“Rule 6: Set Your House In Perfect Order Before You Criticize The World”
— 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson
I remember the first time I was told a newbie would be reporting to me; I screamed silently. After the endless bashing of horrible bosses and Big Daddy Corporate, it was finally time to see if I’d fare any better (puts on a clown mask). Naturally, it’s easier to point the finger at others, but paying attention to the four fingers that point back is an entirely different story. It’s easy to call out bad behaviour and slam “toxic people” and “my mental health is affected” tags on it. However, taking action is another matter entirely. One of the best seniors I worked with had a certain disdain for the "mental health" tag because people throw a lot of nonsense in that basket. Don’t get me wrong; if you’ve read my previous pieces, you’d know that I’m not trying to take the impact of work on people with a pinch of salt. However, this piece isn’t [overtly] about mental health.
We’ve all had someone look out for us at different times in our careers. Unless you’ve been in total hell, chances are there’s that big brother or sister figure (or mother/father figure, whatever you fancy) always at arm’s length who’s willing to throw in random advice (either useful now or sometime in the future) or put in a much-needed word here and there. Now think about the times you were put in tight situations that required some help, and ask yourself, "Have I done the same thing for others?” You might say, “Justin, no one looked out for me.” Well, look how you turned out. Do you like it? Do you like yourself? Do you like being around...you? Do your colleagues like working with you or being around you? Did you turn out to be a "father of the house" (dads with children who run and hide like cockroaches once they come home)? You aren’t fun to be around, and if you had some training and help along the way, then maybe people won’t resent you so much.
I’m a Christian, so I have a deep sense of eschatological (relating to end times) accountability. Sometimes, I try to role-play when I give an account to my maker of how I treated the people I worked with. Did I impact them positively? Or did I make their lives a living hell? Did I stand up for them when I had the power and opportunity, or did I throw my hands in the air, saying “It’s none of my business.” If you asked yourself these same questions and felt a sense of guilt, it’s fine. We are probably all villains in someone’s story. However, where there’s room for reparations and reconciliation, take it with both hands. Where there’s none, accept reality, learn from how you acted, and commit to doing better.
When you are responsible for people, especially those who have just begun their careers, remember that their first engagement will largely impact their careers. Do you recall how your first job shaped your attitude toward work, colleagues, and people in general? Great, so see yourself as part of a new bloomer’s story. I think we have more than enough Are you Stupids, Eds or Chihuahuas and we need to deliberately reduce the pool size as part of our ESG and greener earth initiatives. Save the planet! (Air punch).
There’s also the argument or perspective that there’s an Ed, a Chihuahua, and an Are You Stupid in all of us, and, as the old Cherokee proverb says, it depends on the wolf you feed. When people recall the villains and heroes in their life stories, which character will you be? Doctor Fate? Sabbac, or even the anti-hero, Black Adam, by choosing to walk the path of both good and evil (by the way, I think Black Adam was a good movie irrespective of what the critics say). Even then, the Bible paints an interesting picture of indecision in Revelation 3:16. Spits!
Please do not think I am trying to make the case for raising pampered, ice cream-filled, and chocolate-cookie-filled employees. There’s a place for tough love and some ass-whooping now and then to keep them in check. I’ve said before that you can express your displeasure politely and it’ll still have the intended effect, whatever that is. And sometimes, in all honesty, we have to push the newbies into the big, vast ocean and let them swim or drown and learn from the drowning experience. This is like “hell week," faced by wannabe American Navy Seals. It’s a gruelling six-day stretch, where Navy Seal wannabes get about 4 hours of sleep, run more than 300 kilometres, and do physical training for over 20 hours daily.
It’s like when I started as an introverted kid in change and project management. There are roles where communication is at least 70–80% of your daily activities, and this was one of them. I’d always hide behind my boss at the time, who handled a number of the senior-level conversations until the day of reckoning came. I had several interviews lined up with various senior executives, and I was supposed to “join” my supervisor in these interviews. At least, that was the plan. I was petrified when I saw an email from her to the executives saying that I’d be coming around to see each of them for our interviews, asking them to accommodate me. Thankfully, I had a fair amount of exposure to the “throw them in and let them swim and win, or drown and learn” mentality, so I didn’t protest. In the end, it went well (in my head, at least). A couple of years later, when I and a couple of teammates were resigning from the firm, she later opened up about how she deliberately threw us into hot situations to see how we’d fare and to help us learn and grow. This was irrespective of our experience and/or grade. While these moments felt blood-boiling and stomach-churning, in the end, I believe they counted as the finest hours.
In the journey to “pass it on,” you can aim and aspire to be a leader who is genuinely interested in helping younglings of the same gender navigate through work and life in general. It’s the most common I’ve seen, and it seems to be the simplest to adopt. There’s no harm in keeping things simple. I find this model more formal for women and quite informal for men, generally speaking, in my close circle. You could also offer random tips and advice on everything from juggling work and family to time management for professionals and the benefits of learning how to communicate and express yourself.
A mentor of mine (let’s call him “Rigoarcher”), a senior manager at one of my previous organisations, once offered presentation classes to interested employees without being asked. If you are like me, who always feels shocked, nauseated, and highly irritable at the sight of badly designed presentations, especially by people who have been working professionals for a considerable period, you’d see why this is life-changing. Rigoarcher also gave a second round of lectures on the art of strategy (if my memory hasn’t failed me on the title). Irrespective of your business line or specialisation, this is another valuable and essential life skill that people pay ridiculous amounts of money to learn, and ‘Rigo gave it all for free. I don’t know about you, but I have profound respect for whoever teaches another man the art of optimising the hunt for their daily bread, or by extension, running a bakery. You know the saying, "Teach a man to fish," blah blah blah. Even more sacrificial was the fact that these meetings were held very early in the day, so we had to wake up a lot earlier than usual. In this age of remote and hybrid work, it entailed waking up earlier than usual, as opposed to a minute or two before our daily check-in calls.
