People like me I’m a very likeable person.
Proanoia is the opposite of paranoia. A paranoid person thinks without any bases in reality that every body is out to get them . A proanoid person is someone who thinks without any basis in reality , that every body likes them. You often hear a manager described as paranoid but I haven’t heard of proanoia before. Yet I have come across managers who think everybody likes them.
I worked for a senior manager who following a restructuring took over some additional responsibilities including a service and its head. He was surprised and upset when the service head chose to take redundancy rather than work under him. He just couldn’t accept that someone disliked him so much they refused to work for them. He couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to work with him, he considered himself a fair and compassionate manager someone who prided themself on their integrity. But he was a senior manager and you don’t get to be a senior manager without having some steel in your character. He was defiantly not a soft touch or naive about human behaviour.
One of the key requirements for an effective senior manager is to have insight into how your behaviour effects others, this is usually presented as a cautionary note about the risk of being seen as overbearing, unintentionally intimidating or a tendency to close down debate. What you see as championing EDI may be seen by some as lecturing, your requirement for people to do the right thing may be viewed as pious. Simply being true to yourself will not appeal to some people who have a very different management style. So you should accept that some people will not like you. To expect everyone to like you is just as bad as thinking nobody likes you.It’s a detachment from reality that will limit your effectiveness as a senior manager.
Blair McPherson former Director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
