Jeffrey Pfeffer: evaluation

Transcript context

…You also talk about this. Yeah, there's this quote I have. "Acknowledge that others are often no better than you, because that makes you feel better about the story." So for people that actually want to be liked, I like being liked. I don't know if it's a flaw in my upbringing. Is the lesson you're capped on your power if you worry about if you want to be liked? At the end of the day, you don't want to be intentionally disliked. You don't want to violate my dear friend Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule and gratuitously be an asshole. But you are hired to get a job done. It's interesting. I unfortunately am now too old. In the words of my chiropractor, I'm suffering from too many birthdays. So I have a lot of doctors who are doing a great job. Trust me, when I choose a doctor, I have a, unfortunately he retired, a neurosurgeon who did two surgeries on my spine. He's considered to be one of the top 20 in the country. If you go on Yelp, you read about his personality and his office furniture. As I said to somebody, he's doing microsurgery on my spine, I can wind up permanently paralyzed. I really don't care about his personality. I don't care about his office furniture. That's an extreme example, but it makes the point. When you are put in a role, you are put in a role because presumably you are supposed to perform in that role. If you get appointed to be a head coach, if we make you a quarterback on an NFL team, or we make you center on a National Basketball Association team, you did not get that job because people thought you had a cute personality. You got that job because you have the skills to make your organization successful. And if you do not use those skills because you're worried about what everybody else is thinking, you are not only harming yourself, but you're harming them because you are not doing what you were hired to do. So a simple way of thinking about this, which makes me feel better about. As we talk through this, I'm becoming less uncomfortable with these, which is a good sign. It's don't actively try to be disliked. Don't prioritize being liked, prioritize competence and respect.…

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