Humility

Avoid Control Talk

June 3, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

“But, Excuse Me, I’m Type A”: The Ultimate Humblebrag?

February 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Our increasingly egotistical culture sanctions competitiveness, achievement-orientation, impatience, assertiveness, and work-fixation. Fine. But do we need to recast selfishness, greed, aggressiveness, and egotism as virtues?

Consider the assertion “I’m type A” you’ll often hear from people who’re harried and quick to anger. That expression has become the ultimate humblebrag—an announcement for the narcissistic self, indeed. It’s often a lead up to some form of a self-absorbed burden to be imposed on others.

Intense people are off-putting, particularly to laid-back types

The designation “Type A” was presented as a negative characterization in the 1970s by cardiologists—not psychologists—about people prone to so-called “hurry sickness.” These people tend to get angry and, consequently, have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Now then, “I’m type A” has become the special consent some people expect to be granted to be a bit infuriating. It’s a polite declaration of the self-conscious entitlement, “I have somewhat better standards. Sorry to be so persistent.” “Sorry to squeeze you dry on this project, but I’m driven to deliver my best.”

Idea for Impact: If you’re a Type A, by all means, be an overachiever, strong-minded, demanding, whatever. But be all these without being obnoxious or instinctively imposing uncalled-for pressure on everything and everybody and every time. Lighten up.

“I Told You So”

October 26, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Something goes wrong, and your frustration is so intense that you just can’t resist blurting out, “Told ya, I saw that coming” or even “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

The phrase “I told you so” one of the least justifiable in the language. It rarely generates a positive response, and it’s unfailingly damaging to marriages, friendships, and parents’ relationships with children.

Events and premonitions thereof make perfect sense with hindsight. Your loved one already knows that you were right, and she was wrong. Going through failure is hard enough. She doesn’t need you to pour salt on her wound.

At some point, when the dust has settled, you may say carefully, “Sweetie, this stinks. That surely did not go as intended. Perhaps we shouldn’t do that again.”

It’s never okay to do the “I told you so” spiel even if you have her best interests at heart. Keep your disappointment—or delight—to yourself.

Being right about something feels so darn good, doesn’t it? But hold your tongue on gloating. Give up that attachment to the need to be correct. Let your loved one be human—let her heal, learn, grow, and evolve.

Avoiding negativity in the supportive relationship sometimes means biting your tongue and allowing the pieces to fall where they may.

Give your loved one the positive support she needs and help her cope. If you are kind, she may be more willing to listen in the future.

Idea for Impact: In relationships, a little tact and a lot of silence go a long way.

I’m Not Impressed with Your Self-Elevating Job Title

October 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ben Horowitz of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz discusses giving employees ego-boosting new job titles to appease them for not receiving a promotion or a pay increase:

Should your company make Vice President the top title or should you have Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief People Officer’s, and Chief Snack Officers? There are two schools of thought regarding this.

Marc Andreessen argues that people ask for many things from a company: salary, bonus, stock options, span of control, and titles. Of those, title is by far the cheapest, so it makes sense to give the highest titles possible… If it makes people feel better, let them feel better. Titles cost nothing. Better yet, when competing for new employees with other companies, using Andreessen’s method you can always outbid the competition in at least one dimension.

And, as a counterpoint, the pitfalls of job title inflation:

At Facebook, by contrast, Mark Zuckerberg… avoids accidentally giving new employees higher titles and positions than better performing existing employees. This boosts morale and increases fairness. Secondly, it forces all the managers of Facebook to deeply understand and internalize Facebook’s leveling system which serves the company extremely well in their own promotion and compensation processes. He also wants titles to be meaningful and reflect who has influence in the organization. As a company grows quickly, it’s important to provide organizational clarity wherever possible and that gets more difficult if there are 50 VPs and 10 Chiefs.

It’s become trendy to create and bandy about outlandish job titles and inflate career profiles.

I’m never impressed with self-elevating titles (e.g., Revenue Protection Officer for a Train Ticket Inspector, Director of First Impressions for a Receptionist) that make you sound like a pretentious, egotistical, and obnoxious person.

Your job title is supposed to help me understand what you do without having to open up the dictionary.

Yes, vague and puzzling job titles surface partly because the world is changing, and so are trades and occupations. Some new job titles are going to be needed.

But it’d be great if we could get by with a much smaller and simpler inventory of descriptive job titles.