Now take a moment to do some self-reflection; think about what you hated or liked about superiors you have worked with. Think about areas where you feel they would have done better. Pull out a pen and a notepad and create an improvement plan:
- Speak to your peers and ask them to identify areas where you suck. Let’s call it a “suck list." The outcome of the suck list should become your improvement plan. As part of your improvement plan, try to have check-ins, maybe quarterly, every half year, etc. Think of it as breaking a bad habit, look for an accountability partner who can give you honest feedback on how you can learn and improve. It’s almost like attending regular AA meetings (Alcoholics Anonymous). If you prefer to keep it all inside, that’s fine. You can always download a habit-tracking app to track and monitor your progress. A good application that I’ve fiddled with is Habitify (non-promotional). P.S. I ended up deleting it because of the distracting notifications.
- Learn self-awareness and self-regulation. Listen to your inner voice (I am not referring to the one that tells you to behave badly, à la the red devil that appears on your left shoulder). I won’t dwell too much on this, the internet is littered with opinion pieces and quick tips on building self-awareness.
I thought about creating an easy-to-use template for this activity, but one of the ways to make an activity habitual is to keep things simple. Besides, I find that I never use those templates when I download them. I am not a fan of mega-changes, even after learning the ropes of change management a few years ago. I came to love change management at the individual, personalized level rather than the group level. It’s a lot more stressful, but it’s more thorough and empathic. I also find things like this a lot easier when I adopt a puzzle mindset. That is, we are all pieces of a puzzle that together form an imperfect picture, like some sort of mosaic. Or we are all actors handed blank scripts to play different roles. And remember, the young shall grow and the old must die. No matter how long the incumbents stay in charge, either by bureaucratic law, career fatigue, or age, you are going to have to step up and play your part. In the end, playing the role of the protagonist or antagonist is up to you. I agree that it isn’t all black and white, but you get the picture.
One thing that has also helped me recently is behaviour recollection. I try to recall moments when I saw a person exhibit a character or gesture that I found to be remarkable, and I replicate that act. Sometimes, I’ve noticed I sound like the person I'm trying to impersonate in my head, even changing my speaking and vocal style. Weird? Yes! However, I believe we all do this to some degree, and I am just saying this out loud. So if you see me sounding like a puppet in a discussion, just know I am simply playing back a behavioural script that I found helpful and remarkable.
A simple piece of advice: strive for a goal bigger than yourself. Think about someone other than yourself. Tell yourself:
"I choose to be different in my space so I can stand as a voice for those for whom I am responsible."
In case you’re still wondering why I am writing all this, the answer is simple. I hear a lot of people complain about their companies, bosses, and organisational structures. These companies are all built and run by people. The enablers of the terrible, i.e., Big Daddy Corporate, aren’t monkeys (at least, literally speaking). They are people, made of flesh and blood. And guess what? They breathe in oxygen. Whenever you have to work with someone junior, either on a project, a temporary engagement, or as a leader, ask yourself:
- What legacy do I want to leave them with?
- How do I want them to see me?
- When they remember me, what kind of thoughts do I want them to have? Thoughts of gratitude or thoughts of resentment?
- What positive impact can I make on their lives?
- How do I make their lives easier while giving room for the right type of challenge that leads to growth?
- What did/do I dislike about my leaders, past and present? How do I make sure that I change the narrative based on my experience?
Lately, I’ve been on an energy conservation journey, an alternative to my previous chronic "shiny object" syndrome. As a result of this, I only take on tasks that I can do something about. This is because I strongly detest speaking about things for which I have no skin in the game. If I can’t do anything about it, I don’t want to think or talk about it. I am not Batman, and I can’t save no Gotham (even though he’s my favourite superhero). At work, you won’t see me volunteering for organisation-wide circus shows disguised as transformation initiatives. I delete those emails once I get them. Like I said earlier, the sweet spot for me is the day-to-day connections and the social interactions within my control. I try to pay close attention to those with whom I have direct connections in the corporate social network. I try to watch how I interact with and treat them. I think an emphasis on self-awareness has gone a long way to help. By asking questions like:
- How am I sounding at the moment?
- How am I feeling at this moment?
- If I feel angry, what is the possibility that I’ll take it out on a colleague?
- How do I make sure that I don’t transfer aggression?
If you’ve noticed, I have provided a lot more questions than usual in this piece. This is deliberate because, just like most things in life, there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers. You know your reality, and your answers will be different from mine. In the book, "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos," the author further charged, “If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you rule a city?” Always pay attention to what you can fix, and fix it with all your might. There is enough evil and misfortune in the world, so why in God’s name will you want to feed those fires? The Bible also charges us in this regard:
Unless you have [actively] chosen to do better, I do not believe you have a right to point fingers, whine, or complain. Before you call out the “a**hole” you report to, take a few moments and do some self-reflection. Ask yourself:
- How do I behave toward others in a similar situation? Better or worse?
- If worse, how can I do better?
- Who have I possibly hurt?
- How do I seek absolution? (Yes, you read that right).
In short, “Am I an a**hole?” And if I am, how do I become less smelly? You might ask, “But I still have to deal with a lot of mess from others.” Where’s your sense of fun and adventure? Grow a conscience and desire to do better. Stop being selfish (at least in this regard). And as Simon Sinek said, “Be the Leader you wish you had.”
