The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 1 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Who’s the boss?

Blood, sweat, and fears

If a reputable organisation offered you a job that is similar to your current job, would you take it? If you decline the offer because you are happy with where you are, would you reconsider if the prospective employer offered to double your salary? You would not be alone if you jumped at the opportunity.

Now consider a different question. If you could design a job that fulfils your fantasies, what would that job entail? What would you say if someone offered to give you your dream-job, but said that you had to halve your current salary? For many people, income loses its importance when it is traded with job-satisfaction. Some respondents say that if their dream-job existed, they would try to find ways to reduce their living expenses so that they could focus less on their debts and more on their career. This type of question solicits varying responses based on age, maturity, and family commitments. Typically, those who have become disenchanted with the corporate treadmill are more likely to value job-satisfaction over wealth accumulation.

Many people do not have a clue about how to define their ideal job. Even some of the most senior of executives who are running large organisations have not paused to contemplate what they really want. When someone asks them about what would make them happy, they are unable to articulate what their dream-job would look like. How can you find a dream-job if you do not know what you are looking for?

If you are not sure what you want from a job, this book will help you to build a clearer picture of your career.

If you are the boss, or if you desire to become the boss, this book will help you to understand which skills will be the most important in the future.

If you do not want to be the boss, this book will show you how to become a successful employee who sells services at a premium. It will also show you how you can negotiate better conditions so that you do not suffer the typical ailments of stress and pressure.

Killer diseases

Collectively, we entered the twenty-first century carrying a doctor’s certificate. It said, ‘Suffering from stress. Light duties prescribed.’ What does it mean to be ‘stressed out’? What causes us to feel pressured, overworked, and underpaid?

Every ten years or so, we learn about a new wave of occupational hazards. Most recently, public liability has become so expensive that community events have had to be cancelled and small businesses have had to be closed. Exorbitant insurance premiums have been fuelled by our litigious society, whose members no longer take responsibility for their own actions — even when walking across a field.

Back in the 1990s, employers discovered how costly it could be to handle grievances and ‘emotional damage’ in relation to sexual harassment and unfair dismissal.

In the 1980s, employers refused to believe that ‘repetitive strain injury’ was a serious ailment; not until the courts awarded astronomical payouts to victims of soft-tissue injury. All of a sudden, ‘ergonomics’ entered the vernacular.

In the 1970s, employers and insurers were learning about back-pain and whiplash. For private investigators, business boomed as they spied on unethical workers for whom ‘compensation’ was another word for ‘get-rich-quick’. Lawyers convinced victims to try their luck, promising ‘no win, no fees’.

Despite employers’ best efforts to appease unions, to placate environmentalists, and to satisfy insurance companies, it seems that our places of work are more dangerous than ever. Stress is the new killer that affects workers’ mental and physical health. It destroys both productivity and profitability.

Is it conceivable that, despite earnest attempts to improve occupational health and safety, we have entered an era in which the greatest threat to our workforce is an ill-defined intangible disease that emanates from work itself? Could it be that workers are more inclined to suffer from stress because they are uncertain about their future and because they are not passionate about their work?

Although we can point to many factors that fuel stress, we must find out what triggers it. In my search to understand the essence of stress, I have come to disagree with popular medical definitions. I define occupational stress as a condition resulting from our inability to reconcile our capability with our authority. This means that stress is ignited when we can see a solution to a major problem, and we know that we are capable of fixing that problem, but we have no authority to do so. We are shackled by bureaucracy.

Stress leads to frustration, which in turn leads to a debilitating disease called ‘depression’. I define depression as a condition resulting from our inability to reconcile our inadequacy with our responsibility. This means that depression consumes us when we realise that we are unable to do anything about our own problems. As a result, we believe that our problems will never go away.

Stress test

I have devised a stress test called the ‘elasticity of command’. It enables me to determine an individual’s propensity to suffer from occupational stress. I draw on the analogy of giving employees a piece of elastic to measure the distance between them and the nearest colleague who can obstruct a project unnecessarily. Employees are then asked to compare that by measuring the distance between them and their commander (the boss) — whose responsibility it would be to facilitate a smooth transition for the project.

If the boss is reachable and responsive, the stress level is said to be minimal. If the boss is unreachable and unresponsive, the stress level is said to be extreme.

Stress becomes ‘frustration’ when those who can obstruct us are more powerful than our boss. In industries where everything is processed in real-time, we must be given the tools to make decisions in real-time.

Using ‘elasticity of command’, we can see that the person who is ultimately responsible for work-related stress is none other than the boss (whether it be our own boss, or someone further up the ladder). Bosses, too, can suffer from stress if their superiors are unreachable and unresponsive.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 2 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Have you been naughty or nice?

From performance appraisal to staff reprisal

Performance appraisals affect the majority of employees. Often they are a complete waste of time because they are manipulative, stressful, counter-productive, and ineffective. Most organisations tell employees that reviews are necessary for personal development and for salary adjustments, yet they use them for ‘crowd control’ or as a legal tool to oust non-performers or those whom they do not like. Interestingly, this tool has backfired on employers just as many times as it has been useful in court. As a result, modern review documents are drafted by lawyers, written by psychologists, then edited by personnel managers. By the time they reach employees, they are unbelievably convoluted, irrelevant, and downright impossible to implement because the measurement processes are nonsensical.

Regardless of the final scores, pay-rises and bonuses are determined arbitrarily by those who control the purse- strings. Their game reminds me of magicians who start with, ‘Pick a number, any number… ’ and then proceed to tell us what that number is. Managers often know who they want to reward, so the performance review becomes an academic exercise that is reverse-engineered to fit the pool of funds that has been allocated for certain bands of ‘performers’ — or dare one say ‘cohorts’.