Idea for Impact: Avoid bogus grandeur—challenge job title inflation. Don’t assign senior-sounding job titles to those with middle-ranking wages.

Power Inspires Hypocrisy

July 27, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mark Hurd, whom I featured in Friday’s article, was one of the most respected and eminent leaders in Silicon Valley until his mighty fall following his dalliance with a contractor during his time as CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP.)

Hurd had hired this contractor, a glamour model, as a “hostess” for “executive summit events,” even at out-of-town places where there is no HP event, but Hurd happened to be.

Power Corrupts and Inspires Hypocrisy Hurd was ultimately exonerated of violating HP’s sexual-harassment policy (nothing was consummated with the contractor, and Hurd settled with the accuser for undisclosed terms) but he was officially charged with drumming up expense reports.

Hurd walked away from HP with a $34 million severance package. Almost immediately, he became co-president of Oracle, earning $11 million a year and options.

Much has been speculated about the real reasons HP’s board gave Hurd the boot, especially considering that he probably falsified his just an expense report just the once. Even then, said expenses were petty compared to the massive turnaround he had engineered at HP after walking into a very troubling situation. Hurd was famed for his no-nonsense management style and for finagling a culture of operational excellence at HP.

When the Hurd controversy broke out, Wall Street Journal’s Jonah Lehrer argued that when nice people rise to positions of power, “authority atrophies the very talents that got them there.”

The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude.

Contrary to the notion that nice guys finish last, research shows that the surest way to accumulate power is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But once nice guys reach the top, the headiness of wielding power causes them to morph into a very different kind of beast. They lose their ability to empathize with others, especially lesser mortals, and ignore information that doesn’t confirm what they already believe. Most tellingly, perhaps, they learn to excuse faults in themselves that they are quick to condemn in others. That’s not to say that every CEO is a secret villain. But even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

Idea for Impact: Power can become an enabler of corruption, deceit, and hypocrisy. People in positions of power have incentives to hold others to strict account for their behaviors even as they themselves act up, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

This is Not Responsible Leadership: Boeing’s CEO Blames Predecessor

March 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

David Calhoun, Boeing CEO In January, Boeing’s former Chairman, David Calhoun, became CEO after the board fired Dennis Muilenburg. Less than two months later, in a New York Times interview last week, Calhoun blamed Muilenburg for the misfortunes plaguing Boeing:

Asked why he wouldn’t give up his salary (he gets a $7 million bonus if he can get the 737 MAX back into the sky) in light of the 737 MAX-related woes, Calhoun declared, “… ’cause I’m not sure I would have done it [taken the job without a salary].”
On Boeing’s systemic culture problem (a steady trickle of revelations has exposed software problems and corners being cut in the engineering and certification processes,) Calhoun characterized the contents of the leaked emails as unacceptable but also downplayed the issue: “… I see a couple of people who wrote horrible emails.”
Calhoun has been on Boeing’s board since 2009. While the MAX crisis snowballed and Boeing’s crisis management went from bad to worse, Calhoun took over as the board’s chairman. In that capacity, he fully endorsed Muilenburg saying, “from the vantage point of our board, he has done everything right,” “he didn’t create this problem,” and “shouldn’t resign.” Now, in the last week’s interview, Calhoun had a different take: “Boards are invested in their CEOs until they’re not. We had a backup plan. I am the backup plan.”
Acknowledging that Muilenburg boosted production rates before the supply chain was ready, Calhoun declared, “I’ll never be able to judge what motivated Dennis, whether it was a stock price that was going to continue to go up and up, or whether it was just beating the other guy to the next rate increase. If anybody ran over the rainbow for the pot of gold on stock, it would have been him.”

Calhoun and the rest of Boeing’s board of directors were part of the context right from the outset. The roots of Boeing’s current crisis embody decisions made by the company’s leadership over a decade and fully sanctioned by the board. The board is wholly accountable for everything that happens under its authority.

Idea for Impact: Blame is an Accountability Killer

This is not responsible leadership. A true leader doesn’t pass the blame for failure but graciously accepts responsibility for the problems he inherited. Even though Boeing’s lapses may not be traceable directly to him in his capacity as a member of the company’s board, Calhoun should have acknowledged his—and the rest of the board’s—failing to keep an eye on Boeing’s leadership team over the last decade.

Leading with integrity means taking personal responsibility. It’s tempting for people to take flight and avoid the personal consequences of what happened, to reject personal responsibility, and to pass the blame on to other people.

