“If you wanna be leading your organization in the next three to five years, you’ve really gonna have to change your leadership style. You’ve gotta really embrace those five attributes.”
-Rajeev Kapur @therajeevkapur
Are you struggling to work with a narcissistic boss? Discover the best strategies to handle their behavior and keep your job safe!
Working with a narcissistic boss can be a challenge. You may feel undermined, your talents unrecognized, and your efforts unappreciated. However, it’s possible to manage a narcissistic boss without jeopardizing your job security. Learn how to protect yourself while dealing with their narcissistic behavior.
If you want personal help in gaining clarity, your authentic power back, and healing to be rid of the Narcissist for good, join our Empath community. You’ll receive weekly inspiration and strategies to heal from Narc Abuse and understand Your Unique Human Design Energy Blueprint.
And as soon as you’re in I’ll gift you a human design reading! With your type, strategy, and inner authority.
Join now! And get your reading within 24 hrs.
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Our guest today,
Rajeev Kaur. Rajeev is an author of Chase Greatness, enlightened leadership for the next generation of disruption. We talk about working with a narcissistic boss can be a challenge. @therajeevkapur
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Key Moments:
Here are some key moments:
- What was it like working with Michael Dell? [6:26]
- Document everything with a Narcissistic boss
- The future of Enlightened Leadership [24:00]
Blog
Uncovering the Secrets of Working With a Narcissistic Boss
Educate Yourself on Narcissist Personality Disorder
The first step in working with a narcissistic boss is to understand the underlying causes of the disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a condition characterized by extreme self-involvement and a lack of empathy for others. People with NPD often show a marked sensitivity to criticism, and can be overbearing and controlling in their interactions with colleagues. Understanding these tendencies can help you create coping strategies to best handle them.
Kapur Rule #7 Praise your people in public, mentor them in private.
Chase Greatness
Learn How to Stay Calm and Reject Power Struggles
In order to stay safe in your workplace it’s important to learn how to remain calm and reject power struggles with a narcissistic boss. Act professionally by avoiding confrontation. Remain focused on the task at hand, do your best and be aware of your own words. Stay away from any discussion that might devolve into criticism or confrontation. Above all, remember the golden rule—treat people the way you would like to be treated—being respectful will go further than playing their game.
Improve Strategies for Dealing With a Lack of Empathy
Narcissistic bosses are often known for their lack of empathy and the Power Struggle Syndrome. It is important to recognize the need for communication, even if it does not feel like it will go anywhere. Make sure you structure your message correctly in order to break away from this cycle of power struggle. Provide nuance and give your narcissistic boss options so that they know you’re trying to be cooperative without putting yourself down. Ask questions rather than make assumptions when possible as ultimately understanding one another is key in any relationship, no matter how toxic or difficult.
If you want personal help in gaining clarity, your authentic power back, and healing to be rid of the Narcissist for good, join our Empath community. You’ll receive weekly inspiration and strategies to heal from Narc Abuse and understand Your Unique Human Design Energy Blueprint.
And as soon as you’re in I’ll gift you a human design reading! With your type, strategy, and inner authority.
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Develop a Proactive Plan When Receiving Criticism or Complaints
In an effort to defuse the situation, it is important to offer solutions and develop a proactive plan in response to any criticism or complaints offered by your narcissistic boss. To do this, describe in detail what action would be taken if the same problem were to arise again, as well as how you will prevent it happening again. Show them that you are proactive and willing to learn from mistakes instead of focus on past errors. This way, you gain the trust and respect from them while showing your commitment to addressing their concerns in future situations.
Use Assertiveness to Defend Your Position and Your Work
Assertiveness is the key to dealing with any narcissistic boss. They tend to take any sign of weakness and use it against you. To defend your position, politely express how you feel and explain why you think your perspective is valid and preferable. Make sure that you lead conversations with a positive tone instead of becoming defensive and doing it in a friendly manner. Remember, when facing difficult conversations with a narcissist, assertiveness is what will teach them respect rather than submission!
About our guest
Rajeev Kaur. Rajeev is an author of Chase Greatness, enlightened leadership for the next generation of disruption. .
CEO Rajeev Kapur reveals how most business leadership is out of step with the evolving times and values, which has negatively impacted both the effectiveness of our workforces, as well as the bottom line.
