Dear friend,
My late friend and mentor, Dr. James McManis, used to say, “If you’re not pissing people off, you’re not doing your job; nice people stink up the world.” I think he was right on the money.
If you are a transformational leader, manager, entrepreneur, or mobilizer, at any level of the enterprise, from the CEO to the front-desk receptionist, you are supposed to be upsetting someone. How so? Because the moment you begin to care about your shared future with others and to point out the salient nonsense in the room, you are bound to upset people.
The Harvard philosopher Harry Frankfurt, in his book On Bullshit, points out that we are so immersed in it that it starts passing for common sense, and we accept it. What is it? Not simply lying. It is saying whatever needs to be said, true or false, to have things your way. It is a lack of care for others wrapped around a commitment to looking good and a small personal agenda that must win at all costs. That habitual way of being, without concern for others, is what we are naming. It wastes capital and potential, and it makes teams unworkable. To call it out will make some people upset with you.
And that is alright, because not everyone has to like you. As a transformational leader, your job is not to be liked. Your job is to take a stand, to be bold and courageous, to name what everyone else is too afraid to name. Your job is to open the conversation about the standards that should matter to you as a group, and to remind people what is at stake if you all keep deceiving one another. Many of us are willing to do this with our families, yet somehow lose the nerve at work.
Become comfortable making enemies, if you are doing something worthy. That does not mean going around upsetting people for sport. Be kind, never mean or nasty, but be direct, and bold, and full of courage. Do not be afraid to take on hidden nastiness that masquerades as niceness and common sense. Be someone willing to stand for what they believe.
A short, sharp poem by the Scottish writer Charles Mackay comes to mind:
You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor.
He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure
must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip.
You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.
With care,Saqib