I have no objection to managers using subjective and discriminating means to distribute rewards by way of money, title, position, and power. Why go against human nature? No matter how a review mechanism is designed, and no matter how many computerised forms are filled in, managers will still have their own inexplicable justifications for who they like, who they appreciate, who they loath, and who they wish to promote. These intangible feelings cannot be specified on forms. After all, what mathematical reasoning process do you engage in when determining who you like or dislike? The complex emotional and egotistical methods that are used to categorise friends is not something with which a computer can cope. It all boils down to processes that cannot be measured. For more about human behaviour, see Chapter 8, ‘I’m not a racist, but… ’

Nudge nudge, wink wink

When I was eighteen years old, there was a young chain-smoker not far from where I lived. We used to go for walks in the night air. I cannot recall his name, but what sticks in my mind is that he was honest about being stressed. I never knew what troubled him, and I did not ask, but he would say something like, ‘I’m so stressed out… I am under so much pressure.’ That would not normally captivate me, except that he had an obvious twitch. As a youngster, I did not link the two. I had no idea that stress could cause such visible side-effects — not until I suffered the same problem a few years later.

One of my bosses had the nicest smile. She was petite, attractive, and said very little. I automatically assumed that her demeanour made her an agreeable person. But I was in for a shock. Her intimidating ways left me with a twitch that I could not shake off for eighteen months. I did not link the two until she left the company. It is funny how a clear and present threat can linger with us for ages. It can even go undetected until we are far away from the situation to see the real cause. I was unaware that her subtle, yet unrelenting intimidation had such an effect on me. I reflected upon my neighbour. I had erroneously presumed that his twitch was a result of a mental disorder from birth.

I was angry with myself for being so naïve and helpless in my manager’s presence. I always thought that I was tough and resilient. Although at school I was able to take on bullies of all sizes, I had no tactics to handle adults. Worse still, I was untrained to detect the kind of intimidation that led to my nervous twitch. Eventually, I became aware of such terrorisation, but only to a limited extent because I was caught out again with a new mechanism called the ‘performance review’. Regardless of their intended purpose, and irrespective of how they are implemented, performance reviews are demeaning. The whole notion of bosses sitting employees down and grading them, like farmers grade their eggs, is humiliating. Who do they think they are?

Irreverent logic

For organisations that use performance reviews, it would be difficult to convince them to abandon their entrenched procedures. It would be problematic to engage in a discussion about this because of magnetic thinking — meaning that irreverent logic is used to argue a point about a practice whereby the intention is virtuous, but the execution is flawed.

Advocates of performance reviews could list dozens of benefits. The ultimate and most important one is to improve the company’s performance. With that intention in mind, anyone who argues against reviews would seem to be arguing against improving the company’s performance. This is what is meant by irreverent logic. Of course we should find ways to improve performance. In so doing, managers are warned against using noble intentions to fuel ignoble programs that infest organisations in the guise of excellence.

Over the years, performance assessment schemes have been modified, tweaked, re-cast, and re-designed; all to no avail. For years, performance reviews have attempted to embrace seventeen main areas. These are to: set standards; determine benchmarks; give feedback; coach staff; drive pay-rises; determine promotions; reward on merit; measure performance; document incidents; meet legal obligations; develop talent; outline training requirements; plan careers; highlight weaknesses; raise the alarm for bad employees; give warnings; and justify dismissals.

Any human-resources mechanism would be burdened if it were expected to administer more than one objective; let alone seventeen.

Performance appraisals are not, in themselves, harmful. But the unavoidable side-effects are intolerable. If a commercial medicine caused insufferable side-effects, it would be withdrawn from the market. If a headache tablet worked wonders to relieve pain, but caused hair loss, people would reject it. When the downsides are obvious, it is not hard to understand that an effective product can also be defective.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 3 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Networking

You scratch my back, and I’ll be off

Many people ask me why, on my business cards, ‘Post-Tentative Virtual Surrealist’ appears under my name. I usually joke that it is a diagnosis of a rare medical condition. Here is the real story of how I came up with the title.

At a corporate function, an irritating couple was working the room. It was obvious that they saw the gathering as an opportunity to develop business contacts. They were not at all shy about walking up to each small group, offering their business cards, making some small talk, extracting some information, and then moving on to the next cluster, saying, ‘We’ll call you next week. We have some very interesting things to tell you.’

It was obvious that they were networking. Eventually, they meandered to my corner to perform their ritual — a big smile, a firm handshake that could easily turn into a hug if one were not careful, and the ceremonious exchange of business cards. The four people in my circle obliged by surrendering their cards. The smooth operators read the cards, clarified each person’s title, and made some overly friendly remark that bordered on sycophancy.

‘Oh, hello Jonar. Good to see you here,’ said the woman, gleaning my name from my name tag. She had already given me her card, but noticing that I had not given her mine, she offered another card in one hand and held out the other hand in the hope that it would prompt me to give her mine. I took her second card, but I did not reciprocate.

‘So, Jonar, who do you work for?’ she asked.

‘I’m just here as a guest,’ I said, unwilling to divulge any information to the nosy assailant.

‘He’s with IBM,’ volunteered one of the people in my group, thinking that he was being helpful.

‘Who do you report to?’ she asked.

‘Someone overseas. You wouldn’t know him,’ I said.

‘What’s your title?’ she persisted.

That style of interrogation is not to my liking, so I said that I did not have a title. She refused to believe me. ‘You must have a title!’ she said.

Irritated, I replied, ‘I’m a post-tentative virtual surrealist.’

‘A what?’ she demanded, while maintaining her fake smile.

Talk about a nuisance! Still, I have her to thank for my new job title, which I had just made-up on the spot.

What do you do for a living?

You might have gathered that I dislike networking. Those who know me might be confused, because they think of me as a good networker. I would remind them that I have never called to take advantage of them. I have never asked them a personal question, or probed into their private life or work. Furthermore, at functions I never ask anyone about their work, their job title, or their family, unless they first volunteer that information.

Here is another little secret about me: I am quick to dismiss people who start a sentence with, ‘What do you do for a living?’ Mind you, these days, my work is rather public, so there is less of that. I now have to suffer a new set of repetitive questions.

Although such questions are used as innocent ice-breakers, they show signs of a weak capacity for stimulating conversation.