As a ceo, Rajeev. Accomplished a three multimillion dollar exits two times. Best place to work. Winners over 2 billion in revenue. Global executive with experience building teams in over 20 countries. So being enlightened does not mean that you need to be poor. . You can actually aspire and manifest and achieve your goals through love and.
If you wish to purchase his book, you can head on over to find Chase Greatness on Amazon
Her Programs: https://jessicaknight.thinkific.com/
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Transcript
34. Uncovering the Secrets of Working With a Narcissistic Boss Rejeev
Raven: Welcome to the Empath and the Narcissist podcast, where you regain your sparkle back after narcissistic abuse. I am your host Raven Scott,
a trauma informed spiritual mentor, certified meditation teacher, and human design expert. I’m empowering empaths three times a week in recovery and healing from narcissistic abuse, childhood trauma through human design, self-care, mindfulness advice, and expert interviews. This is season five
This is episode 34, uncovering the secrets of working with a narcissistic boss.
Rajeev: You’ve gotta document everything that you feel like you’re going through. You gotta start creating a paper trail of the bullying or the narcissistic behavior that, that’s causing this issue. a lot of people feel like you have to choose one or the other. And if they’re gonna choose, they’re always gonna choose profits Because to me, in order to survive, or if you wanna be leading your organization in the next three to five years, you’ve really gonna have to change your leadership style. You’ve gotta really embrace those five attributes.
I talked.
Raven: Are you struggling to work with a narcissistic boss or coworker? Discover the best strategies to handle their behavior and keep your job safe. With our guest today, Rajeev Kaur. Rajeev is an author of Chase Greatness, enlightened leadership for the next generation of disruption. .
CEO Rajeev Kapur reveals how most business leadership is out of step with the evolving times and values, which has negatively impacted both the effectiveness of our workforces, as well as the bottom line.
We talk about working with a narcissistic boss can be a challenge. and you may feel undermined. Your talents are unrecognized, your efforts are unappreciated. However, it’s possible to manage a narcissistic boss without jeopardizing your job security. So in this episode today, we’re gonna talk about that and talk about how the workforce is moving towards enlightenment and how to deal with, as an empath, these narcissistic people in power.
So I can’t wait for us to dive into this conversation. Let’s go.
Welcome, Rajeev. Thanks for being here.
Rajeev: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Raven. Thanks for having me.
Raven: Yeah,
Rajeev: out we’re neighbors almost.
Raven: I can’t believe it. We’re neighbors. I talk to so many people all over the world, and finally someone who lives just like a stones throwaway from me. So
Rajeev: I know. That’s so funny. Small.
Raven: it. And I really truly love our topic we’re gonna talk about today. We don’t normally. Talk about the workplace, but it’s an extremely, incredibly important, I said lots of adjectives there.
It’s very important to talk about it because we spend so many hours at work and these narcissists and or whatever gonna call it toxic people can really affect our lives and our mental health, especially if they’re our bosses. So yeah, let’s get into.
Rajeev: Yeah, no, look, , it’s a really interesting subject because I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding the politics of the workplace. They have a hard time working for potentially a boss who’s out to climb the ladder of the organization without any regards to the employees. , I’ve been in those situations.
, I was an executive at Dell for a long time, and I’ve had, , I was actually, I worked directly for Michael Dell for about a year, and it was
an amazing experience. Is the antithesis of that whole thing. , he’s nothing even close to, which is amazing. I also, bosses who were very much in that wanted to climb up and stepping stone.
Raven: Yeah. Wow. I just have to go back to that and, and ruminate on how amazing that that is to work with Michael Dell. . Can you share with us a bit of what you learned from his leadership that inspired you to write your book?
Rajeev: Well look, , it was been a long time ago, so it’s like 93, 94 when I kinda, kinda the 94 timeframe when I kinda wor worked for him. So I was at a competitor. I can’t come over to Dell. And after about six to eight months of being at Dell, Michael’s like, look, we’re really struggling against this competitor used to be there. Why don’t you gonna spend some time with me? And I did. And he said, well, why don’t you come to work for me? And I said, ok. And he’s gonna say, Interesting thing was I was like, I dunno, 24 years old at the time, whatever. And he’s only 26 or 27. Right.
So it, so it’s just like, two guys just hanging out talking.