Calhoun could have acknowledged that the board’s actions had a role in the situation. By facing up to these criticisms and admitting that Boeing and it’s board could have done things better, Calhoun could have encouraged others at Boeing to do the same, especially considering that he must overhaul the company culture from the top down.

Let’s Not Talk About Trump

March 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you feel like you’ve been overdosing on news and conversations related to politics and Trump, much to the exclusion of other meaningful subjects, try the “No Trump Rule” evoked by essayist Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal:

Every Friday I meet for lunch with three or four friends from high school days. I instituted at these lunches what I called the No Trump Rule: ‘No’ not in the sense of being against Trump’s politics but against talking about him at all, for doing so seems to get everyone worked up unduly. The rule, I have to report, has been broken more than the Ten Commandments. No one, apparently, can stop talking about our president. The Trump talk quickly uses up most of the oxygen in any room where it arises, and can bring an argument to the shouting stage more quickly than a divorce settlement.

Look, I understand that everybody has been amped up to eleven since Trump emerged as the Republican Party’s nominee in May 2016, but some of us don’t want to talk about him—or politics.

I, for one, don’t think it’s a good idea for so much of our news, talk shows, and social media feeds to be devoted to a single subject for this long. Yes, Trump is a polarizing figure, and our country is so divided. But we don’t need to let him, and the anger he provokes, besiege every moment of our lives.

Awareness and activism are vital to civic duty, but hatred isn’t meaningful activism

I’m happy to listen to everybody’s opinions, but I’m fatigued by the extent to which politics dominates present-day exchanges. Ordinary conversations about routine topics tend to degenerate quickly with any evocation of the current state of affairs. Even banter about the weather (“the last refuge of the unimaginative” per Oscar Wilde) can quickly spiral into climate change, the environment, fossil fuels, oil, Russia, Putin, and so on.

More than anything else, I can’t bear the way most people currently think about politics—in particular, how ill-informed they tend to be. I am dismayed at people’s shallow understanding of the significant issues of the day—immigration, trade, nationalism, economic inequality, healthcare, etc. The stakes are high, and, given the depth of people’s political convictions, their anger is understandable. Nevertheless, the propensity to lash out against those with different views and dehumanize them is deplorable.

I will talk about politics with people who aren’t as much interested in winning an argument and convincing opposing people of the wrongness of their positions as they are about understanding more fully why others hold a particular conviction.

Our values, not politicians, should mold the policies and positions we support

Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers’ commendable I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations (2019) proposes a framework for having productive political discussions with those you love and yet disagree with.

Somewhere along the way we stopped disagreeing with each other and started hating each other. We are enemies, and our side is engaged in an existential battle for the very soul of the country. We are no longer working toward common goals. We are no longer building something together. Our sole objective is tearing the other side down. Nothing short of total victory is acceptable.

…

The reality is that we never stopped talking politics altogether—we stopped talking politics with people who disagree with us. We changed “you shouldn’t talk about politics” to “you should talk only to people who reinforce your worldview.” Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to be molded and informed and tested by others’ opinions, we allowed our opinions and our hearts to harden.

The authors, hosts of a popular discussion-podcast, invite readers “to hear each other’s thoughts, to test our own beliefs against each other’s philosophies, and to better appreciate our own core beliefs by having to articulate and challenge those beliefs.” They emphasize an earnest curiosity for the counterargument and the open-mindedness to leave room for nuance:

Engaging with other people is never easy, but it always will be worth it. Engaging with other people about politics is no different. Let yourself take that chance. Let yourself rise to the challenge. Your ability to stretch and grow will surprise you, and so will the people around you. Once people see you as a person willing to have thoughtful, curious, calm discussions, you will have all kinds of interesting conversations that seemed impossible a year ago.

Postscript: Things are far more awkward in the workplace. Politics has always been a sensitive topic—but in today’s contentious climate, such conversations can rapidly escalate into arguments.

Question Success More Than Failure

March 5, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Katrina “Kat” Cole, formerly CEO of the American baked goods-chain Cinnabon, in an interview for Adam Bryant’s “Corner Office” column in the New York Times:

I’ve learned to question success a lot more than failure. I’ll ask more questions when sales are up than I do when they’re down. I ask more questions when things seem to be moving smoothly, because I’m thinking: “There’s got to be something I don’t know. There’s always something.” This approach means that people don’t feel beat up for failing, but they should feel very concerned if they don’t understand why they’re successful. I made mistakes over the years that taught me to ask those questions.