The fundamental rule when initiating a conversation is to ask yourself if what you are about to say to a total stranger is original enough to be interesting. If the stranger is well known, such as a celebrity or an industry figure, you would have to consider if what you are about to utter are words that the celebrity has not heard a thousand times before.

A rule of thumb when meeting someone for the first time is to observe the first question that pops into your head — and make a point of not asking it. Do not bore others by asking mundane or excruciating questions. You will know how boring this can be if you have ever had to wear a cast for a broken arm or leg. Remember how many people made it a topic of conversation by asking, ‘What happened to you?’ It is the same when you have just had a haircut. People say, ‘You’ve had a haircut,’ as if you did not know.

Therefore, consider what you say, and to whom. Allow people to be who they are, not what they are. When you meet people for the first time, do not ask them stock-standard questions that do nothing more than box them into a social set, while signalling that you are only interested in them if they lead an interesting life. Besides, people who lead an interesting life do not usually want to talk about it with total strangers. They could well be exhausted with the subject, modest or shy about it, or just be in need of some privacy. Successful people long to be accepted — but not for their connections, contacts, or fame.

Do me a favour

Many people seem to think that networking is all about getting to know influential people with a view to securing advantages. The practice is so entrenched in business and in society that formal invitations often say something like, ‘You are cordially invited to our annual celebration where you will have an opportunity to network…’

Networking is damaging not because it is harmful in itself, but because it sets up expectations that could disarm you. Do not become a victim of networking by placing your confidence in people who could distract you and sap your energy.

Fundamentally, networking is a waste of time because your success needs to be built on solid foundations. Those who live in the hope that one day someone will discover their talent, will be disappointed unless they build their own infrastructure.

Do not rely on others to do things for you. If you meet people in positions of power, what you do not know is how they got there, and how long they will be there. Beware the manipulators who hold positions of power. Before you know it, they will be hyping up their life and lifestyle in the hope that you will become enamoured of their connections and capabilities. If you try to seek favours from them, you will be targeted and caught before you know it. While you are hoping that they will do something for you, the tables will turn and you will end up doing something for them.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 4 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

The early bird catches the bookworm

For years, I have been a critic of commercialised education, saying that studying at university is, more often than not, a waste of time for those who go there in the ‘hope’ that they might find a direction. Unless they have a specific purpose for obtaining particular qualifications, students are likely to regret their actions. This chapter outlines salient points about how education relates to personal development. It points the way to a satisfying and rewarding career — with or without the help of formal education.

The first step is to acknowledge that no level of qualification is useful for prospective students, until they know the direction that they want to take. Alas, most students approach this problem in reverse, attending a university to find a direction. Such a process is futile. Tertiary studies ought to fuel existing passions, not ignite new passions. Studying a subject merely to seek a qualification, so as to impress employers or peers, is not being true to oneself.

Any criticism levelled at education does not pertain to learning. Fostering an inquiring mind and learning how to develop (and later to feed) an insatiable appetite for knowledge ought to be the second-most urgent pursuit of the intelligent being.

Our uneducated pioneers

Many of the products and technologies that we use today were given to us by uneducated pioneers.

At your next social gathering, ask your friends this question: ‘Think of the ten major inventions or developments of all time that you would deem to have been the most important for society’s progress.’ Perhaps each of the ten would have been given to us by pioneers who, if lined up today, would not pass a basic university entrance examination. In their day, they might not even have been respected citizens.

Imagine attending a concert where you are entertained by sixty leading musicians performing some of the most energising music you have heard. How would you react to being told that the composer does not read music? It seems impossible that such a person can compose breathtaking masterpieces for a sixty-piece orchestra! One such musician is Yanni Chryssomallis.

Who says that Yanni has to read sheet music? Which came first, music notation or music composition? Surely notation and sheet music reflect what musicians do best so that the rest of the world can learn from their talent.

Beethoven composed music while completely deaf, yet many of us would expect that hearing is a prerequisite for composing and performing. We need to adjust our understanding of what it means to be an expert of our craft.

Leading-edge thinkers are years ahead of educators in institutions. Thinkers go about their business by innovating, devising, inventing, building, and paving the way so that other people can benefit from better products and improved processes.

Universities do not create brilliant people. They merely seek the knowledge that brilliant people possess, and re-package it in the form of information. The recent information-technology industry that has changed many aspects of our life (and kept the economy buoyant) was propelled by non-graduates. Universities could not keep up with what these innovators developed. School dropouts were innovative, so universities rushed to observe what was going on. Entire faculties were built to capture the fury of an emerging industry. The innovators were the inspired and talented, not necessarily the university-educated.

Nowadays we are hearing more about the importance of ‘knowledge’. The slogan ‘knowledge is power’ is misleading. Knowledge is not in itself power. Rather, power comes from the application of knowledge.

The grand illusion

Many students are under the grand illusion that they can ‘become something’, merely by undertaking the appropriate course. When they make a decision about the profession they want to pursue, they genuinely believe that all they have to do is get the right marks, apply to a university, and if they are lucky enough to be selected, they can be on their way to reaching their goal.

We live in a world of ‘instant gratification’ whereby we want answers and pleasures immediately. We expect to see results straight away. We are impatient when we go in search of joy and ecstasy. We dislike waiting for medication to work, and we expect speedy recoveries. We want paint to dry instantly, and we want beauty products to enhance our features without delay. Yet, strangely enough, there are still some things for which we are prepared to wait. For example, many people are prepared to go through tiresome routines and long time-frames to attain a goal. Prepared to work hard all year at a job that they do not particularly like, they wait patiently for a holiday, thinking that eleven months of misery can be alleviated by four weeks away at a resort.

It is with the same perverse sense of delayed fulfilment that people are prepared to invest years into tertiary education, hoping that they will eventually find an excellent job. They also believe that the more they study, the more likely they will find employment in an exciting industry, working for an innovative company. This is the promise that many students want to believe in — just like we all want to believe in the perfect marriage and the blissful loving relationship. Unfortunately, the problem with following such a dream is that by the time we find out that we have been misled, it is often too late to reclaim our energy and our youth. Seeking job-satisfaction by undertaking tertiary education is often a gamble. Gambling life away with idealistic fantasies at education institutions that paint rosy pictures, is folly.