Right. It was
kinda, kinda cool. , but he was like light years ahead of everybody at that time. In terms of his maturity, in terms of thinking business at time was a couple billion dollar business. Right. It was not a small business. And so, one of the things that I always admired so much about Michael was he had. Zero ego,
like on a scale of one to a hundred in terms of ego, he’s maybe a five. Right? , and it allowed him, I think what really allowed Del to grow up be successful because, he’s very much in that vein of hire people smarter than you give the tools to do the job and get out of their way. And I saw that throughout his leadership and the time I was there.
. Hiring people were better than manufacturing or operations or sales and marketing, whatever the case might be. Empowering people. Those kind. I think it was great. That was a perfect, no. Were there challenges? Sure. There always was. , every company is, has that, but I think the success in the nineties , and so far now in the reinvention , that he went through that. That to me, what he did in terms of taking the company private, a few years. And then from there, retooling the business, coming back out again. , that to me is kinda like the ultimate, balling move in terms of putting aside your ego saying, look, okay, we’re gonna go do this.
And so , that was huge. , and look in terms of his inspiration writing the book, , his presence has kind of felt throughout the book in terms of some of the things I learned from him , and ideas , and learning. Know the core of enlightened leadership, and that’s what I call it, it comes from that. It comes from that place of saying, Hey, if you can really lead an organization that’s full of gratitude. So there’s five key pillars of enlightened leadership. There’s gratitude, there’s resilience, there’s empathy, there’s accountability, and there’s transparency. And those are all the kinds of things I learned from him as well as other mentors throughout my career.
, which kinda really led me to write the book.
Raven: Wow. Yeah. That’s incredible. And when you were talking about that, you said that , he didn’t have a big ego. That’s incredibly important. And I think. . A lot of us wish more people were like that, right? Because you can step aside and let your team help build and grow this vision you have for yourself.
That’s the way to have that neutral, that balanced ego in life versus those who stomp on us or compete with us or do horrible blackmailing things while we’re at work just because they have this lack mindset and this big ego. . If they don’t do it, and if they don’t look amazing, then you know they’re losing out.
Rajeev: Yeah, , look,
Raven: Before we get into commercial break, I’m gonna read to you a few passages from Rajeev’s book, The five Points of the Enlightened Leaders North Star on page 1 98, here are the five attributes I believe every enlightened leader must always keep front and center as they confront business challenges, gratitude, transparency, resilience, accountability. And empathy.
Rajeev: this is prevalent in all work and , it doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s in the workforce. I’m sure people, kids and, young adults have gone through it at school, whether it’s high school colleges, , this is just family members sometimes have this issue, so , this is prevalent throughout , all walks of society.
So this is not like limited to the workforce. Right. And for me, again, I come back to , those five pillars that I talked. And , if you take the first letter of those five pillars, the gratitude, resilience, empathy, accountability, transparency, that spells the word great. Hence the title of the book is called Chase Greatness.
And so that’s the whole point there. And Brian Hall talked about, ego is the enemy, and he really talks about from standpoint of hubris. Right. I think , we’ve experienced leader. On a global scale in the last few years where hubris really ruled the world , and so that we really caused a lot of challenges and issues, , but we’re not gonna get political today.
, but
anyways, the, the, the point I’m making here is that, we talk about ego being the enemy, and, and I, I’ve had people accuse me of narcissism because I wrote the book,
and, and I, and I do podcasts and all these types of things. I’m like, well, that’s the way you feel.
I’m not way you feel. I’m happy to have the discussion with you about it, but I’m not gonna, but I, know where I’m coming from in my heart. I know the messages I have to deliver. And that’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m a big believer in this concept of enlightened leadership.
And, because what’s gonna happen here, Raven, in the next two to three years, the majority of the workforce is gonna be Gen Z, millennial. For the first time, women are gonna be the majority of the work. And they require different type of leadership. , they’re not gonna, they don’t respond well to narcissistic, egocentric, hubris behavior, you know? Yeah. There’s a small look. There’s always an acception to the rule. There’s some minorities actually, there’s, I don’t mean minorities in terms of people, minority in terms of the population, in terms of people. There’s some minority of that population that will always gravitate towards that type of leadership.
There’s nothing you can do about that. That’s always gonna be there. Hopefully , the tools in my book and the thoughts that, we talked about today will help people navigate those things.
Raven: Yeah. Okay. Two things. Number one, , the narcissistic type of leadership, right, of , suck it up. Strong rule, let’s get it done. Who cares if you need rest? Like, let’s just keep pushing . That I think doesn’t serve men as well, right? There are some, men as, as well who don’t like that and they need rest.
