 |
|
|
|||||
We all think that we have great ideas. And we all tend to fall in love with our own ideas because, well, theyre ours. But most of my ideasand yoursare probably mediocre. And no, thats not an insult; its just a fact about the way most ideas are generated. I mean, if we were all genuinely spewing game-changers the world would be in a much different place than it is today. Most ideas are created without much thought or insight or pushbackand could probably benefit from people challenging them a lot more. Way too many ideas get approved that shouldnt have made it out of the conference room, but with lack of time, energy, and questioning, they move forward at an alarming rate. It doesnt have to be this way. Imagine if you had someone whose job it was to voice concerns about those ideas; someone whose sole purpose was to poke holes, identify flaws, and challenge assumptions. A Devils Advocate isnt there to be negative just for the sake of it. The role exists to make your ideas sharper and more bulletproof before they ever get the green light. The purpose isnt to tear down or be difficult; its to help you move forward more confidently with the best version of your idea, an idea that has been stress-tested and refined to withstand real-world challenges. A stress test The reason you need a Devils Advocate is simple: its the only way to make sure your ideas are ready for the real world. It should be common practice to stress-test your assumptions, invite dissent, and build real critical thinking into your process. Constructive debate is a cornerstone of the innovation process and should be embraced. Personally, I love it. Heres why: it makes me, and my ideas, better. The Devils Advocate role creates honest discussion, and pushes people to elevate their work by considering: Is this really the best we can do? They encourage people to say the hard thing: what others may be too afraid to express. Id much rather have someone help me think through all the potential angles early so I can win versus being blindsided later. I tell my team when Im introducing an idea: Please argue with meI need your brain on this! I dont have all the knowledge or ideas, so I dont make a decision until weve done that, says Tracie Ybarra, VP of talent at Avantor. Without someone willing to push back, your ideas may never reach their full potential. Instead, theyll simply be okay ideas, good enough to get by, but not strong enough to disrupt, innovate, or leave a lasting impact. And thats a shame. Because were all here to live a life of meaning, not mediocrity. Make Your Ideas Stronger How does being a Devils Advocate actually work? The goal isnt to be contrarian or difficult just for the fun of it. Its about creating a process that welcomes balanceseeing the potential and the problems in an idea, and generating solutions to overcome issues that arise. When you know that someone will challenge your ideas, you work harder to defend them, to improve them, to find the flaws before anyone else does. A good Devils Advocate is a professional skeptic: They don’t just point out what’s wrong; they ask why its wrong, and they offer alternative solutions. Engaging with you like this forces you to reflect, to rethink, and revise with the goal of improvement, not failure. Jarret Kleppél, VP, talent and organizational development at NBCUniversal, agrees: Inviting critique and cynicism throughout our process keeps our team less emotionally attached to the proposal and more focused on the outcome. This process also builds an important skill: resilience. You cant prepare for every problem in advance, but you can certainly stress-test better things before you go live. The Power of Constructive Conflict Constructive conflict is what makes a successful team. But we often take conflict as a negative thing. I like to think of constructive conflict to be more like a contrastit creates productive friction by giving a different perspective, not a divisive one. Without that, we settle into mediocrity, where comfort ensures everyones happy, but nobody really grows. Real innovation happens when different perspectives collide, when people arent afraid to challenge each others ideas in a productive way. A MIT Sloan-affiliated piece emphasizes that having a critical reviewer in meetings improves outcomes. One company that they studied experienced a 25% improvement in their project success rates when this role was active. What does that mean? It means that the Devils Advocate creates a stronger foundation for your ideas by challenging them before they face the real world. Devils Advocates also eliminate some of the fatal flaws of some collaboration: groupthink and the tendency to favor consensus over critical thought. People are scared of scrutiny so we avoid it, and thats how “good enough” takes hold. A Devils Advocate Doesnt Kill Ideas. It Protects Them A good idea that hasnt been tested isnt goodits vulnerable. Its like sending a fighter into the ring without any practice or training, expecting them to win. Doing that is naive, and somebody just might get hurt. The Devils Advocate is the trainer that makes your idea go a few rounds in the gym before its ready to compete. At X, Googles innovation lab, teams designate employees to act as devils advocates, identifying flaws in ideas to make them better before launch. IBM thoroughly tests ideas for weaknesses during high-stakes project planning to dramatically increase its chances of success. Christine Tricoli, group executive vice president and chief human resources officer at H.W. Kaufman Group advocates for this approach: One of the benefits of having someone ‘call you out’ or share the ‘unspoken concerns’ of the group is that it spares the team the embarrassment of having someone external discovering the issue for you. It saves time and money and helps you be more productive sooner rather