Interestingly, institutions espouse the benefits of education, yet they are not responsible for delivering on the promises they make. There are no guarantees. There is no recourse at the end if you find that you do not have an advantage after all.

The modern rationale for tertiary studies

Students have many reasons for attending college, not dissimilar to the varied reasons why some people attend church. Their faith might draw them to worship with their community. Some attend for social reasons, others attend out of habit, or because their parents force them to go. Some might be there to steal a glimpse of their sweetheart. They might pursue their religious activities out of hope, fear, guilt, or custom. Some churchgoers attend for the sake of their partner or children; others attend with neither a sense of purpose, nor conviction, but through obligation or indifference.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 5 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

You deserve what you get

Searching for a black spider in a dark room

I can now confidently predict the top-ten questions that I would be asked after my public lectures. Invariably they include queries about the secrets of job-satisfaction and career development. People of all ages, and of all backgrounds, are finding it hard to understand how their work can complement their life. They admit that they do not have a vision for where they are heading. They say that they do not have a sense of purpose. They feel guilty for not engaging in passionate pursuits. They blame themselves for having lost their zest, and they accuse the company of losing the plot.

Even those in well-paid positions within booming industries feel vulnerable and insecure because they know that they are not adequately contributing to their organisation. All that they can do is wait helplessly for something to happen, yet they stagnate as the empty years slip away.

Employees become frightened about their future because they cannot set a direction, let alone see the vision. They think that their only strategy is to engage in further studies in the hope that additional qualifications might lead to a better career. They lose their confidence slowly, much like a punctured tyre loses air. Before they know it, they are depleted and helpless. Eventually, they lose their ability to negotiate, because they no longer believe in themselves. When they reach this point, they become averse to risk. Besides, they have already emptied their energy tank, giving their all to their employer. They have no fuel left to tend to their own nest, so they work doubly hard on the treadmill so that they cannot be accused of disloyalty. Some employees cannot see that they are disposable — until that unfathomable moment when they are dismissed, or retrenched, or eased out one way or another.

No matter how abusive their boss might be, they become numb to the torture because they do not dare to show signs of displeasure. They cannot afford to bite the hand that feeds them. They become professional beggars for financial and emotional sustenance. Like hostages who grow sympathetic to their captor, they become dependent on the boss to stroke their ego, no matter how brutally. Mind you, the only thing more disturbing than abusive employers is surrendered employees. Those who concede defeat will reason that they got what they deserved. Eventually, they attribute their failure to the company and its management, or to fate, or karma, or numerology, or astrology — in fact, to any external force that can explain their demise.

What do you deserve?

There is an old maxim that says you get what you deserve. If only that were true. Do the famine-stricken deserve relentless pain and sorrow? Are the forty million children who live in abject poverty and slavery deserving of their plight?

Every child deserves a loving family. Every family deserves a happy environment. Every society deserves peace. Every nation deserves prosperity. And why not?

Do you deserve a better job? Do you deserve a prosperous life packed with fun and adventure? Of course you do. Everyone deserves wonderful moments to fill the short amount of time we have on this planet. And why not?

Who among us would not feel deserving of a fabulous job? Who would not yearn for an energy-charged career? Who would not desire luxuries to share with loved ones?

The world offers its beauty and invites us to partake in its generosity. All that is required of us is to reciprocate. The law of reciprocity allows us to extract love when we inject affection, to extract peace when we inject happiness, and to extract wealth when we inject value. When we give our best, we can claim the best.

My brilliant career

Central to all of these riches is our career. It is the mechanism through which we toil lovingly so that we can be rewarded completely. Through our work, we can claim our worth. Through our labour, we can claim our rest. Through our craft, we can claim our position.

Our social structures have conditioned us to believe that our status in society hinges on a respectable career. A job is like a name-tag that reveals our identity.

Are you really engaged in a labour of love, or are you merely an employee whose primary objective is to race through the day so that you can get home on time? Is leaving work your main focus when starting work? Is concluding a call your principal goal when answering the telephone? Is finishing a task the main aim when starting it?

When your actions are activities that merely pass the time in anticipation of a brighter future, you can be assured that you will not be granted an enchanting future. Those whose current job is not rewarding, can be certain that their next job will not be rewarding. This means that if you are not happy at this moment, you will not be happy at a later moment because time and place do not govern happiness. The same goes for job-satisfaction; it has little to do with the job itself.

When the vision is blurred

If you are dissatisfied with your job, yet have a deep-seated desire to improve it, you might be wondering what you can do to find your path. You might be searching for something to grab your attention. You might even be willing to surrender your every waking moment to something that can excite you. Alas, you have racked your brain and are unable to find your passion. Nothing takes your fancy — well, nothing within your reach.

You are not alone in feeling that your career is non-existent. You might even still be a student, trying to find a way to embrace your course, without a clue about how your studies can help you to find a direction. Lacking vision (blindness) is one of the nine modern intangible diseases that are explained in Chapter 7, ‘Please cancel my disorder’.

When people ask for help to find an exciting career, I remind them that careers cannot be found because they must be built. There are no shortcuts. Do not confuse ‘position’ with ‘career’. Positions are irrelevant and are of no value. To assume that a position brings contentment is as erroneous as the assumption that living in a mansion yields a happy family.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 6 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Looking into the seeds of time

You can’t reap what you can’t sow

Shakespeare wrote, ‘If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me…’

Can you look into your own situation and know where your future will take you? This is difficult. It is for this reason that you are better off focussing on planting the right seeds and nurturing them.

