“There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.” —The Courage to Be Disliked (Kishimi, Koga)
Book recommendation from CMO
During a recent 1:1 meeting, I confided in our CMO (Matt) that I have a tendency to be a people pleaser. Matt asked me, “Have you read The Courage to Be Disliked?”
“No,” I replied.
In a casual yet enigmatic tone, Matt said “Check it out, you might like it.”
And he was right.
The courage to be disliked
Provocative title right? Indeed, especially for a self-proclaimed people pleaser. Over the course of 5 hours, I devoured Kindle pages with my taps, engorging myself at the wisdom buffet recommended to me.
What is the book about? Simply put: the psychology and philosophy of Alfred Adler. While I won’t burden you with an exhaustive book summary in this forum, I would like to do two things:
Introduce you to Alfred Adler and his basic principles
Conduct a thought experiment if Alfred Adler was a Chief of Staff at a tech company
Who is Alfred Adler?
An Austrian medical doctor who founded a school of psychology. He blossomed into the inner circle of Sigmund Freud in 1902, along with Carl Jung. Adler and Freud matched wits for 9 years until Adler split in 1911. Apparently they disagreed quite a bit, along with some personality friction.
As his psychology career accelerated, Dr. Adler was called to serve in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Basic principles of Adlerian psychology
Meaning of life: “Life in general has no meaning.”
Human objectives for life: 1) to be self-reliant, and 2) live in harmony with society
Denial of trauma: “No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.” In short, no more excuses. This is the opposite of Freudian cause & effect.
Freedom: “Freedom is being disliked by other people.”
Courage: “Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.”
All relationships should be horizontal, not vertical: true connection happens among peers, not subordinates and superiors. For this reason, Adler (controversially) also:
Denies all praise and rebuke: because they imply judgment; show gratitude instead
Pursuit of superiority: humans inherently want to growth/improve over time
Own your tasks: Adler clearly delineates different types of life tasks: work, friendship, love. Never let anyone intervene in your life tasks, and don’t intervene in other’s life tasks.
All problems in life are interpersonal problems: and they stem from our tendency to involve ourselves in our
Self-acceptance: an honest appraisal of reality and what one can change; truth, not affirmations
Happiness: the feeling of contribution (to a person or community)
Bias toward action: “Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: You should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.”
The past has no meaning
The greatest life lie: not living in the present; letting the past and future hijack our consciousness
What if Adler was your Chief of Staff?
It would be interesting.
Candidly, a lot of Adlerian principles likely wouldn’t fit nicely in the workplace. Therefore, I’m breaking this up into two sections: 1) Adler = great Chief of Staff, and 2) Adler = terrible Chief of Staff.
Adler = great Chief of Staff
No workaholics. For one, Chief of Staff Adler would not tolerate workaholism and would most certainly encourage harmony between professional and personal responsibilities. From the book: [Workaholics] probably try to justify that by saying, “It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.” But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse.
Courage. It has been said that Adlerian psychology is the psychology of courage. I love this. Chief of Staff Adler would be the ULTIMATE ENCOURAGER, constantly challenging the team to push past our collective—and individual—comfort zones, and to the have the courage to face our tasks, even when they are really hard.
Own your tasks. Adler would be phenomenal at 1) ensuring the C-level has clear ownership of their individual task, 2) support them in making sure their teams follow suit, and 3) calling people out when other folks try to “hero” or “fix” another person’s issue which isn’t their’s to fix.
Happiness. Chief of Staff Adler knows that true happiness comes from contribution to others. Therefore, Adler would be amazing at recognizing the contribution everyone makes—to customers, to each other. Also: to the community. Adler would be EPIC at organizing community involvement for the company, e.g. volunteer events, hosting, donating,
Adler = terrible Chief of Staff
Life in general has no meaning. There’s a risk Adler would be a bit of a downer in an All-Hands meeting. If life (and work?) have no meaning, in the absolute sense, it’s hard to rally the troops.
All relationships should be horizontal, not vertical. While intriguing on a personal level, having zero hierarchy could have fairly disastrous consequences in the absence of senior leadership, crisis management, career pathing, coaching, compensation discussions, etc.
No praise or rebuke. This would make it hard to share positive and negative feedback. Adler’s denial of praise and rebuke is grounded in his belief that they are both judgmental and a form of manipulation. Certainly some praise and rebuke can be seen as judgmental or manipulative, but ripping out all praise seems extreme.
The past has no meaning. Our dutiful Chief of Staff would pay no credence to our historical happenings as a company. That’s a hard one to get behind, especially given the value of performance tracking, postmortems, and past challenges and learnings.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit about Alfred Adler via this overview and thought experiment. The book is fantastic.