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The Self-Deception of Irrationality – Next Orbit

A blinding influence that can intuitively incapacitate your effectiveness at work…

maplestory.wikia.com

Once upon a time, there was a brave king called….”

Picture a stretched sun-filled summer noon, in the leafy shadow of the portico of a placid hamlet-home on the corner of a small town in the west of India, a toddler innocently listening to the story…

When I look back at my growing years, I realize that my mother’s folk tales or father’s mythical heroic legends had a great influence over the shaping up of my life values.  How to be like our brave patriotic heroes, how one has to struggle hard to objectify the dreams, which behaviour to be side-stepped, and  many other pieces which are characterized ‘Good’ and ‘Normal’ in our daily life.  Whether I acknowledge it or not, my parents, teachers, and other family elders had a lasting and empowering influence over the final architecture of my humble native wisdom.

As we grow and move away from our fortified familiar environment, our hunt activates for the search of the lost parental love in our surrounding support system that extends us candid advice about our life. You will be surprised, but we continuously long for strong authority figure in our life. It has a deep psychological reason. It is our unrelenting unconscious search. We all need someone to help us make our life much comfortable and secure. Someone who can replicate our parental trepidations is our one of the most significant psychological craving. The influence of various authority figures at an early impressionable age is very discerning and passionate for anyone. Even in our professional life, we look forward to work for an accomplished leader who facilitates an environment that allows us to give our best and engage us in doing productive and meaningful work.

What happens to our search for an inspiring leader in reality?

Do we see more of such promising leaders around us? Or

Does toxic-corporate- irrationality is now virtually turning epidemic?

Difficult or irrational managers are a fact of corporate life. Perhaps, tender sensitivity or appetite to emotionally engage with the cause of the subordinates, is progressively eroding in today’s congested corporate milieus. In any case, there is a great struggle to even microscopically uncover a small number of inspiring leaders in any system. Indifference and individuality are two very commonly nurtured virtues in contemporary corporate leaders. But, certain managers are psychologically acidic. Such acidic managers can syphon out all the excitement from your job. They can thwart your hard efforts and make your work bitterly agonising. Acidic managers  can further wear down your confidence, leading to low morale and compromised sincerity. They can even adversely influence your career prospects. It is all about extermination of your positive energy by calculatively perverting the truth to dangle you for a fabricated cause. For such managers or leaders, undermining established systems to blotch the transparency of processes, is so noble a task. They are self-imposing, narcissistic, arrogant, and do not suffer even a scrap of shame for their wrongdoings. They believe in dictatorial regime. Paradoxically, they may act very honeyed in front of larger organizational system, but in privacy of their influence, largely they echo a pathologically disparaging behaviour. Trust me, it is also contagious. I know of an incompetent toxic CEO and his virtual imitations at the apex leadership team, and how eventually they steered entire existence of that thriving company to an absolute tragedy. Providentially, our vulnerability and existential anguish, drive us to pamper and reinforce the very characters. We metaphorically surrender to their absurdities for our survival,as we do not want to be feeling undesired in the system or we silently work towards a respectable exit. It is a well proven fact that access workload or work pressure does not generate anxiety or depression, but an intimidating authority possibly may.

Please remember, we are not talking about generally power hungry difficult leaders. They are so common and do not necessarily act difficult or irrational all the time. We are talking about compulsively acidic leaders, who are destructively dysfunctional by mental design. Twigging such embryonic toxic leaders is not easy. At times, surprisingly they are very discreet while pulverizing your soul.

Nevertheless, the next logical question will be “What to do once I have such a hard-wired and irrationally toxic leader as my manager”?

Having worked with quite a few acidic leaders in my long career, I have learned not only to endure but also master the art of impelling them. Times are changing and we all demand transparency, empowerment, and respect at our workplace. So, I am going no holds barred in recounting some of the landfills for you to evaluate.

Shake-Out of the Hangover

Often we feel intimidated by the very presence of such irrational managers. It is psychological. We continuously reinforce that notion in our mind. Over a period, we learn to rationalize his atrocities. We accept it as given. We can’t even elusively visualize questioning his unjustified leadership style. At times, we also take convenient excuses to behave like him. I want you to recall the meaningful affirmation by Buddha in Dhammapada, “All phenomena are perceived by mind, made by mind, and ruled by mind”?  It is all in our mind and we end up suffering because of our own discernments. Preferably, it is much better to seriously introspect about his conduct and our unfounded apprehensions. Moreover, I also do not believe that we are likely to gain anything by exposing him to external world. Idea is not to publicly undress him. But it is important to observe his behaviour, the way he takes decisions, what irritates him, what are his deep fears, his preferences and prejudices. Be equipped for a health talk. If you are confident about yourself you can talk anything with almost anyone, including sensitive issues, like his problematic behaviour. First of all, you need to stop worrying about what he is thinking about you. Do not take anything personally and do not preserve his Image hangovers please. A peaceful and unruffled mind is resourceful enough to pave the best alternative path.