than later. Leaders need to cultivate an environment that encourages this type of disruption or challenge within the team. How Do You Implement the Devils Advocate? Its easier than it sounds. Start by assigning someone the role of asking (or rotating the role among the team) tough questions during brainstorms or project planning. This person should have the power to challenge assumptions, ask what could go wrong, and offer alternative solutions without repercussions. Their job isnt to just criticize; its to actively work with the team to solve problems and refine ideas so theyre more likely to succeed. Ask yourself: when was the last time you let someone challenge your ideas in a constructive way? And if you dont have a Devils Advocate on your team, how could you benefit from having one? Let Dissent Be Your Friend My closest friends are the ones that can be most honest with me. I need them because they make me a better person, and their intent is to help, not to harm. Its the same here with ideas. By challenging your ideas early and often,you help move them forward and give them the best shot at success. Stop avoiding the hard questions, and stop letting groupthink win. Instead, build the Devils Advocate into your process and let it turn your good ideas into great ones. Because in the end, the only thing worse than a bad idea is an unexamined one.
Category:
E-Commerce
Hi there! My name is Marcus Collins, DBA, and I study culture and its influence and impact on human behavior at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Each week, this column will explore the inner workings of organizational culture and the mechanisms that make it tick. Every entry will be accompanied by an episode from my podcast, From the Culture, that digs deeper into the culture of work from my conversations with the organizational leaders that make it all happen. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you are not having. Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you dont miss a beat. ___________________________________ Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Weve all heard this misattributed Peter Drucker quote and instinctively understand the disproportionate influence culture can have on an organizations business. However, if you asked five people to define organizational culture, youd likely get 55 different answers. Chief among them would be something along the lines of organizational culture is how we do things around here, the behaviors and norms that make up how a company engages in the collective production of work. Sounds about right, right? Sure. However, a centurys worth of literature on the matter would say otherwise. A social operating system According to Émile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, culture is a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like us do. Its a social operating system by which we collectively see the world and, subsequently, behave in it . . . together. What we wear, how we talk, what we dotheyre all byproducts of our cultural subscription. The same goes for organizational culture, the shared operating system for an organization that helps employees collectively see, so that they might collectively do. Therefore, reducing our concept of organizational culture to merely what we do around here ignores half of what makes culture . . . well . . . culture. Its this half, the way the organization sees the world and makes meaning of it, that dictates what we do. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"","subhed":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Take Airbnb, for example. The company sees the world as a place where everyone belongs, so its behaviors are demonstrative of this perspective. Thats why Airbnb adheres to a No Meetings Wednesday tradition to accommodate team members who tend to be more introverted, so everyone belongs. They practice radical acts of transparency so that information is available to everyone, not just those in the know. They also provide employees with an annual $2K travel credit to encourage people to go out and experience the world the way other people do. For everyone at Airbnb to feel like they belong, its important that employees see themselves as a part of a global community, not just as coworkers. World travel helps this endeavor by fostering the kind of empathy that drives connection. These ways of doing things around here at Airbnb are byproducts of how the organization sees around here. Together, the seeing and the doing constitute the organizations culture. Culture isnt just values Of course, there are those of us who understand this distinction. However, far too often we mistake the organizations perspective for its values; but the two are not analogues. Values are what an organization deems to be important. The way the organization sees the world, on the other hand, defines the truths that the organization holds about the world and why certain things have any importance in the first place. For instance, Patagonia believes in “climbing clean.” The company envisions a world with minimal human invasiveness on the planet and, therefore, it values environmentalism and integrity, which, ultimately, inform its ways of working. Its valueswhich the organization deems importantare informed by its perspective. Values alone are hollow without the deeply held truths of the organizations perspective that undergirds them. Its no wonder that research from the MIT Sloan Management Reviews 2020 Glassdoor Culture 500 study found no correlation between a companys stated values and the lived experiences of its employees. Culture is not a companys values; its the system upon which these values are constructed. So, without a clear perspective of the world, an organizations values are typically meaningless and have no impact on its behaviors. Theyre merely pretty words