Right Attitudes

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Getting Along

Lessons from Airline Entrepreneur David Neeleman: Staff Your Weaknesses

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Airline serial entrepreneur David Neeleman has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) School was torture. He couldn’t focus, and he procrastinated constantly.

“I felt like I should be out doing things, moving things along, but here I was, stuck studying statistics, which I knew had no application to my life,” Neeleman once said. “I knew I had to have an education, but at the first opportunity to start a business, I just blew out of college.”

Despite his own struggles, Neeleman went on to build a stellar business career in the airline industry. He started Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue Airways, Azul Brazilian Airlines, and Breeze Airways. He’s even led the revival of TAP Air Portugal.

Through it all, Neeleman made the best of his strengths—original thinking, high energy, and the ability to draw the best out in people.

Far from lamenting his ADHD, David Neeleman celebrated it

Early on, Neeleman realized that he must manage his ADHD carefully. Throughout his career, he got help with his weaknesses.

People with ADHD tend to possess rare talents and gifts. They can be extraordinarily creative and original. They display ingenuity, and they encourage that trait in others. They can improvise well under pressure.

However, ADHD confers disadvantages too. People with ADHD are likely to be incredibly forgetful, disorganized, impulsive, and hyperactive. They drag their feet and miss deadlines. Their performance can be inconsistent. They can drift away mentally unless, oddly enough, they’re under stress or handling multiple inputs.

Sadly, modern society (including parents, schools, workplaces, and career counselors) tends to linger upon the negative symptoms and encourages people with ADHD to learn to cope with them. Strengths are more likely to go unnoticed.

Idea for Impact: Don’t let your weaknesses stop you from reaching your life goals.

In your work-life and outside, seek environments that allow you to bring more of your strengths to play. But don’t ignore your weaknesses (or the downsides of your strengths.)

Staff your weaknesses. Identify two or three key job activities that you don’t do well. Determine how you can delegate those responsibilities to others or seek help. This way, your weaknesses don’t become the Achilles heel that can hamper the strengths that make you effective.

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How to Mediate in a Dispute

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In mediation, the parties in disagreement work out a mutually acceptable solution with the help of a neutral, third party mediator.

If you’ve been called to serve as a go-between in a dispute, here’s what you can do to help promote mutual understanding and resolution:

  1. Set ground rules. Agree on how much time you’ll give to the mediation meeting. Keep the meeting close-ended. If there’re more than two parties, each with different views of a dispute, engage more than one mediator.
  2. Have each party prepare a brief summary of their positions before the mediation and send them to you, and, ideally, to each other. The brief can explain positions, rationale, and motivation. The brief can also contain each party’s summary understanding of the opposing party’s arguments and counterarguments.
  3. Insist that the each party have a clear understanding of their underlying intentions. What’s their best understanding of the basic objectives? What do they want to achieve? What’s rigid? What’s flexible? What are they willing to bargain?
  4. At the start of the mediation meeting, remind each party that mediation is a voluntary process. Your role is to help the parties reach an agreement, not to reach an agreement for them. Say, “Nothing lasting will happen unless each of you participates in the solution. Any agreement you’re able to reach must be your own.”
  5. Announce that your intention is to foster the interaction by helping each party understand one another’s perspectives and expectations. Encourage them to consider a wide range of solutions and to shun false dilemmas (“either-or” approach.) Push them to understand the other party’s underlying interests, not just their stated positions.
  6. Outline how they’ll work together during the process. Get them to agree that they’ll deal with matters in a non-confrontational way and be open-minded about what the other wants.
  7. Let each party make a preliminary presentation without interruption from the other parties. Then, encourage each party to respond directly to the other’s opening statements.
  8. If the communications break down completely, restart the mediation process by separating the parties and talking to each party separately. Go between the two rooms to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each position and to exchange offers. Continue the interchange until you’ve helped define an agreeable compromise.
  9. When you’re talking to each party separately during a break down in the discussions, help each party hear the views of the other and identify areas of common ground for a resolution. After independent caucuses, if possible, bring the parties back together to negotiate directly.
  10. Don’t stop each party from venting their frustrations, but try to keep them under control. If there’s rambling, gently pull the conversation back. Refocus on what needs to be achieved. Encourage them to remain open to persuasion.
  11. Even with a well thought-out approach, some disagreements turn ugly. Re-focus the dialogue on the future. Remind the parties that they can’t fight over something that’s already happened, but they can set a course for going forward.
  12. If the parties come to a resolution, draft the terms of a binding agreement and have both parties review it and sign it. Make sure the parties own the resolution, because they’re the ones who’ll live with the consequences.
  13. If the parties don’t reach an agreement, help them decide whether it’d be helpful to meet again later, use a different mediator, or try other ways to resolve the issues.