During some of my lectures, I hand out seeds and ask students to tell me what those seeds will produce. They could be holding seeds from which will grow the most intricate of flowers, or the most marvellous of vegetables. No-one is able to tell me, because most seeds look the same. They are brown, hard, small, unattractive, and offer no clues whatsoever about what will spring from them. Even if cut in half, there is no way of seeing the miracles of creation. Deep within the cells reside incomprehensible codes that untangle to unite with the soil, sun, and rain to produce profound beauty. Each seed has an inbuilt reproductive system so complex that it can humble anyone who ponders the intricacy and miracle of life.

The garden of Eden

Each of us carries an assortment of seeds — whether inherited or acquired. All the seeds look the same, so the challenge is to know which to nurture and which to discard. These seeds are sometimes called opportunities, skills, talent, attitude, luck, or fortune. In the style of Vollenweider’s poetry, I maintain that if we harbour seeds of doubt, we will grow vines of confusion. If we endure seeds of tears, we will contend with leaves of loneliness. If we cultivate seeds of compassion, we will raise trees of love. If we develop seeds of understanding, we will produce fruits of forgiveness. If we foster seeds of tenderness, we will sprout flowers of laughter. If we nurture seeds of calmness, gardens of joy will flourish.

So it is with our careers. What we sow today will determine what we can reap tomorrow. Therefore, those who are confused about their careers can easily determine what their future will bring, simply by looking at what they harbour, what they foster, and what they nurture. Take a close look at your life and observe what you tolerate and what you cherish. Observe what you find agreeable and what you find permissible. That which you allow into your life will set the foundation for your future. This means that if you allow energy-sappers into your life, you can be certain of a depleted future. If you accept mediocrity, you can be certain of misfortune. If selfishness is your disease, you will contend with emptiness.

Mission improbable; vision impractical

Many people do not understand what it means to have a mission. A mission is a set of activities that you must accomplish if you are to reach your goal. So start by deciding what you want, then reverse engineer your strategy so that you can determine which seeds you need to accumulate. Never mind trying to dictate how the seeds will grow, because you cannot control the laws of nature. Do not tamper with nature. Instead, learn its laws. For example, if you inject hatred, you will see devastation. If you inject laziness, you will see death.

Your most urgent task is to focus on what you are doing right now. How well did you perform today? How hard did you work? How much love did you inject into your craft? Did you try to cheat anyone?

People fumble when they go in search of that which cannot be found, and when they seek to turn into that which they cannot become. For example, a chef who wants a cake does not set about to become the cake. Furthermore, the chef does not go in search of the cake. Instead, the chef sets about acquiring the right ingredients in order to bake a cake.

This means that when you can see what you want for yourself, you cannot attain it by looking for it because ‘it’ does not exist — you have to build it. This is what is meant by building your career. (By the way, what you ‘see’ becomes your vision, and what you must ‘do’ becomes your mission.)

The first step in any mission is to acquire the appropriate ingredients. These might include knowledge, awareness, attitude, and other soft and hard skills. The second step would be to learn how to combine them. The third step would be to build the stamina to be able to physically unite them in the right proportions so that they blend harmoniously.

This is not as easy as it sounds. In the case of baking a cake, almost every household has the ingredients, yet few would know how to mix them. Although their pantry contains flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, and even though they all have an oven, few are able to bake a mouth-watering chocolate gâteau. So it is with careers. Most people have the ingredients. Sadly, the possession of ingredients is not sufficient to cook up a storm. It requires knowledge and timing.

It is important to learn about the general ingredients you need for success. Set about acquiring them, and learn how to combine them, and build the stamina to be able to undertake any arduous task. Here you will need persistence and tenacity.

Press on

The worst thing that disgruntled employees can do is to ‘work to rule’ (whereby they do only what is required of them, and nothing more). Being on a ‘go slow’ is self-damaging. It would be like refusing to undertake your exercise program just because you do not like the gym instructor. Many resilient prisoners maintain their exercise regime while in captivity. If they refuse to train simply because they do not like the prison and its wardens, or because they feel that they were incarcerated unjustly, they would only be harming themselves.

You need to keep up your personal development program no matter what you think of your boss or the organisation. Whether your boss deserves it or not, you need to maintain your momentum so that you do not slow down. By the time you have built the right attitude, aptitude, and acuity, you will be in a comfortable position to design and build any career you choose — much like a chef can use handy ingredients to make different delicious four-course meals any night of the week. Combining talent and energy to create your own opportunities is more important than lusting over one job. It is better to learn how to cook, than to master one recipe.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 7 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Please cancel my disorder

The nine intangible diseases

If only it were possible to write a book called First & Last in which the author could list the first and the last of everything; and describe the event itself. For example, who was the first person to bite into a tomato? Who was the first person to see fire; and what did that person think or feel at the time? Which community was the first to experience the thunderous sound of an aircraft breaking the sound barrier? Who was the first person to be blinded by gazing at a solar eclipse?

Imagine how fascinating it would have been to follow the last dinosaur. Who outlived the group of people who personally knew King Henry VIII? What was occupying Galileo’s mind during the last week of his life?

The initial concept of ‘money’ would have confounded many people. Can you imagine the discussion that would have taken place when a travelling trader visited the shores of the Nile in Egypt and said, ‘Allah be with you. I like your vegetables. I’ll take them, and in exchange, I’ll give you this piece of stone we call money’. The seller’s perplexity would have been precious to catch on camera.

We hear of things that happen once in a lifetime. Some comets appear in our solar system every 75 years or so. If we do not look heavenward at the right moment, we will have no other opportunity during our lifetime. Halley’s comet last appeared in 1986, and will next appear in approximately 2061.

What is more fascinating is not so much the concept of a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience, but the concept of a ‘once-ever’ event. There are some things that can never happen again. For example, your birth was a once-ever event.

Although these moments of history are locked away forever, we can rest assured that new marvels abound, including new problems, new solutions, and new sights and sounds that our ancestors could not have enjoyed.

What age are we in?

If you were at a gathering and someone asked, ‘What age are we in?’ What would you say? Many people think that we are in the age of telecommunications. Other descriptions include: the age of consumption; the age of knowledge; the age of invention; the Internet age; and the space age. The majority believes that we are in the age of technology. I disagree. The technology that drives the world today has been around for decades. Most of the important advancements in the construction of social infrastructures took place long before the computer was invented.