Business as Usual

Look at the person from a mature and elevated position. Let him feel safe with you. All acidic managers are control freak. It has more to do with compensating their own psychological incompetence than imposing actual control. I will recommend you to be natural, just be “what you are”. Explain to him about your sincere intentions to proliferate his distinction and status. Rather than blindly taking instructions, craft a pattern of dispassionate work related dialogues. Ask less and listen more. Cherry-pick your words prudently. Remain focused and issue based. Take ownership of your work. Do not dilute your rhythm and focus at task. Remember, he may react bit flabbergasted with your positive approach, but certainly and squarely with an agenda to monitor you for nonconformities. Therefore, keep business as usual. Besides, your readiness to successfully move on with the assignments will also help you to manage his inflammatory swings. If possible, give him few alternatives to select without hinting your preferences. Let him be the boss. Comply with the expectations at work. At times, you may have to reluctantly feed his brittle ego. I am not suggesting you to surrender, but to cleverly negotiate your way-out without meeting with any accident. Over a period of time your working relationship will definitely improve.

Bless  Imperviousness

One guiding principle to keep in mind: “the problem is with your manager and not with you”. Do not deceive yourself. No point accounting for a negative illusion of your acidic manager. Wake-up! It may be neither an ethical nor a cerebral imperfection at your end. Do not believe and mislead yourself by justifying what you think about self. Your toxic leader draws his power from you only. Objectively look at him as another frail person stressed to manipulate the surroundings to make his mark in the system. Be kind to him. Be instrumental in facilitating his goal. I recommend to you that In such ego conflicts, generally an intelligent person gives in, so be intelligent enough to drop your ego. You need to be firm but poker-faced when he is roaring at you. No point neutralizing such a situation by emotionally calming him down, that will further infuriate the situation. On the contrary, question him without raising your temperament for better clarity. Please do not hang your head to avoid his glairs, keep straight eye contact without having expression of fear or hurt. Never reinforce his sadistic pleasure by squirming.

All this is fine as provisional controlling of the circumstances. But this is not a lasting way out. As I have talked on several professional platforms, the answer is in your fundamental professional values: “Be honest to self and your work”. Career is much beyond a transitory “window-dressing” exercise. You need not to unremittingly renovate your true-self for others’ unpredictable demeanour. If you are good, no amount of toxicity can cloud your exuberance. Be what you are…toxic leaders will come and go.

We all need love and affection. In our career, we look forward to report to an impartial and sensitive reporting authority. We live our grown-up years in search of the suitable replacements of our lost parental adoration. Once we find a caring inspiring leader, we start humming around with all our passion and obedience…The truth is , we are all the time in search of our deep infantile footprints of the loving memories of our parents.

Even now when I visit my native home…especially in summer…late at night on my breezy terrace, when I lie on my back and look at the infinite blue sky with millions of glitzy stars, winding clouds, and bright crescent moon.… amidst cheery squeals of parakeets around the mass of huge mango trees…snooping faint snitches of the bells from the temple at the other side of the road… Everything looks so beautiful and eternal… Indifferent to the hustle-bustle of the commercially infested world with the undying expeditions of material gains…I trek back to my childhood…with my closed eyes , remembering my mother and…

 ”Once upon a time there was a brave king called…”

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14 Comments

  • Excellent! The ‘toxic-corporate-irrationality’ is for real! Individuality and indifference is also real. However omnipresence of acidic supervisors and increasing spread of indifference makes it difficult for younger and growing managers to acquire a sense of confidence that they are doing things right. Perhaps bosses do not want subordinates to acquire sense of satisfaction in their work and achievements! And that results into epidemic of inadequacy feeling resulting into loss of dreams and seeing glittering stars in blue sky!
    Amazing insights! Thanks for sharing!

    • Honoured to have your response. Largely an acidic manager inappropriately uses his authority to establish his power status. Imagine an enthusiastic young manager, when he enters a corporation, he believes in quality of courage, nobility, and justice. He is there to grow in his life. However, a self-obsessed toxic leader from the deep dark corners of his mind, plans to plunder him only for self- preservation…and one day the young manager gets submerged in the ocean of mediocrity without any ripples.Thanks for your comments.

  • Hi Bhagwat,

    Another brilliant piece from you….your style of writing is superb. You actually live and feel it happening around you and associate the same.
    And…..as I said earlier…need to see your book on the shelves…shortly.