These books are most helpful in negotiations, either when you’re the mediator or one of the parties in conflict: Roger Fisher et al’s Getting to Yes (1991, 2011; my summary) and Kerry Patterson et al’s Crucial Conversations (2011.)

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Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work

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When politics and social issues are increasingly divisive, workplaces find it challenging to forbid political conversation entirely from the workplace. In April, project management software company Basecamp faced uproar when trying to ban politics at work. Co-founder Jason Fried announced that Basecamp would no longer tolerate discussions around political or social issues “where the work happens,”

Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy and redirects our dialog towards dark places.

Basecamp’s ban was meant to prevent distraction and souring of work relationships, but the mandate swiftly backfired. Twenty out of some 60 employees threatened to quit.

Banning Political Discussions Isn’t That Simple

I think banning political talk is a lazy way for leadership to not deal with issues like racism, misogyny, stereotyping, and contempt that may be festering among employees.

Often, when people say they want more political discussion in the workplace, they actually mean that they want more political discussion about viewpoints they want others to conform to. Workplaces with lots of political discussions are ones where most of the staff has identical socio-political leanings. Employees with divergent political leanings tend to be reticent and stay out of such talks.

It’s neither productive nor possible to not talk about politics and society at work. Companies can’t tell employees to not bring their real selves to work. People are opinionated about politics, and everyone has views and tries to defend them. Besides, politics isn’t a neatly self-contained issue that doesn’t overlap with anything else. When an employee’s attitudes aren’t in line with the company’s—or even the majority’s—attitudes, “put up or shut up” policies end up more damaging than the bickering or backlash they are intended to avoid.

Group settings are better when divergent opinions are known. An inclusive workforce must be able to embrace a diverse range of views. Conversations will come up anyway, and instead of banning these conversations and encouraging employees to take them outside of work, employers must institute protocols for airing and understanding opposing opinions and dealing with offensive behavior.

Idea for Impact: Canceling conversations about the significant issues of the day simply silences those with unpopular attitudes instead of encouraging a culture of growth.

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Mindfulness Can Disengage You from Others

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This BBC article warns that mindfulness has a way of stirring people to think of themselves in more independent—not interdependent—terms:

A recent study suggests that, in some contexts, practicing mindfulness really can exaggerate some people’s selfish tendencies. With their increased inward focus, they seem to forget about others and are less willing to help those in need.

To counteract these effects, experts suggest other mindfulness techniques such as “loving-kindness meditation” (deliberately thinking about our sense of connection with others) and “mindful listening” (paying particular attention to another’s descriptions of emotional situations.)

Mindfulness is an expansive nonjudgmental awareness of one’s experiences. While mindfulness may help you get a deeper understanding of yourself and comprehend “you” and “your mind stuff” deeper, it takes deep listening, sensitivity, and empathy to learn about “others” and “you and others.” As you tune more into yourself, you should become more able to tune into others.

The original practice and philosophy of mindfulness meditation actually consist of many of these other features mentioned in the BBC article. Somehow, those notions have gotten lost in the monetization and industrialization of mindfulness in the West.

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Entitlement and Anger Go Together

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Exaggerated entitlement could possibly explain what’s driving the recent surge of abusive or violent incidents on flights in America.

We live in a time where everyone seems hypervigilant to the point where even a slight snub can be taken as an act of deliberate aggression—either reactively or without provocation. People want to assert themselves, and every little social interaction seems to turn quickly into a battleground of entitlement.

Self-Protective Efforts Heighten Entitlement

To make things worse, air travel sits at the confluence of so many things involving so many people (and circumstances) where each “participant” has little direct control over what’s happening to them and others around. Political polarization and mask mandates seem to have intensified these anxieties too. Moreover, the FAA’s zero-tolerance policy toward disturbances and the threat of massive fines are unlikely to disincentivize passengers and staff in the heat of the moment.

When people feel entitled, they’re not just frustrated when others fail to acknowledge and entertain—even listen to—their presumed superior rights. People feel deceived and wronged. They feel victimized, get angry, and exude hostility. Worse, they feel even more justified in their demands and thus assume an even stronger sense of entitlement as compensation.