I believe that we live in the age of con-fusion. I have hyphenated this word to emphasise more than one meaning. The first connotes the traditional use of ‘confusion’ to mean ‘bewilderment’. The second meaning takes the word ‘con’ which means ‘together’ and the word ‘fusion’ which means ‘to melt’. The implication is that we are in an age wherein we are fusing disciplines that had never before touched each other. The primary element is technology, whereby we fuse it with secondary elements such as medicine, finance, business, law, education, and farming.

The process of convergence is not as complex as con-fusion. The former merely brings elements together. The latter combines those elements to form a completely different substance.

We humans have been able to imitate nature in order to innovate. Unfortunately, the by-products have become the new burdens of our age. These include tangible consequences such as new waste and garbage, for which we have not yet developed adequate disposal methods. Also included are intangibles that complicate our world when we envelop them with regionally based ethics and values — meaning, what is considered acceptable within certain countries and customs.

Some intangible by-products are manufactured on purpose. For example, in the past, multinationals were accused of starting a new industry by inventing the perceived disease called ‘body odour’. The multi-trillion dollar industry showers us with perfumes, body sprays, soaps, deodorants, and other products to make us smell more appealing. The modern equivalent is the perceived disease of computer illiteracy.

Other by-products that emerge from con-fusion include mental and social disorders that manifest tangibly (such as obesity) and intangibly (see those listed below) to grip nations and to torment people.

The nine deadly intangible diseases

I have identified nine debilitating modern diseases that I think are responsible for personal failures and misery. Although these diseases are not new to the human race, they have now reached epidemic proportions. When coaching and counselling my clients and their staff members, I have been struck by the prevalence of these diseases. Below, I have summarised the results of my findings (listed in alphabetical order).

Modern disease 1 – Abdication

The best technology is the one that is invisible and stable. The light bulb is an example of invisibility, in that it works without intervention on our part. The electricity station is so far away that most people will never get to see one in person. Television and radio are good examples of stability, in that they work every time we turn them on (notwithstanding the glitches in new digital devices). The hard work that takes place behind the scenes to produce the programs is not something with which we have to concern ourselves.

Invisibility and stability are the ideal states for fast-paced societies. Unfortunately, they are also the contributors to the disease of abdication, whereby we entrust the complexity of our world to someone else. For example, we have no idea how the electricity generator keeps working, nor do we doubt that it is being taken care of. At this level, dependability turns into dependency, while reliability becomes reliance.

Fears of dependency and reliance surfaced when the calculator was first allowed into the classroom. Educators fretted that students would lose their ability to perform basic arithmetic. Modernists argued that it did not matter, pointing to the fact that many services in modern life come to us without any intervention on our part, and that progress meant that we had to let go of the fundamentals. So much so, that some milk drinkers have never seen a real cow. There are also children who have never experienced the tears resulting from cutting an onion. Are they missing out on something? What about modern children for whom a box of matches is a novelty amid ignition gadgetry in their kitchen?

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 8 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

I’m not a racist, but…

Pride and prejudice in the workplace

Do you believe that you have been denied work opportunities because your boss does not like something about you? This chapter explains how racism and discrimination work, and what you can do to minimise their effect on you.

At its essence, racism describes a preference for one group over another and the belief that one’s own ‘race’ is superior to another ‘race’. Regardless, I doubt that we operate at that level. At school, at work, and within our community, people are not concerned with the pure issues of race. They contend with its constituent parts that include discrimination, inequality, sexism, chauvinism, favouritism, nepotism, bias, preference, fear, and intolerance.

If you are trying to fight racism, forget it. By locking horns with fundamental human emotions, you will lose. Racism is not the enemy. It is not something that you can identify as an external foe, because it exists within each of us — not because we are all racists, but because we all harbour the basic ingredients that could easily ignite to form inexplicable feelings about others.

Although I do not condone racism, I believe that the many complaints about it are misdirected because people are being persecuted or disadvantaged based on other human factors, not on their race.

I’m guilty, but not of racism

Although I do not know many racists, I do know many people who discriminate against others based not on ‘race’ but on ‘human’ factors. I must admit to being guilty of that myself — meaning that I find some people attractive and some people unattractive in their attitudes, their way of life, their physical appearance, their personality, and their intellectual and spiritual expression.

Could you have a physical and intimate relationship with anyone, regardless of hygiene, looks, habits, odour, general appearance, age, and beliefs? Marriages end because one partner could not cope with the other’s table manners. Friends part because they could not tolerate each other’s personal habits. Even those who meet the person of their dreams could be easily repulsed by peculiar personal preferences.

I must also admit to exercising that degree of discrimination at the business level — meaning that I prefer not to work with people whose business conduct and social graces are not to my liking. The dubious ethical standards of some professionals are disgusting, whereby I become uneasy about transacting with them. I can detect con-artists from afar, and I want nothing to do with such manipulators and liars. I prefer to avoid people whose negative or destructive views grate on my spirit. I would not want to work with people whose morals and principles are contrary to what I can cope with. That type of feeling is not one that I can always justify to my colleagues in ‘words’. Do you call that racism? I call it human nature.

Cataloguing the world

When meeting people for the first time, our brain goes into overdrive as we unintentionally categorise them. Some ignorant people do make erroneous judgements based on nationality or skin colour. Although this cannot be condoned, it is understandable. Society superficially operates on the basis of ‘image’. The concept of ‘branding’ works by positioning the qualities of a brand in the consumer’s mind. Consumers could, over time, be led to believe that certain brand names do represent certain qualities. If you were asked to identify the best brands in the world, you would probably mention some that you respect, but with which you have never had any association. Similarly, you are likely to have pre-conceived notions about cultures with which you have never come into contact.

