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Sept. 15, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:11
1454 RTR@Work
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Hi, everybody. It's Steph.
It is the 13th of September 2009.
This is a re-record because my mad, delightful baby does not like it any longer.
When I podcast with her, when we're walking around, she starts screeching whenever I podcast.
And it's only when I'm podcast, when I'm talking to her or singing or whatever.
She's fine, but she no like either podcast either she read up.
So, over the course of four days, I managed to record one 25-minute podcast in snippets.
And then I thought, well, to assemble it, to listen to it again, to edit it, just in case it doesn't flow, I might as well just, it's actually just faster to re-record it.
So here you get a take-two, which hopefully will be slightly more efficient.
Oh, I've really wasted 40 seconds introducing it.
Oh, the inefficiencies are catastrophically low already.
So, this is RTR at Work.
People have had some questions, excellent, genius, brilliant questions, as always.
Some questions about honesty at work.
I think it's a fascinating, fascinating topic.
And I will share some of my amateur nonsense opinions, as always, and you can see if they are of any use to you whatsoever.
These are not proofs, these are approaches that I have found useful.
Usual caveats, blah blah blah.
So, There is a difference.
There's a fundamental difference between honesty in an economic relationship and honesty in a personal relationship.
And the fundamental difference, I would argue, is that in a personal relationship, you are not a means to an end.
You are an end in yourself, right?
People want to know you. They want to enjoy your company.
They want to do things with you. And you are not a means to an end.
And if you are a means to an end, I would not say that it's not a particularly good relationship.
Like if someone's dating you because you're good arm candy and it's a means to their own vanity, then not a very good relationship.
I'm sure that's not too radical an opinion.
Whereas in an economic relationship, you are a means to an end, right?
If you are a salesman, you are a means to gaining profit through customers.
If you are a programmer, you are a means to gaining profit through code.
If you're a waiter, you're a means to gain profit through customer service and satisfaction.
So honesty is very different in a personal relationship than it is in a professional relationship, in an economic relationship.
So the first thing that I would suggest that is similar In a personal and professional relationship, in terms of honesty, and I think some people get hung up on this, and I can understand why.
I'll sort of make a case as to why I don't think it's the case.
But they say...
That in business, when you go to a job interview, you are very conscious of what you're saying, you're trying to put your best foot forward, make a great impression, you dress well, maybe you shave twice, wear pants, whatever it is that is your thing for job interviews.
And that there's something kind of false or fake about that, if that makes any sense.
And I don't necessarily believe that.
I think that presentation is important and first impressions do count.
And first impressions are shorthand for a whole bunch of things, right?
I mean, the reason that you wear a suit and, you know, hand over a non-soiled, non-dog-eared resume in a job interview is not because you want to lie every bit, because, I mean, I think two things are being tested.
One is general social appropriateness.
It certainly is true that if you show up in t-shirts and jeans, That you may be a good worker, but it also means if you don't address this up front and say, I've chosen to do this because, it means that you're not very aware of social situations, which doesn't mean that you won't be a good worker.
It just means that there will be certain things you won't be able to do, right?
I mean, you won't be able to talk to customers, really won't be able to do presentations and support sales or whatever, I mean, if you're in a technical field.
I won't be able to be a waiter and can't read social cues and so on.
So that sort of do you understand basic social cues is the first reason you would do that.
And the second reason is to show that you care, right?
I mean, if you just kind of roll in off the street and say, yeah, it's just dropping by.
So you wanted someone.
I don't have a resume, but I can write it down.
Then clearly you haven't taken the time to go home and get a resume and change.
So you don't really care about the job.
You're just casting your net pretty wide and so on, right?
So, I think it's those two things, you know, an awareness of social situations and the sense that you care about the job and the company, at least to some degree.
I think those things are important in terms of, I mean, if you don't care about the job, then you may not stay.
If it's not worth it to you to put a suit on, you probably won't stay on it.
You're not invested and so on.
It's the same reason why some companies who want to be around for the long haul will spend a lot of money on celebrity endorsements because it means they're in a big hole and they can only fill it by providing good customer service in the long run.
