Work Matters

Tag: Assertiveness

  • How Would The Dalai Lama Tell Someone To Fuck-Off?

    One of the themes I have been writing about lately is on The Delicate Art of Being Perfectly Assertive. I have been focusing on this skill as a hallmark of great bosses, but I have been noticing lately that it is also a hallmark effective people more generally.  I love working with moderately pushy and competent people — be it my research relationships, other colleagues, my clients, the folks who often write me emails and comment on this and other blogs where I post, or friends and acquaintances.  I don't like dealing with flakes who never answer or follow-up.  But I especially don't like dealing with people who treat everything as an emergency that needs to be done right now.  I can think of at least five different types of people who drive me especially nuts in this regard:

    1. Friends and colleagues who believe that their concerns are ALWAYS so important that they can interrupt whatever I am doing.  I had one colleague who, although she was competent and caring in many ways, believed that whatever concern she had was so important that regardless of who I was meeting with, she had permission to barge into my office, drag me out into the hall (or if it was a student, she often ordered the student in the hall), and then press her (usually) non-urgent issue on me.

    2. People who are very flaky about answering my questions and inquiries, but whenever they have a question or concern, they make very clear — using terms like ASAP or those awful exclamation marks in Outlook that their concerns must be answered right now, no matter how trivial.

    During the years that my wife was managing partner of a large law firm, she always described the use of those exclamation marks in emails as a personality characteristic.  She had some partners who never sent emails about anything without using those things.  Recently, I was dealing with a corporate lawyer over the release of a teaching case and — although there were perhaps 15 people involved in the discussion from four different organizations — only one person used those awful exclamation marks and used words like "urgent" and "ASAP," the lawyer.  I wrote him a note saying that he was doing a disservice to himself and his profession by using such repeated and claims of urgency, as it reinforced negative stereotypes of lawyers.  I also noted that he was the least responsive person in the group to requests from others.  

    3. People who I have never met, but insist that their questions or
    concerns are so important that I must drop whatever I am doing right now
    to deal with their concerns.      As readers of this blog who email me
    or make comments know, I really do try to be responsive to everyone's
    emails and questions.  But I can only move so fast and must do triage.  I
    got a phone call from a woman — followed by an email — I have never
    met the other day demanding that I stop everything I am doing and help
    her with deal with her asshole boss.  I feel bad for her and I try to be
    responsive to such people, but her request came on a day that my dog
    was very sick, and I had to deal with that.  She wrote back a couple
    more times and I can't bring myself to answer her emails.

    4. People who show no respect for the fact I have a personal life and a family, and there are many times when those concerns come first.   Frankly, I am pretty aggressive about pushing back when people do this to me.  I really do put my kids and wife first most of the time.  But I do have some colleagues who treat this a weakness and press me to change priorities.  I have become especially clear on this since having open heart surgery in April.  

    5. People who won't let a conversation end.   I am a pretty friendly guy, but like everyone else, I have lots of different things to do, and there are some people I deal with who don't seem to get even the most blatant efforts to end the conversation.  Saying "I have to go now, I am late" seems to cause some of colleagues to block the door or grab my short so I can't leave!

    At this point, I best emphasize that I am not perfect and have committed all of the sins listed above.  But I am trying to do such things less and hope I am making progress.  In closing, I have two questions for you:

    1. What kinds of overbearing people do you find especially distressing?

    2. How can you fight back against such intruders without being an overbearing jerk yourself?  In my old age, I seem to be using passive aggressive methods more — being especially slow to respond to people who want an instant answer for example.   I still use confrontation but am trying to learn to be more polite about it.

    This reminds me, I had a colleague ask a really funny and intriguing question a few weeks back: How would the Dalai Lama tell someone to fuck-off? I am using that as a headline because I think that might be the skill required here — the ability to gently, firmly, and graciously assert yourself.  And it is a great question — and it is a great book title too! 

  • The Delicate Art of Being Perfectly Assertive: The 4th Belief of Good Bosses

    I put-up a new post over at HBR this morning, which is the 4th in what will ultimately be 12 Things the Good Bosses Believe.  This fourth belief builds on research showing that the best bosses strike the middle ground between being too assertive and not assertive enough — the press their people hard enough to motivate and guide them, but stop short of being overbearing or micromanaging to the point of pissing-off followers or undermining their confidence or work.  As I say in the post, this requires much flexibility, and is one reason that perhaps the central idea in Good Boss, Bad Boss is that the best bosses are in tune with what it feels like to work for them — which means in this case to understand just how hard to push your people on average  and to be able to "read" when it is time to interject, perhaps lean on them or instruct them, versus when to back-off, is a crucial and difficult craft to develop.  As I say at HBR, my favorite quote about this fine art comes from Tommy Lasorda:

    When I heard about this research, I couldn't help but think of a quote
    from Tommy Lasorda, who has worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers for
    almost 50 years, including a 20-year stint as the team's manager. The
    first day he took charge of the team, Tommy said to the press: "I
    believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too
    tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it."

    I love that.  Also, Julia Kirby, who edits my posts at HBR, dug up the fabulous picture below.  It is in the final link in the article, but I couldn't resist inserting it here:

    081019_p03_tp

    The reason I love this picture so much is, as I have discussed on Work Matters before, and explain in the new HBR post:

    [w]hen I had finished writing much of my
    new book    , I had a conversation with the very talented Marc Hershon about
    what to call it. Marc is unusually good at naming things. He's the
    branding expert who named the Blackberry and the Swiffer, for example,
    and has helped authors like Tom
    Kelley     and Dr.
    Phil     come up with titles for books that turned into bestsellers.
    (Marc also co-authored his own book called I Hate People and
    produces all manner of other creative output, including screenplays, TV
    scripts, jokes for the likes of Jay Leno and Dana Carvey, and weekly
    political cartoons for San Francisco-area newspapers.) Based on the
    chapters he read, and thinking about the bosses he knew, he suggested
    the title "Top Dog on a Tightrope." What struck him, in other words,
    was the constant balancing act required. He also thought it was
    important to emphasize that, while everyone misjudges a step now and
    then, the best ones fall less often, because they have the skill to make
    constant and correct adjustments to stay out of trouble.

    Being a "perfectly assertive" boss is a lot easier to talk about then to do. I would love to hear your ideas about how you –or bosses you know — have accomplished this feat.  Please comment here or over at the HBR post

  • Enough With The Big Hairy Goals — Also Any Ideas About Assertive AND Effective Bosses?

    I am continuing to dig into the details on my list at HBR of 12 Things That Good Bosses Believe.  My post on point 3 appeared today, Having
    ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to
    think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable
    my people to make a little progress every day. 

    Or, as HBR editor Julia Kirby called the new post, "Hey Boss, Enough With The Big Hairy Goals." Nice title, the main idea is that yes, big goals matter, but the best bosses devote most of their time and energy to the small wins, the little steps required to achieve them as that is only path to doing so, breaking them down into bite size pieces stops people from freaking-out and freezing-up, and it enables people to experience more pleasure in the process. 

    My next post at HBR will be on "One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to
    strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not
    assertive enough."  If you have any nominations of bosses who are especially good — or especially bad — at striking this balance, I would love to hear who they are and what they do.