6 ms·
> Be a pleasant person. This is the cheat-code for getting everything you'll ever need and most of what you want out of life. Frankly, I would have made it num
by jachee 8y ago
> Be a pleasant person.
This is the cheat-code for getting everything you'll ever need and most of what you want out of life. Frankly, I would have made it number one.
- azhenley 8y agoBeing pleasant is one of my personal rules/goals for life. But it is interesting to analyze great leaders who have been jerks. This 30 minute Youtube documentary on the topic is very interesting: "DICKS: Do you need to be one to be a successful leader?" https://youtu.be/gRRvjZ_XNog https://youtu.be/gRRvjZ_XNog
- jrhurst 8y agoIn bigger projectd and groups people need structure. If you're goal is provide success and structure for the people involved you can't let other people's lack of structure hurt everyone else. I think the "Kind of a Dick" is more of a cultural shock issue. You can be pleasant, but also blunt and honest about what needs to be done.
- austincheney 8y agoI would not make it number one. Being generally pleasant is absolutely beneficial to yourself and everyone around you, but it is not a replacement for competence. Faking it with pleasantries is toxic, a form of lying with misdirection.
- badfrog 8y agoAre you suggesting that somebody can only be one of pleasant or competent?
- austincheney 8y agoYou should always strive for both.
- alasdair_ 8y ago>Are you suggesting that somebody can only be one of pleasant or competent? I assume they are suggesting what they said - don't make it the number one thing. If it WAS a binary choice, I'd rather have a competent asshole than an incompetent nice guy. Being nice is absolutely important, incredibly so - I think we often forget that as engineers - but you still absolutely need to be competent first. Either skill can be learned, so if you're one and not the other, it's fixable.
- bluntfang 8y agocan you go into more detail here? It sounds like you have anecdotal experience where you find people who focus on being pleasant aren't competent.
- austincheney 8y agoYou should always strive to be a generally pleasant person, especially when things get tough. This not an excuse to lye though. When bad news or a disagreement emerges tell it like it is. Don’t bullshit around it. Don’t sugarcoat it. Be direct, honest, accurate, and objective. If that makes somebody sad then so be it. The best way to cushion a devastating blow is with directness and offers, meaningful offers, of support. Violating your integrity for kindness exposes you as weak and suggests you struggle with communication skills. You will come across as untrustworthy and unreliable.
- sethammons 8y agoI don't disagree. I place "pleasant" near "considerate." You can give bad news or disagree and not be a jerk about it. I think some folks are putting it too close to "make others happy."
- rifung 8y ago> Faking it with pleasantries is toxic, a form of lying with misdirection. If you consider being pleasant to be the same as being a decent person, and not just being polite, then I'd argue all of those things make you not pleasant. Even if you're incompetent if you were decent you'd admit to your faults and work on improving them to a required level. No decent person would willingly just let their team down.
- austincheney 8y agoI do not confuse pleasantness with decency. Pleasantness is how you appear. Decency is what you are.
- sanderjd 8y agoPersonally, I prefer working with less competent pleasant people than more competent unpleasant people. You can find useful stuff to give less competent people (and help them become more competent over time), but it's hard to avoid unpleasant people affecting the morale of a whole team.
- barrkel 8y agoYou can rely on competent people, you can give them a task and forget about it. That forgives a hell of a lot of abrasiveness. I 100% prefer being able to rely on someone rather than have to handhold or redo their work myself.
- sanderjd 8y ago100% agree to strongly disagree :)
- eropple 8y agoUntil in their efforts to be competent, they be unpleasant to the wrong person--and now you have a new and different and harder problem.
- icebraining 8y agoArguably, that's being incompetent. If their task involves a social interaction, then to be competent at it they must know how to successfully manage that too, even if they are generally unpleasant.
- zmmmmm 8y agoPeople aren't really binary like that ... "competent" or "not competent". It's all mushy and complicated. Some of the most competent people I manage at some kinds of tasks are basically a net loss at other tasks. The pleasant ones are lot easier to work into diverse tasks and get a "competent result" even if it is more messy than just tossing them a task an forgetting about it.
- cortesoft 8y agoNo one is saying that is all you need. Being pleasant is necessary, but not sufficient, for succeeding in life.
- icebraining 8y ago> Being pleasant is necessary Being able to be pleasant is necessary. Being generally pleasant, I would argue, is not.
- jfk13 8y agoDepending on your definition of "succeeding in life", I'm not sure this is true. The current leaders of various countries, such as the USA or Russia, are arguably counter-examples: they don't seem to me to be pleasant people, yet by most standards they could be said to have achieved success in life.
