He's a so-called old soul, and he knows what he wants.
"I am going to have my own company, one day, and to be the boss. A good one".
I smile, very proud of him, and yet I can't help but tell him:
"You know, as far as I can remember, I almost never met someone that said that they wanted to be a bad one, not officially, at least not on purpose. Most people want to be a good boss. It is just not that simple, because not everybody has the needed soft skills and not everybody is willing to work hard for acquiring them, or they are not aware that they are not as good as they think to be and that they need those skills in the first place".
[Nobody wants to be a bad boss...
Well, maybe nobody but the weird characters of
Seth Gordon's Horrible Bosses (USA 2011)...
from a time when Kevin Spacey was still considered cool]
He agrees with me, and we change the subject.
Nobody wants to be a bad boss or, for that matter, an annoying colleague, a flaky friend, a lousy partner, a boring conversationalist, an emotional vampire, a passive-aggressive neighbor, a mediocre lover, a toxic person to deal with.
George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
People do the best they can and/or what they consider right, under certain circumstances, depending on their Weltanschauung, their mindset & values system, their story, their skills and the resources available to them at that moment.
And yet, everyone would love to be a good boss, to be a good person, to display emotional intelligence when it is needed the most.
To be a source of light and not yet another cloud on a sunny day.
This one is for Karl, that will for sure become a very good boss, one day.
Tags: Soft skills, Being a good boss, Self-awareness, Human dynamics, Emotional intelligence
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