I once attended an event for early-onset mid-life crisis that was a cross between a straightforward self-improvement course and indoctrination into a religious cult. The average attendee was in their mid-thirties, mostly from a professional background, and emotionally scarring to some degree. It was over an extended weekend and for the first couple of days
‘How was it done last time?’ I think those might have been the very first words I uttered in my first management job, after the initial introductions. Its cousin is ‘Because it was done that way last time’. There’s a tension between repeating certain tasks the way they were done in the past, and throwing
Speaking at his leaving do, I once heard a CEO describe his Finance Director (although I’m cool with CEO, I can’t get used to CFO yet) as having ‘kept him honest’. As a new recruit I hadn’t had time to get to know my new boss before his departure was announced, but I remember thinking
I’ve heard someone close to the entertainment industry describe film stars as like gods: impossibly good-looking, taller, slimmer, and more confident, even their hair is not like other people’s. If politics is show business for ugly people, what sort of people are in plain old ‘business’? I suppose the answer is every sort of person.
What makes interviewing such a hit and miss process? Firstly, it’s a social interaction. There are social aspects of meeting someone for the first time. No one is at their ease. So much is going on in terms of judgements, reactions, attraction or repulsion. We’re probably unaware of most of it. The social skills of