I have known in my time, petit bullies, pro-vice-chancellors, and even vice-chancellors with silence before public demand for change. Those executive officers who do have genuine conversations on the ‘demands for change’ are not bullies. The petit bullies are those executive officers who feel that they have no need to have the genuine conversation.
I just posted about this new idea of ‘nuanced conversations’.
After seeing this image before me (thanks, Evan Hadkins), I decided to start a new major folder in my PC system, called, SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
We never needed to say, “nuanced conversations”, some decades ago among educated persons. Conversations were expected to be nuanced. The forum, though, is a good idea today, although there’s a growing number of such forums. I will mention the Southern Brisbane Suburban Forum Inc.
“Beyond The Faultlines” is the approach of excellence. It describes well the approach of today to overcome the power of morons, on or off social media, and I am not talking mental illness, I am talking ethics. Morons are the willful ignorant, selfish, egocentric, arrogant, and plain uneducated, and possibly in the habit, lazy. It is more than personality failure. It is being deliberately anti-social.
Malcolm Turnbull, in The Monthly article, “How to deal with a Trump return?” spoke about how to deal with petit bullies by speaking about how an Australian Prime Minister ought to (or should have) dealt with a Trump Presidency:
Issues can be worked out at official levels. By the time they reach the desk of the president or the prime minister [or vice-chancellor], they have essentially been resolved.
This type is narcissistic, driven, totally focused on accumulating wealth and power for themselves.
The one thing I had learned about this type of personality is that if you suck up to bullies or give in to them, the only thing you will get is more bullying. Punching them in the nose (metaphorically or actually) is rarely successful either.
To succeed with them, you need to stand up to them – but courteously. The only thing they respect is strength. The bully despises those people he suborns, while he respects (even if he does not like) those he cannot.
The relationship should be courteous, professional but above all businesslike.
Backslapping simply won’t do this time around.
The leaders …will be among the few who can speak truthfully ..[the petit bully] can shout at them, embarrass them, even threaten them. But he cannot fire them.
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Neville Buch
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