  • While going through this article I was reliving my career of 23 years. Mr. Yagnik, your blogs are deeply connected with reality, very insightful and most importantly, solution oriented. I would advise all my young colleagues and peers to subscribe to your site.

  • Mr Bhagwat,
    What you depict here is a scene from any competitive corporate environment – whether growing or a well established unit, but not an entrepreneur’s mentality – who infact believes in ‘growth for all’. In my years of service across various sectors, I have seen shades of arrogance, power play, opaque culture and building consensus against individual/ thought process as suits. Toxicity, though not intentional could also be the outcome of local communication failure – with both sides responsible and thereby having ill-feelings. Through your blog, I take an opportunity to encourage young/ seasoned / mature staff to always talk it out …as you sense this building, chances are it may be just a perception and your view not others about this targeted so called ‘toxic personality’ – And in case it happens to be ‘in-real, sooner or later…the person would be given a feedback and things will improve, thick skinned people take it all and do a situational adjustment as that is one v important success factor to have a healthy corporate life. SO – do not give up, fight it out!

    • Dear Rajita,Thanks for echoing my views on the topic. Regrettably, in many organizations, the toxic behaviour is broadly tolerated by the decision makers. At times, it suits them. Such apathy towards the offending behaviour leads to a culture where toxic leadership almost becomes an acceptable behaviour. We learn to accept the deplorable leadership as normal. Too often, sneering comments, troubling at work, screaming, and deceitfully imputing become the second nature in the system. Besides, condensed communication on this subject also play a decisive role. A healthy dialogue is most powerful tool in such an environment.

  • Dear Bhagwat,

    This is a brilliant piece of your thoughts with an emotional touch. During my long career I have had the experience of working with acidic leaders at times. You have to be strong enough to deal with such leaders. I strongly agree to what you said “Be honest to self and your work….. toxic leaders will come and go”. I have followed this dictum while handling such leaders.

    These toxic leaders create dissatisfied employees, negative work cultures and energies ultimately leading to organizational fall.

    • Thanks for supporting views. We often talk about the physiognomies of the toxic managers but not much about “what reinforces such behaviour”, like, culture, climate, governance, etc. I believe, it is mostly the prevailing culture which contributes to pampering of toxicity in its leaders

  • Dear Mr. Bhagwat Yagnik,
    I fully agree with you on your opening remarks about parents, teachers, elders in the family and national heros who played very critical role in shaping our strong personalities. ( This is true for professionals who are in the age group of 50-60).

    As I analyze more and more young children I am at a loss to discover that they are being deprived off the personalities (mentioned above-parents, teachers etc) who played very instrumental role in shaping our personalities.

    Thus younger children getting our kind personality nourishment are getting reduced to minority.
    Likewise selfless and inspiring leaders are progressively getting reduced to minority.

    You have beautifully discussed what to do after having hard wired and irrationally toxic leaders as our managers.
    In conclusion tactfully and confidently handling them is the best option.
    Last option is to make an exit when the organization too is toxic. Otherwise not. Acidic leaders will come and go.
    On the whole wonderful reading.
    Warm regards,
    H.K.Pahwa

    • Thanks Dear. You have touched a very sensitive live wire. I look forward to all possible opportunities to reach out to those platforms where I can have an occasion to talk to young students and professionals on life values. You are absolutely right. Today’s kids are having limited exposure to such advices and handholding. But they are so bright. They only need right inputs. Predominantly the effects of good parenting is missing. Respect for family and society, self-control, amenability for basic life norms, and shaping of self-esteem are so fundamental to mental growth. Besides, characterization through empathy, integrity, ethical reasoning, selflessness. The parenting roots are so critical.I appreciate your comments.

  • Dear Sir,
    wonderful read ,its not the experience that is being shared but how truly portrayed like a dissociated observer from a perpetual position.
    I have experienced in my career, self-imposing, narcissistic, arrogant supervisor who have beautifully acted very honeyed in front of larger organizational system, making system believe they are doing the best and intentions are perfect but in privacy of their influence, largely they echo a pathologically disparaging behavior.

    I wondered if there is pattern of these behaviours coming from personalities strong in sports but with less sportsmanship or where they have not been able to fully expose or got a platform to fully use the to vent out the impressions

    I truly echo your views to Look at the person from a mature and elevated position,focus on what the supervisor himself is motivated by like organization leadership,vision and “Be honest to self and your work….. toxic leaders will come and go” .

    The thoughts are aptly a good handy advice to be shared for people making a career transition under ignorance.

    Warm regards

    .

    • Dear Riitesh, Thanks for your candid feedback. I believe, It is very difficult to project that unsuccessful sports personalities are generally Acidic. It is good to invest in renewing our own soul than looking for cause of our distress. Be sincere to self and rest will come around soon. A beautiful quote I remember…“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” ~Pema Chodron

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