Shakespeare wrote in his description of Feste, the jester in Twelfth Night that one should never underestimate a man who is “wise enough to play the fool.”

I’ve given that advice to executives, managers, workers and friends and it always works, especially if you broaden your concept of “fool.”

Being a fool doesn’t mean being foolish; it is more acting innocent or ignorant instead of showing off your knowledge or expertise.

Playing the fool draws out the other person; it gives you the opportunity to learn what they know and get a far better understanding of where they are coming from, where they are going and how they plan to get there.

Playing the fool is sort of like Undercover Boss where the CEO learns far more about her organization by pretending to be a candidate than she ever could in her normal persona.

However, I find fewer people willing to play the fool in these days of social media no matter how successful the technique.

They worry that playing the fool might be misconstrued in 140 characters and that is more important than the beneficial outcome that can result from playing the fool.

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There is much talk these days among what Jim Stroup calls the modern leadership movement (MLM) that leadership is all about influence.

What I’ve never seen is any mention that influence is about control.

Influence moves you in the direction desired by the leader, essentially controlling your choices.

Also faulty is the assumption that the influence ‘leaders’ exert is always for ‘good’; as I keep saying, assumptions are bad.

In this case the assumption is that a ‘leader’ you like/trust/respect won’t lead you in a direction that encourages you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own if you thought of it.

That is a faulty assumption at best and a destructive one at worst.

To paraphrase an old saying that has served me well in my life, consider the source of the influence sans assumptions before allowing it to affect you.

In other words, listen objectively to the words and consider what they mean.

One trick to doing that is to pretend someone you would never allow to influence you said the same thing. How would you react?

If you would pull back and say, ‘no way’, then it should be ‘no way’ even if the source is someone you like/trust/respect.

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I’m not particularly sentimental and, by today’s standards, I’m a pretty private person, at least on-line. Last Memorial Day I wrote about my father and heroes, this year I have nothing personal to offer, but I did find a poem that sums up my attitude to who deserves the credit for the life I value.

It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given you freedom of religion.
It is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given you freedom of the press.
It is the veteran, not the poet, who has given you freedom of speech.
It is the veteran, not the protester, who has given you freedom to assemble.
It is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given you the right to a fair trial.
It is the veteran, not the politician, who has given you the right to vote.
It is the veteran, who salutes the Flag, who serves under the Flag, whose coffin is draped by the Flag.
–Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC

As to those who dishonor them by using their funerals as a staging ground to flaunt their ideology I have one simple comment, go to hell.

Because that is where you belong.

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I was talking with a manager this week who was dreading doing his required annual reviews.

After describing his relationship with each of his people, he went on to tell me what he needed to say and how each would respond.

I asked why he was so sure and he said “because they always respond that way.”

Remind you of your own situations?

How many times have you had a conversation with a manager, peer or subordinate and walked away shaking your head thinking, “I knew I’d get that response.”

I know I have.

But did they respond to the content or the presentation?

I call it AMS syndrome and it infects all of us at various times.

AMS stands for assumption, manipulation, self-fulfilling prophesy and I first wrote about it shortly after starting this blog five years ago.

I wrote about AMS and its effect on managing a diverse workforce a few months later.

A couple of years later I again focused on how assumptions can actually undermine an entire company’s product direction without every being recognized.

No one indulges in AMS intentionally; it’s purely subconscious. It’s driven by experience, not just our own, but friends, stuff we’ve read, movies, TV, etc.

Anything that seeds our thinking with expectations, whether specific or vague; those expectations convert into active assumptions, which causes us to present out content in ways that elicit the exact result we thought we would get, i.e., self-fulfilling prophesy.

This is the conversation I had with my client as well as emailing him the links I’ve included above.

I got this email from him today, “I’ll be damned, you were right. Reviews went great. Thanks!”

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I’ve written several times referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and it’s come up in numerous conversations I’ve had.

Each time I hear that Gladwell’s premise is flawed and that if a person is determined enough they will succeed blah, blah, blah.

They claim this holds true whatever the location, including gang-ridden inner cities or third world countries; work hard enough and you will overcome.

My typical response to their rhetoric is “bullshit.”

A few days ago TechCrunch published The Chilling Story of Genius in a Land of Chronic Unemployment; a comparison between Ibrahim Boakye and Max Levchin.

It is elegant proof of what Gladwell says, as well as a warning call to the stupidity of wasting our world’s human resources.

On a much smaller scale managers waste their human resources every day through “positional deafness,” i.e., only soliciting and/or hearing thoughts, ideas and suggestions from those at X level or higher.

I’ve never understood why managers expect workers who were consistently ignored and shut down to suddenly start contributing because they receive a promotion.

• Nobody suddenly develops a brain as a result of being promoted.

• If they were good enough to promote then they should have been good enough to listen to in their previous positions.

• If they can’t contribute in the position for which they were hired, why hire them at all?

• Even new grads hired for their potential need to be heard; they are like eggs and like eggs they must be cared for if they are to hatch.

Managers afflicted by positional deafness often experience high turnover and lament the lack of loyalty, especially in “more junior workers.”

But the term ‘junior’ is very subjective; for some managers it refers to those with just a couple of years of experience, for others it’s a level within the company and for still others it’s relative, with the baseline how long it took them to finally be heard.

It’s easy to know if you suffer from positional deafness, just consider the sources of your input over the last quarter and what you did with it.

Better yet, ask the people you trust to tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear.

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There’s a bad habit I see sweeping through companies. It’s not really new, but it has gotten much worse in recent years.

This particular habit used to be more the province of arguing couples, relationship counselors and divorce courts.

Always more of a guy thing, I now find it on the rise among women.

I call it “verbal avoidance” and it is irritating to say the least.