I think it’s a non-gender thing. I think we’re all rising to the awareness that this doesn’t work anymore. Like burnout is a real thing.
Rajeev: Yeah, , burnout’s a real thing , and I’ve actually, I had a long conversation about burnout last week with somebody and there’s only, so I’m the c o of my organization right in my business, and, I’ve got, 150 some odd employees. But all around the country we talk about burnout all the time.
With my leadership team now, one of the hardest things to do is get, is to get folks to actually take their vacation. And part of it is that they feel like if they don’t take their vacation, that when they leave they get a nice paycheck at the end. Cuz , they accrue that little, , they get a nice little pay. Payout
on their vacation. So there’s, so that’s part of it. But getting people to actually take their vacation , is a real mystery in terms of how to really do it in a way where it looks like it’s a win for everybody involved. And, but I can tell you it’s really important that that happens and,
Raven: Mm.
Rajeev: , and you come back to your point about, , it’s an equal issue for men as it is for women in terms of that Get up, put on your big boy pants, go for it, go do it.
All those kinds of things. Look, I think at some point sometimes tho those statements are, and sometimes they’re harmful, hurtful. And the key is gonna be timing. , if the first thing outta your mouth is, Hey, suck it up, and you know , that to me, I can see , where that could be a very hurtful situation because look, you were in a leadership position for a reason, right? , when I was growing up in the. and when I was going through leadership training , and all these things I did, you were taught that if you were ever to go talk to your boss, you need to go to your boss with three solutions. Right. Otherwise, don’t
go to your boss
Raven: Right.
Rajeev: , but to me, , that’s challenge.
, I challenge that because , you’re the boss for a reason. And sometimes employees are stuck. Sometimes employees need. Sometimes it might be a kid, it might be a friend, it might be a colleague, whatever it might be.
You know? So sometimes people get stuck and you’re in the position, you’re in for a reason. So what is it that, what is your experience? What in your experience that can do to help that person, right? And if you can create a world in your organization, Where you can lead from a place of empathy and say, look, I understand sometimes you might be stuck. Do I prefer that you come to me with solutions that we can discuss? Sure. But sometimes you just don’t have it. Sometimes you need help. I think Covid is a perfect example.
There was no, no one had gone through Covid, right?
No one right? , there was no mentor for me to call. There was no case study for me to go. and there’s a 24 to 48 hour window there. No one had any answers back in March of 2020, even
me and people are looking at me for answers and I didn’t have any answers.
So you feel a little bit like an imposter. Like, what the hell am I doing in this chair? Or what am I doing here?
Right? But then you do, but at that point you do need to jolt that. That’s, and I remember quickly, I remember waking up one morning, like a day or two , after everything shut down. Okay, gotta get up.
You gotta put on your big white pants. There was no, because sometimes you need that hard jolt to knock you outta that funk that you’re, sometimes it can be appropriate, but can’t realized that you’re gonna go out concert effort across all members of the team to navigate through covid. And we did.
And , we’ve been highly successful.
Raven: Yeah. And it’s putting your heads together and figuring it out together as a team.
.
Now, going back to this, can you restate, that was my other thing as I wanted to ask you is, can you restate your acronym again? What spells out great.
Rajeev: So it’s gratitude resilience, empathy, accountability, and transparency
Raven: those are
all
beautiful.
Rajeev: yeah. And a lot of people ask me, well, why transparency and not trust?
Raven: Hmm.
Rajeev: and I’m like, look, in order to have trust in an organization, you first have to be fully transparent with the organiz.
And so that’s why transparency comes first, , so that’s why that’s there.
Raven: Hmm. And as someone who maybe is an employee or a project manager at work that. Considers himself a sensitive person or an empath. You can feel what your team needs, but approaching your boss that maybe narcissistic is extremely difficult, like h how would you advise that type of person to navigate the waters with?
With that?