Countries, too, have brand qualities. Regardless of fact, some people form opinions about products, depending upon the country of manufacture. Here is a simple test for which there are no right or wrong answers, merely ‘perceptions’ that you might have formed over the years. Answer these questions based on which of the two countries would offer the better product in your opinion: 1) Chocolate from Belgium or Bhutan; 2) Whisky from Scotland or Sweden; 3) Cheese from Norway or New Zealand; 4) Stereo systems from Japan or Jamaica; 5) Perfume from France or Fiji; 6) Fast cars from Germany or Greece; 7) Computers from Taiwan or the Tonga. There are also perceived origins for different types of food such as curry, pasta, pizza, and noodle dishes.

Consider the judgements we make about professions. At gatherings, people react differently towards those who say that their occupations are astronauts, surgeons, car salespeople, judges, shop assistants, undertakers, students, accountants, psychiatrists, film producers, or street-sweepers. The unemployed could receive an altogether different reception.

Long tradition gives ‘colours’ superstitious attributes. Some people would never drive a red car. Some insist that purple is the colour that offers good fortune. In some countries, yellow represents bad luck. These are compounded by the inexplicable, yet popular beliefs, that certain numbers represent good luck. People move to a house whose street number adds up to a ‘preferred’ integer or they buy a car whose registration number-plate includes the digit ‘3’ or excludes the number ‘666’. Other people would not work on the fourth or thirteenth floors of a building, and some buildings do not have such floors. There is no explaining how these things are rationalised. In addition, there are fundamentalists, fanatics, extremists, and those who subscribe to astrology, numerology, and a dozen other mystical cults. So as you can see, racism is hardly the major obstacle to human harmony.

If the brain can make judgements about brands, why can it not make judgements about people? If people can be misled about brands, why can’t they be misled about other aspects such as cultures, nationalities, countries, languages, gender, age groups, sexuality, and modes of dress — in fact, anything that is ‘foreign’ to them?

Tarred with the same brush

You might have heard a friend say, ‘I would never again deal with XYZ Company because it’s hopeless and it doesn’t care about its customers.’ It could well be that the company employs 300 000 people, yet your friend would be making a judgement based on what only three of its employees have done. That is a similar reaction to those who judge a whole race, country, or religion, based on what three people have done or said to them, or based on what they have seen on television. Foreign nationals have repeatedly objected to the images that the media portrays about their country and lifestyle. Some argue that travel advertisements showing natives in their national dress are misleading because such costumes are only worn at rare cultural events. What we see about a country through television does not necessarily portray the real day-to-day environment.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 9 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

The enemy within

First impressions last

In the previous chapter, it was pointed out that it is natural for humans to discriminate against each other. Rather than fight the forces of nature, we would do well to understand how racism and discrimination work so that we do not trigger emotions in others that might cause them to distance themselves from us. In the work environment, what we do and what we say, and how we interact and communicate, all contribute to how others might judge us. Below are seven aspects on which to reflect. The list focuses on some of the factors that contribute to discrimination during the early stages of meeting people.

1. Vocabulary

After you have grasped the language and polished your accent to suit the local market, consider the extent of your vocabulary. Those with a limited vocabulary reduce their chances of a promotion, not because people in power want to hear impressive words, but because they want to hear impressive ideas. If you are unable to vocalise your thoughts, how can you show your level of understanding of a subject? An expanded vocabulary is not meant to equip you with a ‘social tool’, but with a ‘thinking tool’.

Other than vocabulary, grammar and spelling are important. It is harder to keep climbing the corporate ladder if you lack competency in these areas. A weak handle on these, presupposes deficiency of intellect and education. For example, there are groups of professionals who cringe at people who say ‘haitch’ when referring to the eighth letter of the alphabet. They also discriminate against those who say things like ‘everythink’ instead of ‘everything’.

Regardless of how competent you might be at your profession, you are judged and ranked by what people can see, hear, and read. These are the external factors that help to paint a picture about you.

If you do not take care of your written and spoken skills, and improve these if required, you might not be given a second chance to prove your capabilities.

2. Public speaking

Ranked as one of the most uncomfortable things that an executive has to do, public speaking is seen as a terrifying obligation. Public speaking also refers to general presentations that are made to the media, staff, shareholders, and the members of the public via seminars or television.

The most successful of industry leaders are those who can stand behind a microphone and project their personality with confidence. It is not a skill that can be honed after one reaches an office of power. Rather, it is rare to reach an office of power without it.

Do not think that public speaking is reserved for high-flyers. To be able to present well to large and small groups is one of the most important personal qualities that an employee needs. Remember that the purpose is to get your message across without unnecessary interruptions and distractions. Those who cannot present their ideas confidently and succinctly are holding themselves back. It is difficult to rally support if you cannot communicate your ideas.

Presentation skills include how you present your ideas and how you use the tools to do so. Computers, microphones, lighting, projection systems, and other devices, form part of the picture. For example, a presenter who thumps the lectern with every sentence might not realise that the microphone is amplifying those thumps into irritating noises that fill the room and distract the audience.

Anyone who gets up to present and is nervous behind a microphone must immediately work to overcome that anxiety. I have often heard executives say, ‘I’m hopeless at it, I just can’t do it.’ Unless they deal with this, it would be like saying ‘I can’t play the piano’. If playing the piano is an important part of your profession, and you never take lessons, you will look a fool when someone forces you on stage and asks you to perform. Imagine being asked to play an instrument that you know nothing about. Imagine being introduced by an enthusiastic master of ceremonies who builds you up as the next presenter and says, ‘Now, would you please put your hands together and welcome our next speaker!’ What would you do? I can tell you what ninety-nine percent of executives do. They walk on stage to take the microphone and they proceed painfully through their unrehearsed performance, using equipment that is out of tune, with no showmanship whatsoever, no content, and a dry presentation that would bore the socks off anyone. You would not contemplate a piano recital if you could not play the piano, so why would you ever get up to present if you are ill-prepared?

