The last college I worked at had a scarcity mindset that affected every decision large or small as mindsets do. It was the result of a pretty severe financial crisis from years before and the drastic emergency measures put in place to offset the losses.

Whenever someone wanted to oppose an idea (or impose another draconian cut), the budget was the go-to argument. There was no arguing with the budget.

Have you ever been called to a mandatory meeting with no explanation? Have you ever been required to perform a task or work on a project without any sense of its purpose? Have you ever been forced to have fun at work?

I have a confession to make. It is one I don’t lightly admit in public. There is something about me that sets me apart from most of the people in America, Europe, and throughout much of the world you know. My secret behavior is likely to make you think much less of me.

What do people really mean when they say someone is good deep down?

Filbert was a bit of a nut. His wife would say that all the time with a chuckle. Usually she said this right after he pulled “one of his stunts.” It was not easy being married to Filbert, and her little pun was just one way she coped. When Filbert acted out, his friends would say, “that’s just Filbert being Filbert,” and offer a wry little laugh of their own.

The people who worked for Filbert generally feared him. For decades he had held his entire building floor in a simmering state of anxious misery that occasionally boiled over into roiling terror.

Here is the scene. You are in an audience listening to a dynamic speaker who prances across the stage, mic in hand, full of zeal and conviction. She is preaching the gospel of leadership, and you and your fellow audience members are her latest apostles-in-training. She is making some sense, but you have little time to process what she is saying before she excitedly jumps to the next point and then the next. Her rapid-fire delivery soon overwhelms your brain, inducing a passive state as you absorb her litany. The energy in the room is crackling. It’s almost unbearable.

And then she says it. Enunciating the words like they are part of an elaborate incantation: “Confidence is the foundation of leadership.” At that moment, your critical thinking skills, which had been taking a little smoke break in the alleyway, kick back in: “Is that true? Is confidence so vital to being a leader?” But before you can fully contemplate her statement, she releases another zinger with all the fervor of a gospel singer: “Leaders are the ones who get thing done.”

The word reason has to do with explanations and rationality. To be reasonable is to be logical, persuasive, and persuadable. We imbue reasonableness with all manner of virtue. Justice is reasonable. Sobriety is reasonable. Common sense is reasonable.

And yet, it is the reasonable that allows for injustice. The people regarded as most reasonable sit idly not wanting to make waves while others suffer. The reasonable can be too sober, stripping life of its joys, large and small. The most common sensical humans often misunderstand and misjudge the counterintuitive, the nontraditional, the innovative, and the absurd. Some extremely reasonable people accept and repeat untruths because they seem familiar and safe. Citing tradition is the trump card of the reasonable.

Leadership is in my blood, literally.

My father was a leader in the truest sense. He was often out in front even when he did not have a title or position to put him there. He spent his life leading, and his example still inspires my leadership philosophy.

Dad’s early life was rough. Unlike my father, his father was not a warm and loving man, and his mother made it clear that dad was neither expected nor wanted. He spent a lot of time at his Aunt Laura’s around the corner in Philadelphia’s Overbrook neighborhood where his older female cousins doted over him. That’s probably where he learned to love.

What would it take to up your gaslighting game?

Welcome everyone to my supremely succinct and most authoritative lesson on how to gaslight effectively. After decades of close observation while suffering at the hands of gaslighters, I am delighted to offer this compact treatise on the ways and means of gaslighting to you, the morally reprobate public.

My regular followers will be surprised that I would offer advice on how to gaslight. After all, I usually write appeals to people’s basic human decency and rail against bullies and liars and other incompetent humans. In other words, most bosses.

I recently heard a local politician quip, “I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but they put covers on books for a reason.” It’s a clever turn of phrase, and he has a point. Modern book covers are a marketing tool and are supposed to indicate, reflect, or symbolize something about the contents of the book. Therefore, the cover should have some meaning and some bearing with regard to the book itself.

What if I told you I knew one weird trick for doing a better job hiring?

Anyone who hires employees wants to do it better. Even if your hiring record is superb, you must realize you are living on borrowed time. Your very next hire might be the toxic, culture-crushing mistake you had evaded thus far.

I oversaw a lot of hiring in my day, and I am pretty proud of my record. Sure there was the occasional challenging case, but even those few had their virtues and most worked out just fine with some guidance. I took hiring very seriously, but my approach was somewhat novel.