By Dr. Daneen Skube Tribune Content Agency Interpersonal Edge
Q: I’ve started a new venture which shows great promise and has garnered a lot of support. However, some people in my business are critical and think I’m trying to ruin normal corporate practices. I’m struggling between wanting to have approval and wanting to innovate! How can I balance both goals?
A: You cannot serve two masters — the master of popular opinion and trying to innovate against “normal” practices. You’ll have to decide which goal will be most satisfying to you in the long run.
Aristotle, the famed ancient Greek philosopher, was a renegade teacher in his time. He advised his students that, “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” I would add to Aristotle’s sentiment that even doing these things cannot guarantee you’ll win popular opinion.
If you run your career, or your life, trying to do what pleases others, you’ll put yourself in a prison of your own making. You can be thoughtful of the needs of others without letting their opinions determine what roads you travel.
We know from reading history that ancient explorers always went where no one had gone before. There were always myths about dragons, monsters, and terrible dangers, yet they explored anyway. There were never any maps and that mystery was what drew them.
We all still have the chance to be explorers. Many of my readers have ideas about things that no one has tried before. Fantastic innovations always start out as ridiculous imaginings that no one takes seriously and end up as innovations that benefit us all.
The personal computer, an online shopping site that sells everything, or remote work all started out as impossible or improbable silly ideas. Those silly people didn’t have much popular support and now are models of what modern explorers may do.
Being willing to graciously fly in the face of convention, will fill your sails with exotic winds that will take you where no one considered going before. You’ll make your own maps, you’ll fight with challenges you couldn’t predict, and what now makes you unpopular will be the reason you end up with a niche.
If the mystery of this venture is beckoning to you, don’t fight with people who think you’re crazy. You’ll only waste your energy. Find people who are intrigued with the possibilities and can help you put legs underneath them.
You don’t need to convince the majority that you have a good idea. Make your focus on launching your venture and let your results speak for themselves.If you succeed, don’t expect the people who criticized you before to admit they were wrong. They may want to come and work for you, but they won’t admit you were right.
As a modern explorer, a successful innovation will be your best revenge. Be too busy enjoying what you’ve created to need any of your current critics to apologize.
The last word(s)
Q: Why in your column do you always place so much emphasis on your readers learning advanced interpersonal skills? Isn’t work a place we go to do a task and get a paycheck?
A: No, work is a place where we must rely on a spider web of interpersonal relationships to do tasks and get paid. As Albert Einstein, the German-born theoretical physicist, noted, “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”
Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker, also appears as the FOX Channel’s “Workplace Guru” each Monday morning.
“Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006).
You can contact Dr. Skube at www.interpersonaledge.com or 1420 NW Gilman Blvd., #2845, Issaquah, WA 98027. Sorry, no personal replies. ©2023 Interpersonal Edge. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