Rajeev: So , I don’t think I’m a very sensitive person, but I did have a situation back in my career, boy, this is probably in 2003, so like June 19, 19, 20 years ago, about 20 years ago, where , I actually had a boss who was extremely, extremely difficult. and he would go out of his way to make my life miserable. And it turns out later on, after later on, after we came to an agreement on what the hell was going on, he was doing these things because he wanted me to be an example. He wanted to make me an example out of everybody else, , but he was essentially bullying me in the workplace. Now I didn’t go report him to anybody, whatever. I’m a big boy and I can figure this stuff. But finally he got to the point where I just had to sit down and confront him. And just like with kind of any bully, the minute you confront him, , , when I confronted him, he didn’t realize he was really doing it. And then when he sat down with me, he said, well, I think I was doing it because of this. And essentially what he was saying to me was, you’re gonna be bruised, but better. And so, , all I can say is having gone through something similar to what you’re describing, you’ve g you’ve gotta confront that person early on.
You’ve gotta document everything that you feel like you’re going through. You gotta start creating a paper trail of the bullying or the narcissistic behavior that, that’s causing this issue. You know? And then you gotta make sure , that you report it to your HR department cause they’re there for a reason. Right. , but definitely you wanna document it, you absolutely wanna document it. Right? I definitely do that. , you should definitely absolutely. Confront him or her, , that the behavior’s not appropriate and that, hard, you’re a hard worker.
And the thing that finally got to him was when I told him, I go, look, you’re gonna get more out of me by teaching me than bullying me. So you have a choice. Which one’s gonna make you look better? And that was kind of the, the thing that . Broke, the issue up.
Raven: Well, that’s, I think that’s amazing that he was able to, Introspect, right? There’s always this debate is like people who are toxic or they are bullying, are they doing it subconsciously? Are they actually tact? Tactally doing this to us, and I think a lot of the times they’re just acting out of what they think is the best way to do it, right?
They’re modeling from maybe their parents or their boss or their mentor. Same thing when people are parenting. So to have him have this moment, Oh, actually, yeah, I was doing it because of this reason I didn’t even realize I was doing it. That’s a really, really amazing and absolutely document everything, especially with if they are true n p D, no matter who they are or wherever they are in your life.
Documentation is the key. It is the
Rajeev: Yep.
Raven: yeah. So we have documentation, Okay. I have another question for you. If you are, a boss or in charge of a team, how do you check that you are being an enlightened leader?
Rajeev: Look for me, I ask questions a lot, right? And , if you look at my organization, one of the things that I learned early on in life, And being a leader was I really like. So there’s two things I did. Number one is I put as much effort and emphasis on my internal customer, which is my employees as I do my external customer. As a matter of fact, I put , more emphasis and more energy on my internal customer than do my external customer. So thought process there is that the more I can take care of my internal customer, they’re gonna automatically take care of the external customer, right? To me, there’s no chicken and egg. To me, it should be all about leading the internal customer. Right now from there, in order to do that, I wanna make sure they have whatever tools they need to be successful. In order to do that, I need to make sure I hire an amazing management team. , and I have an absolutely amazing management team. I love my management team. They’re fantastic. It took me a few years to build them out, but it’s there and it’s great and they’re doing an amazing job. And the ability to allow them to, the ability to empower them to go make decision. , was the number one thing , that I did. And we really decentralized all that decision making. Cause there was a time when, the, corporate becomes kinda the bottleneck and you don’t want that, it slows things down. So we completely decentralized everything, built this out, this amazing matrix organization, and , it’s been incredibly successful. And so , those are kind of some of the things that, that you wanna look at , as you start climbing the ladder, as you’re looking at organiz. If you’re a new ceo, a new president of an organization, those are kinda the things you wanna look at, which is how much power are you giving down to the front lines of the people? You wanna give them as much power as you can to customer? Are you really delegating a de decentralized decision making? And then are you gonna be a back for them when they need help? And those are the key. Those are the key attributes you need, I think, to be successful. In, in the coming decades in, in the.
Raven: Yeah, absolutely. And then again, it goes back to working as a team versus just doing what the top boss says And , don’t question, just do.
Rajeev: Yeah, , look, it’s all about trying to remove silos. You know? It’s all about understanding and realizing that , all boats, rising size list, all boats kind of a situation, , Because they realize, they, and I’m very transparent in terms of how we’re doing in the business, how our numbers are, because they realize at the end of the day that if one division is doing really well and one division is doing really poor, then that division that’s doing well, they still can’t make certain decision to invest because they gotta make up for the myth that this division has, right? So the more we, the more you can bring them all together, the more they can share ideas, the more they can share experiences, the more they can share. Innovations and new things that they’re doing and new product ideas, the more successful the entire group is gonna be. I think we’ve done a.