So I think those things are actually quite appropriate and quite accurate.
And the same thing is true, of course, on first dates.
You show up for a first date and haven't bathed and you've only half-shaven or something like that, then you're basically saying, you know, Really care about the perspective or opinion of the other person.
And I think that's, you know, there is this sort of idea, I don't care what other people think and so on, but those people can be really tough to be around in the long run because they're not kidding, right?
They really don't care what other people think and therefore they shouldn't try to be in relationships, right?
Being in a relationship means you care about the other people.
I care what my listeners think.
I care what my wife thinks. I really care what Isabella thinks.
And being in a relationship is caring about what other people think.
If you can hear her, I don't know if you can.
She's pre-verbal. I'm just following her around as she crawls around.
And she's not quite saying words yet, but she's vocalizing a lot and making sounds.
Mostly vowels, not consonants.
Anyway. So, I just wanted to put that one by the by.
Now, when it comes to the thing that is in common between both kinds of relationships, and this is not the only two kinds, but the two kinds we're talking about here, the thing that is common between the two, in my opinion, is RTR with the self, right?
RTR with the self is essential whether you're in a relationship, not in a relationship, have a job, don't have a job, you know, whether you're hiking or biking or striking, you need to know what you yourself feel, because if you don't know that, you can't You can't relate to anyone.
You can't relate to yourself. You can't relate to anyone because there's no one.
It's like trying to spend money when your wallet's empty.
You simply can't do it.
You have to have money to spend money.
You have to have a sense of who you are before you can relate to others.
Self-RTR is essential in both.
We'll just talk a little bit about it at work.
Let's say, and these situations have occurred to many of us.
It certainly happened to me. You're on some project.
Let's say you're the team lead on a project.
You just start to get an uneasy feeling, you know, wake up at night, oh, you know, this project is worrying me, you can't sleep, or just getting an uneasy feeling when you're talking to the customer or whatever.
Well, that's really important.
You need to, my suggestion is trust your feelings, right?
Now, feelings don't validate themselves, but they are the starting point of validation.
Now, in a personal relationship, you can simply speak about your feelings and you don't have to prove them because you are not a means to an end, right?
So proof is not necessary, which is why I say don't jump to conclusions when talking to people.
Which doesn't mean don't ever have conclusions.
It just means don't jump to conclusions.
But at work, you know, if you have uneasy feelings about a project, at work, it's not enough to say, I have uneasy feelings about the project, you know, in some meeting, in some status meeting, say, I have uneasy feelings, I feel anxious about this project.
Because people don't know what to do with that, because that's not translatable into something.
Because remember, you're not the end, you're a means to an end, which is called profit in a business relationship.
And, I mean, it doesn't mean you can't be happy and friendly and all that, but you are a means to an end in a way that's different from in a personal relationship.
So, in a personal relationship, you can talk about your feelings, and you don't have to validate and improve and this and that, right?
And I would say that if you do, you might want to examine the basis of that relationship and work to make it more trusting.
But in a business relationship, if you say, if you feel uneasy about a project, I don't think there's much point going into a business meeting and saying, I feel uneasy, and then just ending this sentence there, because people, okay, right?
What do you do? So I would say if you're in that situation in business, you feel uneasy, well, try and figure out why.
When did it first happen? Was it in a statement with a client where the client talked about changing the specs or when the client didn't seem to understand the due date or some particular content of the delivery or something like that?
Did you start to feel uneasy then?
Go back, look at your notes, or do you feel uneasy because things are slipping and you really need to...
Get a new due date or add people or whatever, right?
So you're getting an uneasy feeling because extrapolated from the current progress, you're simply not going to get where you want to get to in time.
In which case, you can prove these kinds of things, right?
So you can say, well, I feel uneasy about this project because this client said they didn't even mention this deliverable or they mentioned that this deliverable had been cancelled when it hasn't or it hadn't been cancelled when it has.
And so I think we need to talk to the client and clear this up.
I feel uneasy because I feel that we just aren't going to make the due date.
And here's the math, right? Extrapolated from where we are on the project plan, assuming the same amount of difficulties that we've had in the future as we do now.