Idea for Impact: Entitlement and Responsibility are Inextricably Linked

Underlying this kind of anger process is a lack of separation of rights from responsibility. No professional, social, or domestic environment can remain stable and peaceful without everyone respecting the fact that rights and responsibilities are inseparable.

Nobody is entitled to compassion or fair treatment without acting on the responsibility to give it to others. If you don’t care about how others feel, you can’t demand that they care about how you feel. It’s a formula for disaster in human interactions.

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The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers

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Psychologists use the term realistic ignorance to explain the human tendency to believe that we’re normal—that the way we see and do things is entirely representative of everybody else.

Realistic ignorance is intensified by our natural desire to associate with people similar to ourselves.

Social media algorithms make this worse—they reinforce our attitudes but not change them. They steer us to the type of stuff we already know and like. They make it easy for us to form our own echo chambers, packed with people who share the same views. This causes confirmation bias. Tribal allegiances form flawed ideas and viewpoints about what is typical for organizations and communities.

Idea for Impact: Seek out and engage thoughtful folks who don’t think like you. Discuss, debate, and improve your reasoned understanding of one another and of the crucial issues. Your goal should be to enhance your own awareness of the counterarguments in contentious matters, not win over anyone.

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Avoid Control Talk

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If you tend to say the following to your employees, relatives, or friends, you may be too controlling:

  • “I don’t understand why you haven’t completed that report yet.”
  • “I want you to say sorry to Accounting about your problem. I need you to go over there, make amends with them, and inform me of how it went.”
  • “We will meet at 4 P.M.”

Control talk is expected and natural. It often transpires in day-to-day conversation as a device to influence or persuade the world to see and act our way. Within certain limits of performance, control talk is accepted in critical situations.

However, control talk can get out of bounds quickly and become perceived as a threat. When one party to any conversation has more perceived power—formal or informal authority, perhaps,—unreasonable control talk can soon push the other to concede this power imbalance and restrain what he/she wants. As the American family counselor Dr Tim Kimmel writes in Powerful Personalities (1993,) “Control is when you leverage the strength of your position or personality against the weakness of someone else’s in order to get that person to meet your (selfish) agenda.”

Control talk can promptly engender intense negative emotions. The ensuing conflict becomes evident in the tone of voice, posture, and facial and body expressions. After that, self-defensive reactions will only make matters worse.

Keep all communication with others candid and respectful. Frame your messages in a positive manner that does not contain sarcasm, imply warning, provoke guilt or blame, or suggest intimidation. Summarize what you heard, and ask questions. Practice pauses—they give the other a moment of silence to get beyond the emotional response and allow them to think cognitively.

Wherever possible, ask open-ended questions to de-escalate an argument. Open-ended questions are an invitation to be nonjudgmental, investigate, relate, and see things differently. Try these alternatives:

  • “Tell me more—I want to understand. What can I do to make your job easier?”
  • “Let’s discuss possible solutions to that Accounting problem. How can we change the situation?”
  • “Are you available for a 4 P.M. meeting? Let’s see what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Wise persuasion elegantly combines rational arguments and appeals to positive values and the other’s feelings about a subject. Only when you can engage them emotionally can you change the way they think.

Idea for Impact: When it comes to persuasion, knowing when to push and when to back off is vital. Nobody likes a pushy person.

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Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission

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A long time ago, I heard the managerial maxim, “you will move as fast as you can make decisions.” Amen to that.

That complements the mantra “’tis better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission”—that’s the oft-repeated rallying cry of entrepreneurial thinking.

You need to know when you shouldn’t—and can’t—wait for someone else’s approval to do the things you need to do to succeed. Every time you ask for buy-in, approval, or agreement, you’ll slow yourself down.

Depending on what’s at stake, you’ve got to know when moving forward does need consent. As with everything, you want to know your manager, team, partner, or spouse, how they operate, and their expectations for the group effort. If something’s an important-enough decision with high stakes, they’ll want to be in the loop.

Idea for Impact: Live speed. Where possible, don’t let dilly-dallying for permission endanger your decision-making success. It’s not about taking advantage of situations but about knowing when to push the boundaries. Where possible, aggressively move forward on your own and “get it done.”

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Ever Wonder Why People Resist Gifts? // Reactance Theory

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People are more likely to resist or reject well-intentioned proposals, advice, or gifts when it feels like their freedom is being threatened in some way.

For instance, I hate receiving clothes for gifts—clothing is mostly a matter of personal taste. I’ll grin and bear it. I may even wear said clothes once or twice just to please the giver.