Raven: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes those , remember those, those meetings, especially as a salesperson’s like. I don’t need to hear, my numbers spoken out loud. And this is specific, right? Like not like this department and that department. If you’re in a meeting with a boss and they’re like calling out all of your numbers, sometimes they will shame, like a shame tactic to get the salespeople who aren’t performing.
And they’ll announce it and it’s like, I already know I’m not doing well. Like announcing it to everybody is not gonna motivate me to do better. like that is not a good tactic. And in being , a great leader in motivating your people to sell more,
Rajeev: Yeah, I think, I think. On that one. , I’ve been in situations , where I’ve seen that before. I grew up on the sales side of the organization. So look, salespeople are a different beast, right? Salespeople are hard charging. , they’re super competitive and they’re not competitive in a mean way.
They’re just super competitive. They wanna beat the next person next to him, and , they wanna go on the president’s trip. They wanna win the, highest commission. , they like to see their name in light, so to speak. That sales.
Raven: Yeah.
Rajeev: Right. And that, to me, that’s an example. I think that there’s a narcissism there that’s, kinda can border on the good side of narcissism if there is one, because they just really, cause they really enjoyed being successful. They enjoy that. Right. That, that, that’s why certain salespeople exist. And I remember early in my career, I was working for a computer company before Dell. And every day the leadership team, , the VP of sales would publish. From top to bottom, the top salesperson. And it was a, who was a top salesperson for the previous day, and it had a total for how much that person has sold so far for the month.
right?
And you never wanted to be on the back page of that,
Raven: Yeah.
Rajeev: right? And so you always kinda wanted be on the front page. You wanna be higher up and those kinda things. If you’re on the back page, right? Then you’re like, okay, I gotta go work harder, or whatever the case might be, I might need some additional help.
And so it was never viewed , as a tool to be mean or as a tool to beat anybody up. It was really just, it was really saying, look, this is where you, it comes back to that, in the, I talk about accountability and you still have to hold accountable.
And so think salespeople at the end of the day, just beast.
Raven: Yeah. And I think in my scenario, I’m thinking of when , I worked at Ethan Allen as a designer, right? You go in thinking you’re just gonna be designing, and then you’re like, oh shoot, like I have to sell. Like what? And then you become a salesperson, but you first are the designer. And I think a lot of designers are not, they’re more creative and they’re more like into the process.
, they’re not really into , the numbers and being as hard salesy, but yeah, I remember we, it was like drilled in us though. It was like every morning we talked about the meeting and then like the weekend meeting we talked about it and then one-on-one privately you talked about. So it’s like, I feel like that was a bit overboard and probably didn’t need to happen.
Accountability was there, like threefold.
Rajeev: Yeah, I think the mistake that sometimes those types of organizations, You’re trying to force someone to be a salesperson who’s not a salesperson.
So you gotta give them tools on how to become a salesperson without them realizing they’re a salesperson. You know what ?
, so to me, so that’s really if listening, I call it the fbi. And I don’t mean like federal bureau investigations, I call it feature benefit incentive. Right? So what’s the feature of this couch?
What’s the benefit to you? And here’s the reason why it’s a special right now and it should be available. Right? , and you gotta ask just leading questions. Like what do you think? How does that sound? Literally, that’s all you have to do, right? But what I find a lot in these types of organizations, whether it’s an Ethan Allen type of an organization, whatever it might be, they don’t do those basic things.
All they wanna do is talk about it, but they don’t know how to teach it and provide small little example. How to get small little micro wins, and all and ultimately at the end, the day is if you can, your, your customer yes. Five or six times in the conversation, they’re probably gonna buy from you.
Right? And small little things like
that where they would’ve taken to you, oh, hey Raven, you’re talking about, you just tell the features of the, or the benefit and it’s a special, and ask them how they feel. Because if, if you can get people , to buy from you and they’re feeling. You’re gonna know it’s gonna be a great situation.
Raven: absolutely. Yeah. There was a time. That , there was that training, but then I also remember there was just a lot more, politics in it. There’s the numbers, there’s the shareholders, there’s all these things and thing.
Rajeev: yeah. And, and yeah. And then again, and again, I don’t necessarily blame them. I, I blame the ceo, I blame because, I, I blame, the chief revenue officer, whoever it is, or the chief marketing officer, whoever, I, I blame that management team because they should be able to arm you guys with really simple tactic. And how to do 90% of what you need to get done. And they did do that.
