> The "mind games" is specifically about getting me to say something I can't stand behind. Cool, that's a great clarification. I agree with that characterizat

> The "mind games" is specifically about getting me to say something I can't stand behind. Cool, that's a great clarification. I agree with that characterization of "mind games", and its obviously 100% legitimate to stand your ground in those cases. One reason I think these things happen is because people go straight from school to the corporate world where they expect to be told what to do and never develop their own agency and feedback loops for higher level goals. In a big org it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. Silicon Valley youth worship doesn't help either as it takes time to get enough experience to learn the myriad different ways things can succeed and fail. Young managers often feel they need to have all the answers and control everything rather than realizing the job is really about understanding individual strengths and giving everyone the right incentives and well-defined goals (appropriate to their competence level) to work together and produce output greater than the sum of the parts.