Turns out that my indifference isn’t atypical. Psychological studies of the gift-giving process indicate that giving clothing gifts involves greater risk than with other kinds of gift objects. The chosen gift may not match the recipient’s self-image, identity, or dress style.

The so-called Reactance Theory explains why giving gifts and offering uncalled-for advice could rankle so much. According to the American Psychological Association,

Reactance theory is a model stating that in response to a perceived threat to—or loss of—a behavioral freedom, a person will experience psychological reactance (or, more simply, reactance,) a motivational state characterized by distress, anxiety, resistance, and the desire to restore that freedom. According to this model, when people feel coerced into a certain behavior, they will react against the coercion, often by demonstrating an increased preference for the behavior that is restrained, and may perform the behavior opposite to that desired.

Reactance can come into play when you’re persuading someone to buy a specific product at the grocery store, forbidding a child from using a mobile phone at school, or insisting that an employee perform some detestable task for the boss.

Idea for Impact: Think twice before you do anything that, though meant well, may threaten another person’s sense of behavioral freedom. People who are threatened thus usually feel uncomfortable and angry—even hostile.

In gift-giving, offering advice, or any other attempt at social influence, know your limits. Beware that it’s not always easy to recognize the limits until you overshoot them.

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Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People

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When somebody asks an invasive question that makes you feel offended, you’re never obligated to respond. Consider these smart responses.

  • A curious cousin: “I like your car/purse/home. How much did it cost?” Smart response: “Perhaps a tad more than I expected, but I like to pamper myself once in a while.”
  • Your inquisitive uncle: “How much do you make at this new job?” Smart response: “I do OK” or “I’d like to make more.”
  • Your snoopy coworker: “What was your doctor’s appointment for?” or “I heard you called in sick yesterday?” Smart response: “I’m just fine. Thanks for asking.”
  • The chatty visitor: “You’ve accomplished so much for your age! What are you? 30?” Smart response: “Still young at heart” or “I’m aging fast just thinking about it.”
  • A sneaky partier trying to estimate your age: “When did you graduate from high school?”Smart response: “When I heard Lucille Ball remark that a “man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.””
  • A zealous coworker who can’t stop talking about God: “What do you do on Sunday mornings?” Smart response: “I do non-work things.”
  • An office busy body suggests a date: “Do you think you could ask her out? I know she’s single.” Smart response: “I don’t know. I’d have to think about mixing work and relationships .”
  • A prying friend: “When are you getting married?” or “Are you guys trying for a baby?” Smart response: “I’m kinda private and would rather not talk about this.”
  • A wanna-be Judge Judy wants to solve your parents’ problems: “When are you going to move out of your parents? When will you get a real job?”Smart response: “When my parents start talking to me about it directly.”
  • An intrusive colleague who’s just learned you’re getting married: “Are you going to invite the deputy manager?” Smart response: “It’s up to me and my fiance.” You could add, “Actually, we’re having a small wedding. Just family and a few close friends.”
  • A nosy new neighbor: “What heritage are you? I mean, are you mixed race?” Smart response: “Good question. I’d like to remain mysterious.”
  • A perky lady in your yoga class: “You look great, how much do you weigh?” or “Have you lost weight this summer?” Smart response: “I don’t know—each time I step on the scale, it reads, PERFECT.”
  • A snooping friend asks you to share a secret: “What were you and Sally nattering about?” Smart response: “Can you keep a secret?” and when your friend says “yes,” sneer and say, “So can I!”

You can try to redirect the attention or leave the conversation by saying: “Let me refill my drink.” But some people just don’t get a deflection.

Responding snappishly but firmly will imply that that the issue is not open for further conversation. “Why do you need to know that about me?” or “Why do you ask?”

If somebody continues to badger you, assert, “it’s personal and I won’t discuss it. Please stop asking.” Be as concise as possible. You shouldn’t feel compelled to give an explanation or justify your unwillingness to talk about sensitive matters.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Feel Rude about Quelling Impolite Boundary-Violators

Most meddlesome people often lack self-awareness. Others may just be making friendly conversation and may not realize that they’re being tactless and prying. Yet others tend to over-share the personal and inappropriate details of their lives and assume it’s OK to expect you to too. We live in a “do ask, do tell” society.

Often, though, people just assume enough rapport to be able to ask delicate questions. Spending some time with friends and coworkers creates a false sense of affability and trust that really isn’t there. We’ve all made that mistake!

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