Model What You Want
by Miki Saxon
What kind of boss/colleague/subordinate are you?
Does William Butler Yeats’s line “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity,” fit you?
Sounds like a bad thing, but actually it’s a great attitude to cultivate.
Look at the two parts separately.
Let’s take the second part first; I believe “while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” refers to people who espouse a certain approach or methodology so emphatically that nothing sways them that there may be a better way or even that a different method will accomplish the same thing.
“The best lack all conviction” could be taken to mean being totally wish-washy with no firm beliefs, but taken together with the second part I think it means being open to new ideas/approaches.
In other words, the first is open to learning and the second is a ‘my way or the highway’ type.
Who would you rather work with?
If you want the first, be sure not to model the second.
Flickr image credit: Tom Henrich