Raven: Yeah. Yeah. I think they focus more on the product. Like I always remember Saturdays being product training. It’s like, okay, but how can I sell more? And there was that too. I’m not gonna say there wasn’t, it wasn’t lacking. But I love that the point you say about , who are you talking to Meet them, where they’re at.
And it’s baby steps. Like teaching us how to ask questions. Like it’s still something I struggle with now, right? Determining if I’m interacting with a narcissist or not, or if I’m getting scammed on the internet asking questions. Lots of questions is the way to make sure that. You know who you’re dealing with, you’re safe and protected, or it’s a way to be able to know who needs something from you or if you have that to provide to them.
So yeah, definitely asking questions. Always the analytical mind, right? The, the analytical mindset in life.
Rajeev: Yep.
Raven: Yeah. Okay. So, Yeah. That leads us to my question then. What is an enlightened entrepreneur? Talk a little bit more about your book.
Rajeev: Yeah, so. To me, as I mentioned earlier, and so the title of the book is Chase Greatness, and the subtitle is En Light Leadership for the Next Generation of Disruption.
Because to me, in order to survive, or if you wanna be leading your organization in the next three to five years, you’ve really gonna have to change your leadership style. You’ve gotta really embrace those five attributes. I talked. And those five attributes, it’s what leads to enlightened leadership because to me, enlightened leadership is again, is embracing the fact that in the next two to three years, the demographic of the workplace is gonna completely change. And if anything that this upcoming demographic, they’re much more in tune with what I call the Jedi. I just say that cause I’m a Star Wars nerd and it was easy for me to understand and remember. And
Jedi is another. Jedi is another acronym, which is saying, this workforce says, Hey, we really wanna make sure that we’re working for an organization that understands justice, social justice, that understand the impact of the environment. That’s very focused on diversity and it’s very focused on inclusion. Now are there people like that that, that don’t believe in that? Sure, but the majority believe in. Things are important to them as they look for an organization to go work for an organization, right? And Enlight leadership says, Raven, not only am I here to take care of you within the walls of the organization, not only do I want you to be successful here, I wanna do what I can to support you outside the walls of the organization.
Also, because ultimately you want to try to build a culture for people where they don’t. Because at the end of the day, one of the biggest issues that causes companies a challenge in their profitability or in their bottom line, performance is turnover, right? The Society for Human Resource Managers said before covid Turnover was costing companies over 30 billion a year. That number is like quadruple or quintupled, , since Covid, right?
And we’re all going, we’ve all the great resignation and all these different kinds of things and people are leaving and there’s, there are more jobs open right now than there are potential people coming in the workforce, right? So you gotta do everything you can to build an amazing culture. You gotta do everything you can to support people within the organization and outside the organization. So I’ll give you some small examples. At 1105, the company I. we provide two mental, we we provide two mental wellness days a year for people to take, up, that go above and beyond, underneath personal time that they wanna take. Right? We do that on, on election day. We give people a paid day off to go vote, right? Why do we do that? Because I want people to feel like they can get involved if they’re not happy. With what’s happening in the world, then the best thing I can do is give them the time to go get involved in their communities to affect change without having to worry about getting a paycheck. So we give ’em a payday off to go vote that to me. I, and if they voted by mail, great. Go. Go be a poll worker. You don’t wanna be a poll worker. Great. Go spend time with your kids, your family, go, go to the beach, go hang out. Go take another mental wellness. Whatever the case might be. But the point of it is, I’m just trying to make is I, we try to give them those types of things you.
We, you know, we, we, we support, nonprofits and charities throughout the Southern California region. We’ve supported operations, smile. Now we’re supporting a, nonprofit that supports, that helps, women and children who are victims of domestic violence. So those kinds of things. And, and those are the kinds of small little things that make an employee feel good about working here.
So those are examples, small examples, but ultimately in light leadership says, Hey, I know the workplace demographic isn’t gonna be changing in order, and, and I have to change to go with. And enlightened leadership builds on servant leadership, so it’s not that hard for people. People have probably been practicing servant leadership for quite some time. Basically, servant leadership is, Hey, I work for you, Raven. Enlightened leadership is, Hey, I work for you, Raven. What can I do to help you successful within the business? Also, what can I support you outside business? And that’s enlightened leadership.
