Someone who’s kind to you but rude to everyone else is just being strategic, and you’re the current strategy.
LEADERSHIP
WHAT THIS MEANS
Kindness that switches off for waiters, juniors and people who cannot do anything for them is not kindness, it is currency being spent carefully. You are receiving it because you are useful, interesting or worth impressing right now, and all three of those can change. How someone treats people with nothing to offer is the closest thing to a preview you will get.
Watch how the person you are getting close to speaks to staff, to the quiet one in the group, to someone they find boring. Do not argue with them about it. Just file it, and adjust how much of yourself you hand over.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Who treats you well and treats the staff badly?
MORE IN STRATEGY, SILENCE & POWER
- The ability to leave is the strongest card in any job, relationship or deal. Keep it in your hand.
- Holding back when you could crush someone isn’t weakness. It’s proof you’re in control of the strength.
- Crowds are fast and wrong more often than you’d think. Being slow and right looks lonely until it pays.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.