- tylerhou 8y ago> Our research showed (not surprisingly) that, no matter what kind of organization we studied, everybody wanted to work with the lovable star, and nobody wanted to work with the incompetent jerk. Things got a lot more interesting, though, when people faced the choice between competent jerks and lovable fools. > Ask managers about this choice—and we’ve asked many of them, both as part of our research and in executive education programs we teach—and you’ll often hear them say that when it comes to getting a job done, of course competence trumps likability. “I can defuse my antipathy toward the jerk if he’s competent, but I can’t train someone who’s incompetent,” says the CIO at a large engineering company. Or, in the words of a knowledge management executive in the IT department of a professional services firm: “I really care about the skills and expertise you bring to the table. If you’re a nice person on top of that, that’s simply a bonus.” > But despite what such people might say about their preferences, the reverse turned out to be true in practice in the organizations we analyzed. Personal feelings played a more important role in forming work relationships—not friendships at work but job-oriented relationships—than is commonly acknowledged. They were even more important than evaluations of competence. In fact, feelings worked as a gating factor: We found that if someone is strongly disliked, it’s almost irrelevant whether or not she is competent; people won’t want to work with her anyway. By contrast, if someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer. And this tendency didn’t exist only in extreme cases; it was true across the board. Generally speaking, a little extra likability goes a longer way than a little extra competence in making someone desirable to work with. https://hbr.org/2005/06/competent-jerks-lovable-fools-and-the-formation-of-social-networks https://hbr.org/2005/06/competent-jerks-lovable-fools-and-th...
- maxxxxx 8y agothis is a tricky one if you are lacking in self-confidence or social skills. When I was younger I tried to be pleasant (or my interpretation of what I thought is pleasant) and came across as boring or a pushover. So I went the other way and became a jerk which I didn't do well either. Now I am a little more balanced but it took me decades to get there. So I think the advice should be to be pleasant but also not to try to be liked by everyone all the time. Be a complete person with boundaries and be friendly as long boundaries are not crossed. Also have goals and don't be afraid to express them.
- skookumchuck 8y agoIt doesn't matter if it is tricky or not. It works, and so keep trying.
- red75prime 8y agoMany things work. Some are easier to do.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThe feedback loops are very long so it can be very frustrating to keep trying and failing. It’s also not easy to tell whether something is working or not.
- bittercynic 8y agoThe feedback loop is much longer in some situations than others. If you do something where you're regularly meeting new people you'll end up with much faster feedback on how pleasant your behavior is, and the cost of social missteps is lower.
- derangedHorse 8y agoAn important thing that many people can't seem to understand is how to convey boundaries. I feel like the main separator from an unlikable individual from a likable one is how they express their dislikes to others. Tact is one of the most valuable skills one can have.
- forinti 8y agoJust don't forget you can't please everyone and don't get upset if someone doesn't like you.
- tamrix 8y agoIt's much harder than you think. You have to truly be a good person and not just pretend to be for materialistic gain.
- jachee 8y agoFake it until you realize that you're not faking it anymore.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Consultant32452 8y agoOf the big 5 personality traits in psychology, the three most highly correlated with success are: high disagreeableness, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism. So there's an interesting give and take here.
- maroonblazer 8y agoAre those three correlated with success? Or simply leadership? If the former I'd like to know how "success" is defined. "Success" is a very broad and ambiguous word.
- Consultant32452 8y agoIt's been a while, but my understanding was that it was pretty generic success across significant goals. So that would range from financial success to curing measles. High disagreeableness means being able to dismiss most people, because most people will tend to pull you in towards a regression to the mean. Low neuroticism is about stress tolerance. Doing anything major/new/difficult is stressful. High conscientiousness means you spend time preparing, finish important tasks right away, pay attention to detail, and work well on a schedule. It's hard to imagine being highly successful at much if you can't handle stress, are disorganized, and are very sensitive to others trying to tell you to do what everyone else does.
- c0vfefe 7y agoHigh disagreeableness gives you ambition. High conscientiousness gives you the power to achieve it. Low neuroticism helps you avoid self-sabotage.
- MRD85 8y agoOne of the best things I ever did was stop caring what others think and become more disagreeable. It's sort of ironic that people didn't like the agreeable me (I assume too boring) but I'm far more liked as a disagreeable person. I may also be that I come across more honest when I tell people "no", or I contribute what my actual opinion is instead of whatever is easy.
- amelius 8y agoThis needs more explanation. The stereotypical "Mr. Nice guy" isn't very successful.
- jsty 8y agoThere's a big difference between 'pleasant to be around' and the stereotypical 'Mr Nice Guy' who goes out of his way to do anything and everything he thinks someone might want or need. Simply bothering to learn someone's name, greet them when you see them, and be interested in what they're doing or saying will make people want to interact with you more.
- jachee 8y agoTim Cook is both exceedingly pleasant and extremely successful. The world needs more like him.
- pinky1417 8y agoBeing pleasant costs you nothing and yields tremendous benefits. And you can still disagree with people and not be a pushover. I can have a debate with someone and not be a rude, unpleasant person.
- loriverkutya 8y ago> Being pleasant costs you nothing This lie is repeated pretty often. I had several periods in my life (few months of sleep deprivation after my daughter was born, stressful periods during university, etc), when it required a huge amount of conscious effort to be nice with colleagues, not to mention dealing with assholes.
- malms 8y agoHaha Respectfully, Donald J Trump (and basically every leader in the world)