Raven: That’s beautiful. Now everyone’s listening is like so motivated. They’re like, yes, I wanna work for company that, supports justice and donates and helps me, have the time to go vote. Those are all really important things. What can they do to go to their boss, to, to introduce these ideas, to start implementing them in their c.
Rajeev: Look, I, I, I think most organizations want to do something right, but I think what happens is a lot of times it’s just not, it’s just not natural , for some leaders to, to worry about these kinds of things. Right. , that they’re, , I’m a capitalist. , , I’ve sold. Three companies.
And so it’s not , but I’m also a capitalist that believes that you can also put purpose and profits together, that you don’t have to choose one.
Right? And very, and a lot of people feel like you have to choose one or the other. And if they’re gonna choose, they’re always gonna choose profits, right? And so, look, if, if, if you’re making, if you’re a company and you’re producing, let’s, let’s say you’re producing 5 million of profitability, pick a number. You wanna tell me that, that you can take $20,000 and go donate it to a local food bank and go have all your employees show up, or better yet, or to create programs to help support your employees or on mental wellness, whatever the case might be. Yeah, you can, right? Because ultimately you wanna be able to find ways to continue to retain those employees. And so, so it’s, it’s, it’s understanding and realizing as a leader, if you really have a choice, you can do both. And that’s not just me saying, it’s not just me saying it, you know? There is, mackenzie, which is arguably the largest and best, consulting firm in the market, came out and said that if you can, if you can, if you find ways to do both, you can improve your bottom line by five 7%. So there’s actually benefit because are not leaving, you’re not hire new people. The case might be so,
Raven: right? Yeah. and I would say, narcissists are all about their egos and they wanna look amazing and good and like save the world out into the public. So you can always angle this idea like, oh, if we have this, this will look. It’ll be good for the press or whatever, however you wanna word it.
But definitely find ways to bring this up into your workplace and talk about it because it’s so important for our future and the next generations. It really.
Rajeev: Yep.
Raven: Yeah. Well thank you so much Ji for being here and talking about this topic and helping us and giving, giving us some tips on how to handle a narcissistic boss.
We’re gonna put our big boy and girl pants on and we’re gonna like confront this narcissist in a very tactile way with evidence, right? Don’t just go on in with your emotions, cuz you will lose that battle with your words for sure. So make sure you have the tactile ways with the evidence and. . Yeah. Just the intelligence of saying this is not right.
So anyways, thank you so much. Thank you for being here. And where can people connect with you further?
Rajeev: No, I appreciate that. So, obviously they can find me on LinkedIn, which is, I’m there and people are welcome to connect with me there. The book is available on Amazon, so if they go on Amazon and they look up Chase Greatness, Rajiv and Rajiv is, guess they can see it on the screen, but it’s R a j E E V.
and Instagram is.
Raven: Good. Amazing. Well, I’ll look for you on Make sure I follow you and I’ll tag you in the post. That’s where I mainly am is Instagram Okay, well thank you so much.
Rajeev: you bet. It’s my pleasure.
Raven: So what amazing conversation. I really gained so much and completely realized that my first job that I was in had a very toxic culture, even though I knew it. It just kind of helps define, like it starts from the top down and has to trickle through. And as an empath and sensitive person, we talked about how do you approach the unreasonable requests and what tips in dealing with the unhealthy toxic leader.
And if your.
Or if you are a boss in charge of a team, how do you check that you are being a good leader? Because sometimes even in our shadows as empaths, we can tend to wanna fix people. And when we fix people, we remove their struggle. We remove the struggle, which is their, it’s what their karm. Currency is here cuz the struggle is where they learn their lesson.
So sometimes as impasse, we can act toxic, uh, and step in and try and fix them. So being that enlightened leader, maybe you’re a manager, a boss, even a parent, you know, all of this goes back to what role are you playing in, in your community as a leader and making sure that you’re ct. A safe environment that is emotionally secure, not putting them down or criticizing them, allowing them to give you feedback through you, asking them questions and not fixing and removing their struggle, cuz that is their gold.
As a ceo, Rajeev. Accomplished a three multimillion dollar exits two times. Best place to work. Winners over 2 billion in revenue. Global executive with experience building teams in over 20 countries. So being enlightened does not mean that you need to be poor. . You can actually aspire and manifest and achieve your goals through love and.
If you wish to purchase his book, you can head on over to find Chase Greatness on Amazon and the link will be in the blog in the show notes.
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