Episode 68 - Lyndon B Johnson & Arrogance
Both Monster and Indeed have career advice articles on how to separate Arrogance from Confidence. So today we ask, why not master both?
Arrogance and confidence seem so entangled these days, especially online, that you could be forgiven for confusing the two. Besides, arrogant people get dates and corner offices all the time. So if both arrogance and confidence can get you what you want, what’s it matter that one is a virtue, and the other’s a downright annoying sin? Today on the Re-Engineered You, we explore the strengths of each. And we discuss how we can use “personality alchemy” to transmute arrogance into confidence - just like lead into gold. That way when we’re eventually asked to back up all that swagger with action, we actually have the goods.
To teach us how to find that razor-thin line between arrogance and confidence, we’re taking a page from the most arrogant president in US history, Lyndon B Johnson. This was a man who was so arrogant he once used a member of his secret service as a toilet stall, and he invaded senator’s and journalist’s personal space by looming over them, uncomfortably, on national television. LBJ was so arrogant, some historians think it was a deliberate personality choice to help him get a record-breaking amount of legislation passed. Making LBJ our perfect model for how to use arrogance as a weapon.
History Links:
https://www.cracked.com/article_24271_the-5-most-unbelievably-petty-uses-presidential-power.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3GT9UN7nDo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society#:~:text=The%20two%20sessions%20of%20the%20Eighty%2DNinth%20Congress,-The%20political%20realignment&text=The%20Johnson%20Administration%20submitted%2087,agenda%20in%20US%20congressional%20history.
https://www.amazon.com/Lyndon-B-Johnson-Portrait-President/dp/0195159217
Science Links:
https://neurosciencenews.com/three-types-arrogance-15110/
https://medium.com/@RobertBurriss/are-we-attracted-to-arrogance-77203c5215e9