Are you nice or are you ruthless?

Link to full article https://marketingnewsroom.africa/2021/10/08/are-you-nice-or-are-you-ruthless/

If you have ever been in any position of authority, you understand clearly from experience that ‘being nice’ does not get things done. However, that goes against your social conditioning. It is a parent’s job to ensure that the child fits well with other children and whether subconsciously or consciously some parents overdo it is a story for another day. It was Steve Jobs that said, “If you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader, sell ice cream!” If I were to extend the quote, it would be something like, “If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader, sell ice cream in many different flavors because human beings generally do not stay happy even with one flavor for too long.” The insatiable appetite for happiness in human beings is like a thirst that can never be quenched. A child screams to their parents that they want that new toy, just like the one which the neighbor’s kid owns. You being the loving mother who wants their child to ‘live a better life than that which they lived’, buys the kids the exact same toy; exact color, exact size, exact shape from even the exact shop. You even went to the neighbor and asked at what time the shop opens because you really love your child, right? Good. I applaud you for being the caring parent that you are but does your child see that? Immediately you bring the toy home, the child will be excited but after some time, the child will get tired of playing with the toy and shock on you, they now want dad’s big toy; the newly acquired SUV which your husband uses to go to work. They may even go as far as scratching it if they have been raised to believe they are entitled to everything they want. Such is life! Happiness can only be a temporary state and never a goal. You need to be ruthless when dealing with people. Now, before we go further, let us define ruthlessness in business terms; the quality of lacking pity or compassion for your own and other people’s opinions, feelings and actions which will derail business growth if allowed to exist/happen. This means that a ruthless business leader only gives the business and the people around and in it what they need, not what they want! This includes the leaders themselves.

When we look at the top 100 most successful business people in history, it is obvious that they were ruthless.? By age 31 John D. Rockefeller Senior had become the world’s largest oil refiner and by the time he died, he had become the world’s richest man. The story of the Cleveland massacre is told; of how John D. Rockerfeller Senior through his company, Standard Oil, acquired 22 of his 26 competitors in a span of six weeks in the late 19th century. This being just one illustration of how ruthless the oil magnate was, it is no wonder that his story is surrounded by both hate and love from the masses in equal measure. People high in conscientiousness, the biggest success prediction trait among the big five personality traits, understand the need to attack problems with a ruthless passion to find solutions and would not as such term John D. Rockefeller senior as anything besides ‘hard working’ and ‘committed’.?

Leadership calls for, in the words of Dan Pena, being tough as nails. It is this toughness that gets things done. “Some of my very best friends in Apple, the most creative people in Apple who worked on the Macintosh, almost all of them said they would never, ever work for Steve Jobs again,” said Wozniak in an interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal at the Flying Car conference in Milwaukee. Another story is told of how Steve Jobs dealt with Amazon placing an advertisement where they showed customers bought kindle ebooks on iPhone and read them on android phones. In an email exposed to the public after Steve Jobs passed on, Steve Jobs wrote, “It is time for them to choose to use our payment mechanism or to opt out,” referring to Amazon either using Apple’s payment mechanism or opting out all together.?

In the capitalist world we live in today, it is time for business people to choose to either “make people happy”, which is practically impossible as indicated above, or to serve the interests of the stakeholders (including the customers) which may seem ruthless but is actually the right thing to do. In the words of Josh Kaufman in the personal MBA, “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.” It is ruthless, but right for shareholder value. It is ruthless but right for personal growth as a leader.?

There are five personality traits that define how we view and interact with the world. According to Very Well Mind, the big five personality traits described by the theory are extraversion (also often spelled extroversion), agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. German researcher Rainer Zitelmann, famous for his book, "The Wealth Elite"? asked 43 investors and entrepreneurs with a net worths of at least $11 million each to take a 50-question personality test based on the " Five-Factor Theory of Personality ". The chart below summarizes the data he and other researchers have collected over the years.

In saying that billionaires should be ruthless, we are looking at low agreeableness, high conscientiousness and high openness in particular. A person high on conscientiousness, openness and low on agreeableness is bound to be ruthless in their search for the truth and in their quest to dominate the marketplace. The next time someone asks you to be nice, instead of ruthless in a business set up, remember what Kenyanito tells his team,?

‘NICE’ stands for a person who:

Never?

Intends to earn anything

Close to what

Every billionaire does.

According to headstuff.org, “Traits are roughly 40% genetically acquired, while another 5% is attributable to the family environment, 35% to a nonshared, or peer, environment and the remaining 20% to measurement error.” This means that you too can be ruthless out of choice. I will encourage you to be so, as long as your ruthlessness goes to favor the growth of your business and yourself as a leader, so be it. Be ruthless or go extinct.

Further reading if you want to be a ruthless leader:

The Wealth Elite: A Groundbreaking Study of the Psychology of the Super Rich Paperback – August 27, 2019 by Dr Rainer Zitelman

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal?

When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: Smith, Manuel J.?

Bonus tip if you want to be a ruthless leader:

There is no other way around this; interact with ruthless people. It will feel odd at first but with some practice, you will become tough as nails.