There is no point in ignoring your weaknesses. Do something constructive to overcome these difficulties. There is no escaping that requirement. If you lack the ability to present, you will find yourself in awkward positions where your future employers will feel uncomfortable about you. That is not a feeling you want to trigger in them. Mind you, there are many presenters who think that they do a good job. Do not fall into that trap. Wherever possible, record yourself so that you can scrutinise your performance.

3. Written presentations

Remember that anything about you that ‘speaks for you’ can influence how people see you, and can therefore lead them to form impressions about you. Your behaviour, your telephone manner, and your dress can be the source of a positive or negative effect.

Communicating through written means is far more prevalent and informal nowadays than in the last century. Take care to understand what signals you send when you submit your written presentations to people who do not know you well. Everything about your work must be to a standard that would avoid distractions.

Not everything you send out has to be on the finest paper, but it must be suitable for the reader. For that reason, every effort has to be made to impress the person with whom you are communicating. Do not try to use a word-processor to submit a job-application if you are not proficient at using the software, or if you are unfamiliar with what constitutes ‘good layout’. There are ample courses that you can take to assist you in this regard. Do not overlook typography, layout, colour, and written presentation skills if you wish to communicate clearly. Look at design as being parallel to music. If you did not know how to compose a symphony, you would not contemplate recording one. Written presentations are like symphonies. To the trained observer, they can be inappropriate or pleasing. To make your mark, engage professionals to guide you as to how to present yourself.

The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 10 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.

Wanted: the boss of the future

The skills you’ll need for your next promotion

Successful people are those who can pre-empt future needs. They build personal skills that will be useful and valuable for their career. What will employers of the future be looking for? Here are the top-fifteen current requests from employers when looking to appoint managers. Following each of the requirements listed below are the skills that I believe the boss of the future would need to offer. Take a look at these and try to identify what you need to do to prepare yourself for your next promotion.

1 Current skill – Be a team player

Future skill – Be a troublemaker

Politicians are expected to be schizophrenic team players, in that they are required to appease voters, sponsors, journalists, and power brokers. Under these circumstances, politicians are expected to possess the qualities of a chameleon. No wonder some of them become dispassionate and disengaged. As Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister observed, he served eleven governments in thirty years, so if he had believed in all their policies, he would have ended up a stark, staring, raving loony!

We are told that to be a team player in the general work environment, we need to be a good listener who subscribes to consensus management. We are expected to be amiable, friendly, tolerant, and not inclined to upset others. Take a look at recruitment advertisements, or read job-specifications drafted by head-hunters. They all seem to want a ‘hard-working, hands-on, visionary leader who is a results-oriented team player with bottom-line responsibility who can take the company into the next decade while over-achieving the monthly targets, reducing expenses, and motivating a team of professionals’. These are contradictory requirements.

In the future, managers will need to be decisive, action-oriented, and influential operators who do not suffer fools. Managers need not bother with the diplomatic game of teamwork. Instead, they should focus on constructing teams that work. Furthermore, if you study all the significant developments of the past, you will find that somewhere in there was a person who was neither a team player nor a hero, but a troublemaker.

Future success will rely less on executives who can appease teams and get along with people, and more on those who can make things happen. Give me troublemakers any day over timid diplomats, for it is the former who shape our world. The challenge is to guide their energy in a positive direction.

2 Current skill – Turn managers into leaders

Future skill – Reinvigorate the role of managers

There is a new trend buzzing around corporate boardrooms, born from a popular notion that progressive organisations hire ‘leaders’, while stagnating ones employ ‘managers’. The general inference is that leaders are superior to managers.

Board members might believe that their current ‘managers’ are incapable of taking the troops into the fierce future, saying that managers are only administrators, whereas ‘leaders’ are the visionary saviours. This is naïve. Are doctors better than dentists? Are plumbers better than bricklayers? Surely it is horses for courses. Each has a role in society. In business, one mustn’t assume that leaders are better than managers. This would be an insult to both professions. And yes, being a leader is as much a profession as any other.

The difficulties emerge because, over the years, the word ‘leader’ has amassed magnificent brand value. If the word were a trademark, it would stand alongside the biggest of brand names — revered and respected. Regardless, being a leader is not something to be coveted. Yet, despite the fact that we all know that there are just as many bad leaders as there are good, it is still considered a compliment to call someone a leader.

A leader is simply someone who is engaging in a job — performing a function, and carrying out a task. Being a leader requires specialised skills and it needs to be done well. Yet, being a leader is no more important than any other function.

There is a huge difference between ‘being a leader’ and ‘engaging in leadership’. (This topic is covered in How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.) Until one can grasp this, the subject of leaders, managers, and leadership remains muddy and emotionally charged. It conjures up all sorts of irrational opposition from petty players who just want to be called leaders, regardless of what it means. Just ask teenagers whether it matters to them that their favourite brand of running shoes is not worth a fraction of the price they paid. Price and function have nothing to do with image.

If one understands the differences between being a leader and engaging in leadership, one can begin to understand that it would be misguided to replace managers with leaders.

Whatever the case, the general health of corporations is in a sorry state. Managers have been stripped of their authority. They have been demoralised by the hideous matrix-management structure that baffles them to the point of inactivity. They have been tormented by those to whom they report — junior school-yard bullies with split personalities who purport to be autonomous business leaders, when in fact they are puppets of the almighty headquarters (and those at headquarters are puppets of the stock market). At the end of all the rhetoric and nonsense about the ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ statements, nothing matters to them. Not even customers. Ah yes, remember the customers? No, what matters most to them is the end-of-month results.

It used to be that we measured things quarter by quarter. Before that, it was what we did during a twelve-month period that mattered. And prior to that, we all had to think about our three-year plan, and work towards that. Now you are lucky if you can finish your lunch before some goon in a silk tie asks, ‘Why have you only achieved forty-five percent of the monthly target with only two weeks to go until the end of the month?’ Oh no, drop everything! Drop your lunch, forget about tomorrow, just do what has to be done now to get the numbers now. Never mind about what your long-standing customers might want, and do not worry about following up on that last complaint. No-one cares. If you do not make your monthly figures, you will not even be there to care. So, who cares?