A Crucial Competency for Entrepreneurs - Being Hard to Offend

Being hard to offend is a crucial competency for business owners, and a rule of thumb called Hanlon’s Razor will help you on that journey.

I’ll admit to being very easy to offend for the better part of my life. If indignation were a sport, I’d have medals around my neck and a Nike sponsorship. For example, take driving as a microcosm of human experience and fertile ground for grievance:

• Dunces who double park
• Dum-dums who don’t use their turn signal
• Cads who camp out in the fast lane then speed up when you try to pass them on the right
• Dummies who drive right through stop signs without slowing after they confirm that you are rolling to a stop
• Former hallway monitors at four-way stops who arrive last and wave everyone else on (as if everyone were confused)

Let me tell you from long experience, you can always find some slight if you look hard enough. You can find grounds for victimhood. You can find evidence that you are more informed, deserving, and virtuous than the people you judge. It doesn’t count as being judgmental when you’re right.

Now, as a former card-carrying member of the Chronically Offended Club, I can assure you that feathers-always-ruffled folks don’t think of themselves as easy to offend. They believe they have legitimate grounds for complaint. They believe they have the right of it, whatever it is, from the miscreant who leaves her dog’s doodoos in neighbors’ yards to the serious character defects of people who cut in line at McDonald’s.

The interior monologue goes like this: “What’s the world coming to?! If everyone acted the way they do, the world would descend into chaos. Fact. Some of us have to maintain civilization and forebear their short-sighted, self-serving, and immature behavior.”

This posture comes with a cost. People with their panties perpetually in a wad are so tuned to perceived infractions that they find it nearly impossible to get through a meal at a restaurant or trip to the grocery store without becoming incensed. They fixate on unfairness. The nerve of some people! Chronic indignation warps our vision and leads to a life full of bitterness.

Chronic indignation stunts the growth of your business, too. The time you spend ruminating on real or perceived mistreatment is time you don’t spend solving problems, and entrepreneurship is nothing if not an unending parade of problems. Here are 3 real situations I heard about just last week:

• From a LinkedIn acquaintance in a DM: “I ‘had’ a client on retainer for 10 hours per month. I billed her for 43. She not only refused to pay, but said she should be reimbursed for what she paid me for the 2.5 months before that.”
• From a client when I told him his website appeared to be down: “Yeah, I shut the business down. [COMPANY] fired our contact and the new one went rogue and wouldn’t pay us. I’m retired from all digital now and focusing on real estate. [PERSON] started a new group with the guys named [BRAND].”
• From another client: Her business partner is diverting checks from the business while not doing any work.

Each of these individuals was wronged. They all have a right to feel upset.

The question is, how long do you dwell on it?

An idea from Buddhism is helpful here: the second arrow. The first arrow is the event, which may have been painful and brought feelings of shock, confusion, anger, betrayal, sadness, and fear. The second arrow is what we do with the first one. Do we obsess over the situation? Do we talk about it to anyone who will listen? Do we imagine conversations where we cut the offender down to size?

Indignation tastes good at first, like your salty, savory snack loaded with MSG and fake cheddar dust sunshine.

That’s the irony of indignation: You can be right and still lose. You waste time dwelling on past injuries, regrets, and disappointments. You stay stuck in that moment, that relationship, that loss, and you struggle to turn and see the fuller reality of your life, which is a field of diamonds glinting in the sun. You poke at your scar tissue instead of moving forward.

Indignation causes us to make short-sighted decisions. Indignation is bad strategy, and remember, this is coming from a guy who has made blunders in this department:

• Firing off a self-righteous email to a client who asked if he deserved a “credit” after I’d already gone above and beyond the scope
• Losing my temper with a grocery store owner turned investor while talking on the phone in… a grocery store (bittersweet irony)
• Giving an entrepreneur a piece of my mind when, during a group call, he blamed me for delays he’d caused

I now boil my own struggles with indignation down to two observations:

• Forgiving a person who has wronged you feels like letting that person win.
• Some people have a higher value for fairness than others.

Some injustice is real, and we should fight it when we find it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got it right in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

That said, much of the mistreatment I’ve experienced in my business came down to common, unremarkable weaknesses all of us display from time to time, our clients, business partners, and other collaborators being no exception:

• Misinterpretation (your own, of the situation)
• Miscommunication
• Self-centeredness
• Obliviousness
• Ignorance
• Laziness
• Egotism

You may find people making their mistakes on you to be inconvenient, aggravating, and exhausting, and indignation signals, “I don’t like how I’m being treated.”

Yet, you simply can’t afford to let such ordinary frustrations monopolize your attention. Your indignation may be valid, but it won’t fix anything. You can feed it, but it seldom sends a bank transfer, produces an apology, or secures vindication.

When we find yourself in these situations, with indignation flared and ready to spit venom, we have a choice in what to believe:

1. Either, the client was saying or doing something stupid because they didn’t know any better, and one of the factors above is to blame;
2. Or, the client is a bad actor, and the two of you have fundamental misalignment with character, personality, values, or ethics.

Instead of defaulting to the second belief (and indignation), I’ve found it helpful to reach for the first belief (and empathy) while remembering a rule of thumb called Hanlon’s Razor, which Sahil Bloom summarized:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. In assessing someone's actions, we shouldn't assume negative intent if there's a viable alternative explanation—different beliefs, lack of intelligence, incompetence, or ignorance."

Hanlon’s Razor and empathy open up a new set of questions and potential responses:

• How would I respond if I assumed they didn't know any better?
• How would I respond if I assumed they’re having a bad day?
• How would I want to be treated in this situation?

I’ve still encountered people who being spiteful and insulting on purpose, though not as many as you might think.

It’s true that the one marketing director’s point of view couldn’t be fixed with well-chosen words and a nice lollipop. He was rude, condescending, and, frankly, mistaken. I had the email threads to prove it, but I’m okay with opting out of the Gmail fistfight that wouldn’t have changed him or salvaged the relationship. Sometimes, I let the jerk win the round so I can walk away and win the title.

Besides, I enjoy being myself more when I’m more prone to empathy than indignation. With indignation you can be right and still lose. With empathy you can be wrong and still win.

Next time you find yourself upset with a client or confused why one’s upset with you, remember Hanlon’s Razor. Hit the mental pause button. Wait to respond. You’ll make more money if you put indignation to get back in its cage. Be slow to blow up relationships.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Further Reading: Unoffendable by Brett Hansen

P.A. (Parting Anecdote): My friend Bruce was helping an ex-gang member turn over a new leaf. Bruce got the guy a job interview with a local business owner. Later, he checked in with the businessman, and asked, “How did it go?” The guy said, “Not well. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye.” Bruce had to explain that for one gang member to look a rival gang member in the eyes was often interpreted as a challenge, a sign of aggression. Because that’s the context he was coming from, the ex-gangster, by not looking the businessman in the eye, was trying to show him deference respect. So before you start to inflate your indignation like a Halloween yard ornament, consider that you may be completely misreading the situation. I certainly have.

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