Be Cool
“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him… Joseph said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers.”
I stuck my foot in my mouth the other day. I was hosting a workshop and I described the fact that top performing leaders receive top compensation as “overperformance leading to being overpaid.”
“Overpaid.” Oops.
I immediately course-corrected, moved on, and made a joke about it. No harm, no foul. I definitely didn’t double down.
If you know the rest of Joseph’s story, you know his choice to double and triple down on his status as the “favorite” did not end well for him, at least in the near term. (Spoiler alert: he gets sold into slavery).
Now, I’m not one to blame the victim, but shouldn’t Joseph have known better?
He was seventeen at the time (37:2), obviously the favorite, in a time when being the “favorite” mattered a TON for your future inheritance. Seems like some self-awareness would have been a more effective leadership and influence strategy for Joseph.
LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS FROM JOSEPH
Exercise your self-awareness muscles. Especially in tenuous relationships, invest the time to anticipate others’ reactions. You won’t be accurate 100% of the time, but you’ll learn and you’ll improve that skill. Think through how what you’ll say (and how you’ll say it) could be interpreted by the other person, and then think about what they might do as a result of those interpretations.
Don’t double-down on mistakes. When you mess up (and you will), be ready and willing to adapt. Watch the other person’s reactions. In today’s remote environment, it may not be obvious. Look for cues that go beyond tone and body language. Are they being helpful and responsive? Are they always skeptical and hesitant? If the relationship isn’t going the way you need it to go, don’t keep doing what you’re doing. You don’t control their reactions, but you do control what you give them to react to?