People tend to attribute failure to external factors and success to their own abilities and performance (see self-serving bias and Dunning-Kruger effect.) The human brain is indeed riddled with cognitive and memory biases that are conducive to making people feel like they’re good and capable, regardless of reality.

Idea for Impact: Luck is so much more important than we acknowledge. Most successes and failures in life combine both skill and luck. Understanding the relative contributions of skill and luck in failure—and success, as Cole suggests above—can help you judge past and present results and, more significantly, prepare for future results.

The Poolguard Phenomenon

February 24, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Even Petty Power Corrupts

Ever wondered why some people in a position of power, but without the concomitant rank or status, tend to exert their power unreasonably?

People in menial jobs can have, within their petty fiefdoms, the ability to inconvenience people. Rub a TSA agent the wrong way, for example, and you could be signaled for expanded screening. Summer-time poolguards can be seen checking excessively over kids and parents who show no deference to the poolguards’ authority. At bureaucratic offices, clerks and stern supervisors sometimes impose petty rules that must be followed for the sake of the rules—and nobody likes dealing with them!

The power tripper’s fragile ego hinges on exerting his/her power.

Power Increases People’s Sense of Entitlement

The Poolguard Phenomenon: Even Petty Power Corrupts This anecdotal fact seems to be substantiated by this study, titled “The Destructive Nature of Power Without Status.” The researchers make a case that neither power nor low status independently provokes people to mistreat others. Rather, the combination of these two facets of social interaction makes abuse that much more likely.

We predicted that when people have a role that gives them power but lacks status—and the respect that comes with that status—then it can lead to demeaning behaviors. Put simply, it feels bad to be in a low-status position and the power that goes with that role gives them a way to take action on those negative feelings.

One way to prevent such power dynamics is to find ways to make all individuals feel respected and valued irrespective of the status of their roles. “Respect assuages negative feelings about their low-status roles and leads them to treat others positively.” Courtesy pays!

Notes

Some people will despise anyone they suspect is exerting power over them.
Compare to the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which a group of students was appointed either prisoners or guards in a mocked-up prison. Although all the participants understood they were part of a simulation, the “guards” treated the “prisoners” in extremely humiliating ways because, per the researchers, the guards recognized that they lacked respect and admiration in the eyes of others. (This controversial experiment was the subject of a 2015 docudrama.)
Compare to the concept of the Napoleon Complex, through which, shorter men could overcompensate for their height by means of social aggressiveness. (Napoleon wasn’t short.)
Cf. The “Waiter Rule” states that how you treat seemingly insignificant people says a lot about your personality and priorities.

Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals

April 12, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Shrewd Leaders Must Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals Duplicity must be decried when used to justify the attainment and exercise of power. However, sometimes, even principled leaders must put on an act to realize noble ends—infuse optimism to surmount hopelessness, win followers’ devotion to audacious new ideas, for example.

In the Zen parable that follows, a warrior motivates his followers in the face of desperate odds. He persuades his outnumbered army by flipping an unfair coin and proclaiming that they are fated to win the battle.

A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one-tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt.

On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men: “After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If heads comes, we will win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand.”

Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily.

“No one can change the hand of destiny,” his attendant told him after the battle.

“Indeed not,” said Nobunaga, showing a coin which had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

Idea for Impact: Moral Leadership Relates to the Integrity of Leaders and Their Intentions

A wise leader must be open to bringing deception into play to smooth the way to sound decisions and noble results.

As long as leaders use these methods to respectable purposes, and until people wise up to their methods, certain ends can justify certain means.

Postscript: The quoted Zen parable is sourced from the celebrated compilation Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, Shambhala Edition (1961) by Paul Reps. This book traces its roots to the thirteenth-century Japanese anthology of Buddhist parables Shasekishū (Sand and Pebbles) compiled by the Kamakura-era monk Mujū.

Humility

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Intense people are off-putting, particularly to laid-back types

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Idea for Impact: Blame is an Accountability Killer

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Awareness and activism are vital to civic duty, but hatred isn’t meaningful activism

Our values, not politicians, should mold the policies and positions we support

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Even Petty Power Corrupts

Power Increases People’s Sense of Entitlement

Notes

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Idea for Impact: Moral Leadership Relates to the Integrity of Leaders and Their Intentions

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