Unexpected, like let's say 20% of time has been added for difficulties, you assume that constant, well, you're going to go past the due date in a month, a month past the due date.
So these kinds of things, right?
The uneasiness needs to be translated into actionable items, right?
If you're a waiter, right, I feel uneasy because I'm not getting tipped as well.
Well, that's more about you being a better waiter, I would assume, all of the things being equal.
Or I feel uneasy because I'm just not getting enough business.
Then you can go to the owner and say, you know, what's the take relative to last month or the month before?
So you start with the self-RTR to figure out what you're feeling.
In the business world, though, you have to bring some validation and some proof because you're being paid not for who you are, but for your productive conclusions, right?
I mean, we don't go to a doctor so the doctor can say, I feel uneasy about your health, right?
We go to the doctor so the doctor can say, I feel uneasy about your health, so I ordered these tests and you have X, right?
Or it turned out I was wrong and you don't have X, Y, or Z, right?
Right? In economics, in economic relationships at work, you're being paid for efficiency.
And in a relationship, you're not being paid for efficiency.
Right? You're not being paid, I hope.
Right? But in a relationship, in a business environment, you're being paid for efficiency.
And that's why you don't sit there in a business meeting and say, I feel uneasy.
Let's rap about it and see if we can figure out why I feel uneasy.
Because that wastes a lot of people's time, a lot of people's time with stuff that you can figure out on your own.
Right? So in a...
And to take the doctor analogy, right?
You go to a doctor and the doctor says, you don't want to hear all of the steps that the doctor went through to figure out your diagnosis.
You just want to know what you've got or haven't got.
And so you're really looking for efficiency.
You're looking for conclusions, not, you know, I feel uneasy about your health.
And so, right, whereas if you're the doctor's wife and he says, I feel uneasy about something, then, or husband, I would assume that you would talk about those feelings because he's not a means to a diagnosis.
He is an end in himself, right?
So, the self, sorry, I'm going to keep this short, but the self-RTR is really essential in every situation, whether you're in relationship, personal, professional, public, private, whatever.
But the efficiency principle and the conclusions is really, really important in economic relationships.
So you are honest with yourself and curious about your own feelings and give respect to your own feelings at all times, I would suggest.
But in a work relationship, you have to do the work to validate your feelings with empirical evidence and then you present the evidence.
You can say, I felt uneasy and therefore I did this.
Now, in the long run, in business, and I would say this is where...
It's well worth pursuing this validation yourself, right?
So you feel uneasy about a project, you feel uneasy about a project, and then 10 times you feel uneasy about a certain project, you go and do the work, and it turns out that the project is in trouble, right?
What happens is, as you gain credibility, as your feelings gain credibility, I felt uneasy, therefore I did this work, and there was good reason to be uneasy.
I felt uneasy, I did this work, good reason to be uneasy.
What happens in the long run, I believe, Is that when you say you feel uneasy, other people go and do the work, because you have credibility.
Every time you felt uneasy, there was a good reason, and you validated it.
And therefore, you say, I feel uneasy, and therefore you're all better.
And this is basically one of the differences between employee and manager, right?
A manager has gained credibility to the point where he tells other people to go and validate his feelings or his thoughts, because his thoughts or his feelings have been correct.
So often that his efficiency principle is, I feel uneasy and therefore everybody says, well, there must be something wrong because he's proven it so many times before that his feelings are valid, right?
So if you get credibility with regards to your feelings with yourself and with others, that you validated them yourself and produced objective evidence as to why you feel a particular way, then what happens in the long run is people will accept your feelings as...
Initiators of action, right?
And not just look at you like, well, so what if you feel uneasy because the last 10 times you've been right?
So they'll say, well, we better go figure out what's wrong with this project because his gut is right on.
I'm happy to talk about this some more.
I'll try and keep this short for a variety of reasons, but I hope that this is helpful.
This is my general approach to RTR, which I was even doing sort of when I was in the business world, and I found it to be quite helpful and quite effective.
And certainly if you have any questions, anything that I could provide my usual nonsensical feedback on, I would be very happy to respond.
So I hope this is of use to you.
I look forward to your donations all the very best.
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