the-parcel. Avoid criticizing and discrediting the victims or critics. Continuously verbalize empathy and responsibility, and announce plans for early resolutions and restitution.
Remember that your attitude sets the tone for the rest of your organization. If you take a defensive position, play victim or engage in finger pointing, the rest of your organization will react the same way. Through your communications, set a positive tone to build confidence within your organization and promote constructive responses.
As soon as the crisis dissolves, research and communicate opportunities to make fundamental changes to improve your organization. Reiterate your core values and missions. Revamp internal practices as necessary and follow through on all initiatives to rebuild your credibility. Consider organizational changes and new processes for managing future crises.

[Effective Arguments] Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective

December 12, 2008 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“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.”
– Cicero

“If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.”
– Anthony Weston, ‘Rulebook for Arguments’

Explaining the Other Side of the Argument, An Opponent's Perspective

Explaining the Other Side of the Argument

Entrepreneur and blogger Ben Casnocha presents an effective discussion / debating / interviewing technique:

Here is one of the simplest ways to test someone’s knowledge of an issue: ask them to explain the other side of the argument. Ask the person who’s in favor of spending more money on marketing project X to explain the thinking process behind those who oppose the budgetary move.

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.

How can you effectively argue for your side if you don’t understand the arguments of the other?

Never Limit Your Ability to Learn From Opposite Perspectives

Never Limit Your Ability to Learn From Opposite Perspectives Habitually, we discard contrasting opinions without making an effort to explore their significance. We shape our attitudes and seek facts to support our own beliefs without contemplating the merits of opposite perspectives. We fail to realize that, when we do not understand opposite perspectives enough to justify their merits, we almost certainly do not understand them enough to dismiss them either.

Develop the curiosity to see the world from new perspectives and discover opposite circumstances, whether you believe in them or not. If you follow faith X, attend services of faith Y; if you are conservative, explain the liberal outlook; if you hold the western philosophy on a particular subject, reason the eastern viewpoint; if you oppose a particular legislation, argue the merits of legislation. Instead of asking ‘ why ,’ ask ‘why not .’

When you pause arguing with an opposite perspective and try arguing for it, when you switch your point of view briefly, you will witness a profound shift in your thinking.

Your own attitudes may look different when seen from the opposite perspective. It can help you reinforce your own beliefs and attitudes. This approach may open your mind to discover the merits, similarities, and weaknesses of your arguments that may not be obvious from your own side of the board.
People are often glad to work with anyone who is accommodating and tries to understand their perspectives. Therefore, your ability to persuade others improves.

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Conflict

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Be Your Own Person

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How Wells Fargo Failed to Recognize a Problem and Address it before it Became a Bigger Problem

Leadership Lessons from the Wells Fargo Accounts Scandal: “A Stitch in Time Indeed Saves Nine”

Leadership: “Only the Paranoid Survive”

Idea for Impact: Learn to Sniff out a Fire Better than Anyone Does

Wondering what to read next?

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The proactive approach to moonlighting

Tell employees they can’t mix their business with your company’s business

Discourage employees from selling stuff to other employees

Idea for Impact: Managers can forestall many employee problems by being proactive and setting expectations

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Explaining the Other Side of the Argument

Never Limit Your Ability to Learn From Opposite Perspectives

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