beautifully stated but rarely integrated. This is a significant challenge for business leaders who have reduced organizational culture to a set of rituals, rules, and words. Culture is so much more than these components, but since so many of us have defined culture so narrowly, we have not yet fully realized its impact. Culture, as Durkheim asserts, is an operating system, and this system is the most influential external force on human behavior that we arent fully leveraging. Not because of a lack of skill, intelligence, or technology, but because of a lack of understanding. Thats why this column existsto examine the whys and hows of organizational culture so that we might get better at it. Its also why I created a podcastin a world where there are probably too many podcasts, quite frankly. Culture is an organizations biggest cheat code, but the only way to use it properly is to understand it deeply. So thats what were here to do . . . together. And this is our first unlock, with many more to follow. If we want to get better at the way we do organizational culture, it starts with getting better at the way we see it. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"","subhed":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores th inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Oscar Wilde famously noted, Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. It is arguably one of the best brief illustrations of emotional intelligence (EQ), a trait that became popular thanks to a nonacademic best-selling book by journalist Daniel Goleman, in which he insinuated that EQ is a more important driver of success than IQ (a claim that has been discredited). And yet, theres no shortage of evidence for the importance of EQ when it comes to predicting interpersonal effectiveness, defined as the ability to manage yourself and others in everyday life. In fact, long before EQ was coined in academic research (before Goleman popularized the term), decades of personality research had already highlighted reliable individual differences in the propensity to engage in more or less effective intrapersonal and interpersonal behaviors. In fact, way before HR managers celebrated EQ, your grandma called it good manners. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Problematic personalities Now onto the actual research: Here are five science-based generalizations about people with challenging personalities; that is, people who are significantly more taxing, unrewarding to deal with, and demanding on others than the average person is. (1) Empathy deficits (and why empathy alone is not enough): Difficult individuals often struggle to accurately recognize or care about others feelings, perspectives, and needs. Yet, as Paul Bloom has argued, even empathy itself is an unreliable foundation for moral or cooperative behavior, because it is selective, biased, and easily withdrawn from those we dislike or see as different. (2) High neuroticism and fragile core self-evaluations: Elevated emotional reactivity, anxiety, and sensitivity to threat make everyday interactions feel volatile. When people possess low core self-esteem or unstable self-confidence, they are more likely to overreact, personalize neutral events, and drain others emotional energy. (3) Low agreeableness masked as EQ or blunt honesty: Some difficult personalities score low on agreeableness, meaning they are less inclined toward cooperation, trust, and concern for others. In workplace settings, this is often misinterpreted as emotional intelligence, confidence, or refreshing candor, when it is in fact poor impression management disguised as authenticity. (4) Lack of self-awareness, especially among self-centered narcissists: Many difficult people are strikingly unaware of how they come across. Narcissistic individuals, in particular, tend to overestimate their competence, underestimate their impact on others, and interpret feedback as hostility rather than information. In a way, this is what makes challenging personalities so difficult to deal with: They are either unaware of how unrewarding to deal with they are, or simply dont give a damn! Neither are particularly useful. When others are of the opinion that you suck, and that you are unaware of the fact that you suck, they will think quite poorly of you (unless you are a fictional character like David Brent or Michael Scott, in which case they will laugh . . . cathartically). (5) Low external pressure or weak incentives to be rewarding to others: Finally, difficult behavior persists when it is tolerated, rewarded, or unpunished. Power, status, or perceived indispensability often insulate individuals from social consequences, reducing their motivation to regulate their behavior or invest in being pleasant to work with. As I illustrate in my latest book, this explains the unfortunate fact that when people rise to the top of organizational hierarchies they stop feeling pressure to adjust their behavior to meet others needs. This kind of raw authenticity is a privilege for the elite, the status quo, or those who can afford to neglect situational demands to adjust their behavior in order to act pro-socially. But the less people care about their reputation, the more other people will careand not for the right reasons! What to do So, how best to work with these individuals, which will inevitably be required if you have a job that has you interacting with colleagues, clients, or coworkers (which basically applies to all jobs)? Here are some basic recommendations: (1) Learn their typical patterns: The Norwegians have a saying, namely that theres no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong choice of clothing. In a way people are just like the weather or climate: If you forget to check the forecast or are unaware of the climate, you only have yourself to blame for not being