It occurs when something happens, or is supposed to happen, and person A needs to communicate that to person B.

And doesn’t.

A doesn’t because

• what happened is going to upset B and A either doesn’t want to be the messenger, since messengers are sometimes killed or deal with the fallout if/when B gets upset.
• B is waiting for A to notify him of good news, but B doesn’t have the information yet, so rather than saying that, he doesn’t call.

Of course there are dozens of variations, but they all boil down to the same thing—A does not communicate with B as expected.

When B does reach A, A offers a variety of reasons why the contact didn’t happen, but reasons don’t excuse anything.

B feels frustrated/disappointed/disgusted/angry/betrayed.

Verbal avoidance for any reason breaks trust.

And trust is the basis for any kind of relationship, whether at work, at home or in the world at large.

Silence isn’t always golden.

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Over the years I have spent countless content inches advising that all efforts stem from MAP, and just how critical it is for you to know your own.

I’ve also said that it is MAP that enables or prevents people from implementing what they learn and the advice they receive, no matter the source; I’ve talked about the advantages of managing MAP or actively changing it .

And over the years I’ve received the occasional email and phone call explaining to me why I’m full of it and my MAP approach is garbage—only in more robust terms.

So imagine my delight when I read What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology by Ben Horowitz, general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

It’s a great read about a subject that is typically taboo, but one that impacts most people, even though they aren’t CEOs.

The great advantage most of us have is there’s always someone to blame, whether at work or in our personal life, by saying ‘I did my part’.

Instead, tweak Horowitz’s four points to calm and focus yourself

• Make some friends -There is much talk today about “building community;” people have hundreds, if not thousands, of “friends,” but social networks don’t lend themselves to serious discussions and advice about actions needed or mental anguish calmed.
• Get it out of your head and onto paper – I’ve always been a big promoter of writing it down and divorcing it from your psyche. Writing it down is a kind of personal Sunshine Law that helps you to see things much more clearly.
• Focus on the road not the wall – For better or worse we all follow our thoughts; focus on the path to your destination and you’ll get there—focus on the roadblocks and you’ll hit them.
• Don’t quit! When you are tired and hurting it’s so much easier to reduce the goal or just plain give up, but doing so will come back and bite you faster and harder than doing the best you can—even if you fall a bit short.

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Study Richard Branson as an entrepreneur.

Study him as a leader.

Study him as a manager.

Study him as an example of how to live your life.

Don’t just study Branson; study those around him, such as Stephen Murphy, Virgin CEO since 2006.

Studying both allows you to see how Branson differs from so many of his counterparts.

According to Murphy, “He [Branson] is a listener. He will say ‘I hired you to listen to you. I am not hiring you to tell you what to do’.”

Branson is known as Doctor Yes while Murphy is nicknamed Mr. No; together they make Virgin far stronger than either could separately.

Murphy balances Branson’s “screw it, let’s do it” attitude, but recognizes Branson’s positive mindset, “When there are nine good reasons not to do something, Richard is always the person who focuses on the one reason to do it.”

Branson is a master delegator, not just the responsibility, but the authority and once he delegates he lets go.

Study Branson to learn the value of controlling your ego or, better yet, being confident enough to let your people shine, knowing that giving them the spotlight doesn’t reduce your own place in the sun.

Last year I wrote a very short post on following and Branson seems to fit.

So when you are deciding whom to follow, who’s vision to trust, skip the shiny baubles and silken words and look to see who keeps turning the spotlight on others.

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Today I have a question for you, what is the real point of education?

Bill Gates emphasizes “work-related learning, arguing that education investment should be aimed at academic disciplines and departments that are “well-correlated to areas that actually produce jobs.”"

Steve Jobs says, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing…”

So is the end goal of education to provide the knowledge, skills and tools to work or to teach critical thinking.

The choice is likely to be described as pragmatic and based on available funding.

Years ago a successful business executive I know commented that if people had full bellies, a job and a bit left over to see a movie now and then at the time of the election, then the party in power would be reelected, but if the reverse was happening they would “throw the bums out.”

There are more sinister reasons to find a positive way to avoid graduating legions of critical thinkers.

• Non-thinkers don’t make waves.
• Non-thinkers follow the pack.
• Non-thinkers are easier to control.
• Thinkers are more creative and innovative.
• Thinkers are more likely to reject ideology.
• Thinkers are more willing to take risks.

You have only to look at what is going on in the world to see the effects of an empty belly and education, formal or not, grounded in questions, not answers.

What do you think?

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Most people are familiar with the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but there should be a corollary—do unto to yourself as you do unto others.

It’s called self-compassion, as opposed to self-indulgent.

People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures… People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic.

Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy

Indulgent: benignly lenient or permissive

It seems that some people don’t apply compassion to themselves in fear of it morphing into indulgence.

Does this describe you or someone you know?

If yes, what can you do?

My own observations tell me that self-indulgent people rarely show compassion, so the fear doesn’t make much sense.

I found the article especially interesting, because I’m often guilty of beating myself up and I could use more self-compassion. I do fine on the big things, but the small stuff not so much.

I believe that self-compassion is part of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), so what I needed to do was change mine and being me I wanted a simple and as easy as possible way to do it—and I think found it.

How? By thinking of myself in third person—not ‘me’, but ‘she’.

I had a great chance to try the approach out yesterday.

I was moving something, knocked over a favorite plant and more than half broke off.

My immediate reaction was to tear into myself, but I stopped and instead thought what I would say to a guest who did the same thing—which would have been along the lines of “not a big deal; don’t worry about it; it will grow back.”

So that is what I said to me.

And you know what?

It worked.

Now I just need to do it every time and make it a habit.

Why not give it a try? You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.

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