Jonar Nader says that if you do not like what you are doing, all the more reason to do it better. If you do not like your boss, you must not treat your boss badly. Your mission would be to engineer your way out. Further below is a transcript of the video.
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Here is the transcript:
Donna: You might remember him from his first book, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. Now, it’s How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss. I’m extremely pleased to re-welcome Jonar Nader. How are you?
Jonar Nader: I didn’t think you’d have me back.
Jonar Nader: After all that.
Donna: Why infuriate your boss?
Jonar Nader: Well, I don’t really necessarily mean, go ahead and infuriate your boss but what I really mean is stop expecting your boss to do you any favors. We go to work and we seem to think that our boss will promote us and we just sit and surrender and wait and when our boss doesn’t promote us, we get angry with ourselves. And that’s because we are used to letting other people take care of our life. We let our teachers take care of our education. We let our government take care of our welfare and our lover to take care of our happiness. And we sort of abdicate everything to someone else and really I’m saying, I think if you really want to be a success, first you have to learn how to follow your heart while at the same time learning how to watch your back. I think they’re the mandatories in business today.
Donna: Yes, because of course the path to promotion never did run smooth and that’s something else that you outline in the book quite frankly I might add that you will encounter issues of personal preference, issues of backstabbing. And what are some of the tools you recommend for people to get pass those?
Jonar Nader: Well, do you know, you can forever blame someone else? For example, racism is a big one. And they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t get the job because I’m a woman or I’m Asian or I’m shorter or I’m tall.’ And you’ll always find a reason why perhaps you didn’t get the promotion you desire whereas at all times it’s within you. The reason you didn’t get the promotion you desire is because you did not engineer it for yourself. And some of the practical tips I can give someone is that if you think you want to be brilliant in the future, you have to be brilliant now. You cannot say, ‘Look, please give me a gold medal and when you give me a gold medal for swimming, I might then swim better.’ No, you have to swim better then you get the gold medal, similarly with the future success. You can’t say, ‘Look, please promote me into a Senior Director and then I’ll work really hard.’ You have to work really hard now except people say, ‘But I don’t like what I’m doing now.’
So, if you don’t really like what you are doing now, all the more reason why you have to be so much better at it. Of course, we have a reverse mentality. If we don’t like what we’re doing now, we sort of hover, go home early, wait, don’t do a good job because we don’t like it. And there you end up in a rot. So, always look at everything you are doing now and say, ‘Am I the absolute best at it?’ even if you hate it because it’s an attitude. It’s a way. It’s a process. And that’s the way to success I think.
Donna: So, this is distinct from ambition in the sense that you have to be really good rather than just really greedy. Is that the best way to explain it?
Jonar Nader: Yes, and – and – but you know, instead of being really good, we put out – we put that on hold and go to university. We say, ‘Oh, I know what. If I have a piece of paper, maybe that – or if I network, maybe someone I know whose brother knows somebody might get me the job.’ And yet again, we expect the piece of paper or someone else but it does lie within you. We don’t really understand our weaknesses. We focused too much on our strengths and we don’t understand our weaknesses. And some of the biggest weaknesses that we have are the opposites of our virtues. We’re told to win friends, not how to lose friends. We’re told to be tolerant, not how and when to be intolerant. And I put it to you that successful people know how and when to be intolerant, know when to stand up for themselves.
Most of our listeners are probably one paycheck away from poverty and therefore, that doesn’t give them the buffer zone to be able to go to the boss and say, ‘Look, excuse me. I am not your employee. You are my client. I am selling to you my services. Now, let’s negotiate on what terms these are.’ But actually, employees don’t think like this. They think the boss is doing them a favor by employing them. And so, they’re like servants. And the boss steals their time all the time. If I went into a bookshop and bought eight books and took another eight with me, they’ll call the police. Yet, I go into my boss. I give my boss eight hours of my life and my boss steals another eight hours and says, ‘You have to work back and you haven’t finished that report.’ I go, ‘Hang on a minute. Why should I give you eight hours?’
So, the mindset has to change and in the process, you have to be so good at what you do so that you can command what you require. And how are you going to get that? How are you going to become good at what you do if you don’t have any energy left when you get home?
Donna: So, talking about intolerance, talking about knowing when enough is enough if somebody is really annoying you, where does that fit within contemporary employment law which is very much supporting in some cases the people that are really bad at their jobs?
Jonar Nader: In fact, I say that the voice you are at your job, the more politics you can muster, the more you will climb the ladder because in today’s corporate world, there is no corporate memory left. People come and go so quickly. Your boss changes every six or eight months so any promises made to you yesterday cannot be fulfilled tomorrow. And it is a dog eat dog world. But unfortunately, the backstabbers do get promoted but I’m not sure if that’s the kind of promotion that we want, is it? I mean who wants to work? You have no clout? What is it that you offer? You see, are you employed here because we want Donna in the chair or are you employed here because we want just a lovely person in the chair? There are many lovely people but only one Donna.
And similarly so, we have to ask our listeners, are you doing what you are doing at your office or place of work because your boss wants you or your boss just wants a person who can do it? You need to be able to step out of that so that you can say, ‘I offer something better, brighter, faster, more brilliantly.’ And until you can do that, you have no negotiating power. And if you hate your boss, do not treat you boss badly. If you don’t like what you are doing, all the more reason to do it better so that you can climb out. You see, another thing I said to people, ‘Stop buying anything of luxury. Stop buying a gold watch, holidays or anything until you have saved 50% of your salary.’ You need at least 50% of your salary in the bank as cash so that you have a buffer. So, you’ll no longer be holding to the boss. So, you’ll no longer feel, ‘Oh gosh, if I lose my job, actually my whole life can deteriorate because I have only one week of buffer left.’ These are the problems. People do not have the buffer zones so they’ll continue to allow the boss to beat them over the head unfortunately and people go home crying as we see all the time.
Donna: Jonar Nader, author of How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss. Thank you again.
Jonar Nader: Thanks, Donna.
Donna: Always a pleasure to have you on.
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