adequately equipped. So, if you have a moody colleague, irritable boss, or self-centered client, the mistake is not expecting rain, its turning up in sandals and acting surprised when you get soaked. Once you recognize someones stable patterns, you can start to personalize your behavior, adjust your expectations, and optimize your responses accordingly. In essence, theres always a strategy for improving how you deal or interact with someone, regardless of how difficult they are. (2) Avoid trying to change them: One big issue with difficult people is that we are often tempted to try to change them, assuming that insight, feedback, or goodwill will eventually override deeply ingrained tendencies. In reality, most personality traits are relatively stable over time, especially in adulthood, and attempts to fix others usually create frustration rather than improvement. To be sure, this does not excuse their bad conduct, but it does prevent you from wasting emotional energy on futile hopes that they will suddenly become someone else. An old fable tells of a scorpion that asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog hesitates, fearing it will be stung. The scorpion reassures him that doing so would doom them both. Yet halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anway. As they begin to sink, the frog asks why. I couldnt help it, the scorpion replies. Its my nature. The lesson is not about forgiveness or cynicism, but realism: Some interpersonal patterns are remarkably stable, even when they are self-defeating. Ignoring this does not make you kind, only unprepared. (3) Be better than others: While difficult personalities can pose a challenge to most, your goal is not to find the perfect formula for dealing with them. Rather, think about being better in your interactions with them than most people are. In other words, its not how well you can handle them compared to how you handle other people, but compared to how well other people handle them. This relative advantage compounds: Difficult individuals quickly learn who escalates them, who indulges them, and who remains calm, clear, and consistent. Over time, they tend to reserve their worst behavior for those who reward it, and their best for those who do not. Research on social learning and reinforcement shows that behavior is shaped not only by personality, but by the reactions it reliably elicits from others. When you respond with predictable boundaries, emotional restraint, and clarity, you reduce the payoff of difficult behavior. You may not change who they are, but you can often change how they behave around you, and they may even appreciate you for being more open to them than others are. (4) Practice rational compassion: One of the critical challenges with difficult personalities is that its often quite hard to empathize with them. Examples include chronically anxious colleagues who catastrophize minor issues, abrasive high performers who mistake bluntness for honesty, or self-centered leaders who dominate conversations while remaining oblivious to their impact on others. But as Paul Bloom notes, empathy is by definition insufficient to create civil and prosocial work environments and cultures. Why? Because we are prewired to empathize most readily with people who feel familiar, similar, and psychologically close to us. In contrast, when we perceive others as different or as belonging to a separate group or tribe, empathy quickly breaks down, which is precisely why inclusion is so difficult to sustain in diverse workplaces. Blooms alternative is not coldness, but rational compassion: a deliberate commitment to fairness, tolerance, and restraint that does not depend on liking, identification, or emotional resonance. Practicing rational compassion means treating people decently even when they irritate us, setting boundaries without hostility, and choosing principled behavior over emotional reactions. This approach is especially useful with difficult personalities because it allows us to remain civil and effective without having to feel empathy we may not genuinely experience. (5) Master strategic authenticity: One common feature of difficult personalities is that they make little effort to adjust their behavior to others. Instead, they default to a This is just who I am approach to interpersonal dynamics, implicitly placing the burden of adaptation on everyone else. This unfiltered version of authenticity is often celebrated through popular mantras such as Dont worry about what others think or Just be yourself and others will adjust. The problem is that this logic does not scale. If everyone follows it, the collective outcome is not freedom but a culture of entitled rigidity, where each person feels justified in prioritizing self-expression over social responsibility. A useful analogy is driving: Insisting on going at your preferred speed, regardless of traffic rules or road conditions, may feel good and taste like freedom, but it creates accidents, not progress. Strategic authenticity is choosing when and how to express yourself so that movement remains possible for everyone. It means finding a workable balance between saying what you think and feel, recognizing that your right to self-expression does not override your obligation to others. The inverse solution Ultimately, working with difficult personalities is less about fixing others than about managing yourself with intelligence, discipline, and perspective. The best strategy is often to become the inverse of the problem (or, well, them): to show empathy where they show indifference, self-awareness where they show blind spots, and restraint where they seek release. Difficult people rarely improve because they are corrected, but because the environment around them quietly refuses to mirror their worst instincts. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||