I don’t understand why people won’t just call others by the names they want to be called. When I was seven years old I decided that I would be Jim rather than James, and everybody supported me. I’m pretty sure my family already called me Jim, but I know that to my kindergarten and first grade teachers I was James. After that, teachers would call me James on the first day of school, but I told them I preferred Jim and that was the end of it. I had one teacher who called me Jimmy, but … well, he was kind of a jerk. He was the gym teacher and I was maybe eight years old. Not much I could do about it.

I encountered someone just like my old gym teacher about 15 years later. He was a higher-up at a bank where I worked. He had the annoying habit of calling people by their given names, regardless of stated preference. He wasn’t directly in my chain of command although he was higher up enough that he could easily have had me fired if he wanted to. Fortunately, I didn’t interact with him often.

When I first met William, he greeted me as James. I smiled and shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, William. I prefer Jim.” We had a short conversation. The next time we met he again addressed me as James. I said to him, “William, I prefer Jim. Only my mom calls me James, and then only when I’m in trouble.” That didn’t work, either.

I found out over time that William’s annoying habit of mis-naming people was something of a joke among his subordinates at the bank. I honestly don’t recall if he had that same annoying habit with his bosses. Being young and a little unsure of my position, I let it slide. For the money I was being paid, I could put up with that jerk a few times a month.

As one of two programmer-slash-admins at the bank, I had to support anything computer-related. I guess I’d been there a year when I was to come up to the office to look at a screen one of the secretaries was having trouble with. The problem screen just happened to contain William’s personnel file. The name at the top of the screen was Alfred William <lastname>.

Yeah.

The next time I saw William was a few days later at a monthly meeting with about 50 employees. Part of that meeting involved the head of each department getting up and saying a few words, and taking a few questions. So when William was done with his talk I raised my hand and he called on me:

William: Yes. James?
Me: Alfred … pause … I was wondering about . . .

I didn’t get to finish because he turned red, pointed at me and then the door, and said in a very soft, threatening voice: “Get. Out. Of. Here. … Now.”

Understand, I fully expected to be fired. But by then I knew that my programming skills were in demand and I could find another job easily enough if I had to. I decided that if they fired me, I wouldn’t fight it. Why would I want to work for a company that thinks it’s okay for a senior manager to openly disrespect people? I was laughing as I drove home that night.

I didn’t get fired, and William never called me James again. And I never called him Alfred again, although I did wonder why he had such a reaction to me using his correct first name. Did he have some serious hatred of his given name? Or perhaps he got angry because I showed him obvious disrespect in public. Whatever the case, he started calling people by their preferred names.

I don’t know for sure that the following is true, but I have some evidence to support it.

William went to my manager’s manager and told him to fire me. My chain of command refused, and William escalated the issue to his manager. William’s manager talked to one of his peers, who happened to observe the incident and after some checking around discovered William’s bad habit. William’s manager told William that it was his own darned fault that he was embarrassed in public, and that there wasn’t going to be any retaliation.

Point is, calling somebody by a name other than the one that they prefer to be called by is a sign of disrespect. Actually, of contempt. What you’re saying, when you call somebody by a name other than the one they want to be called by, is that their preferences do not matter to you. I don’t care if that person is a casual acquaintance, or your 50-year-old daughter. If you continually mis-name somebody, you are intentionally being disrespectful, and you can expect nothing but disrespect, or contempt, in return.

Oh, and if I mis-name you–call you by a name other than the one you prefer–please correct me. Be nice the first time. And maybe the second time? I do make a sincere effort to address people as they prefer, but I make mistakes all too often. And, truthfully, I’m more likely to forget your name altogether than I am to call you by the wrong name.

I had cause recently to think seriously about the nature and use of ultimatums in leadership situations. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ultimatum is a tool that costs the leader much more than he gains, if he gains anything at all. It’s no surprise that I’ve never seen an effective leader use an ultimatum to resolve a conflict.

Before I go on, let me make sure we’re all on the same page. In leadership situations the ultimatum takes the form, “If you don’t do what I say, I will institute this [usually very unpleasant] punishment.”

It’s a tool from the carrot and stick school of leadership. When it works, that is, when delivering the ultimatum elicits the desired behavior, it does so because the subordinate desires the carrot, which the leader has control of, or fears the stick, which the leader also has control of. The leader can threaten to take away the carrot or threaten to apply the stick.

The leader delivering an ultimatum absolutely depends on the subordinate desiring the carrot and fearing the stick. The leader has, in his mind, a “can’t lose” situation: he’ll either get obedience, or the subordinate will suffer dire consequences. He knows that the subordinate won’t choose “or else,” because that’s unthinkable. This can elicit the desired behavior in formal hierarchies like the military, because the ramifications of the subordinate’s other choice are indeed dire: court martial or, in a combat situation, execution. It becomes much less effective as the superior/subordinate relationship weakens. For example, in a volunteer organization the leader’s “stick” is almost non-existent. He’s left with the carrot: the subordinate’s permission to participate.

Things go sideways for the leader when the subordinate no longer desires the carrot nor fears the stick. At that point the leader is powerless, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s delivering the knockout blow, “You better do this, or else,” and is not at all prepared for the subordinate to select “or else.” At that point it’s the leader, not the subordinate, who has no choice. He has committed to a course of action and then surrendered control of the situation to the subordinate. The subordinate, who has already determined that the leader has nothing he wants and has no power to harm him, can then tell the leader, with impunity, to go stuff himself. The leader, even if he’s aware enough to realize that he has lost the battle, has no choice but to bring out the stick and attempt to flog the subordinate, despite the fact that his attempt at flogging makes him look like a fool.

If the leader is foolish enough to allow a subordinate to goad him into a public confrontation, then everybody gets to witness just how weak and ineffective the leader is. Not only does everybody see him fail to control the situation, they see him deploy his ultimate weapon and have it blow up in his face. The subordinate disobeyed, dared the leader to do something about it, and then laughed at the result when the leader took the bait. The leader exercised his authority, but lost the subordinate and the respect of anybody watching the conflict.

The ultimatum is a tool employed by weak and insecure leaders when leadership has failed. Even if it elicits the desired behavior, it does so only out of fear. It forever damages the relationship between the leader and the subordinate, and it will cause anybody who witnesses the confrontation to look at the leader in a new and much less positive light.

An effective leader, on the other hand, establishes control of a developing conflict and works to resolve the situation peacefully and privately. If he determines that there is no hope for an amicable resolution, he removes the carrot or applies the stick without preamble. The leader can do this because the subordinate already knows that he’s crossed the line. There’s no need for the leader to say, in effect, “You have one last chance.” Sure, the subordinate might not care and the leader’s assertion of authority might be meaningless. But he did it privately, on his own terms rather than in response to a final gesture of defiance by the subordinate: a defiance that the leader foolishly made possible and all too often encouraged by his behavior.

The ultimate result is the same, but the difference in perception is tremendous. In the case of the ultimatum, the leader is in effect saying “I will beat you into submission.” And when the confrontation ends with the subordinate still defiant, the leader is shown to be weak and ineffective. But the effective leader calmly saying, “You’ve left me no choice. I must institute the punishment,” the leader is seen as having done everything possible to resolve the situation, but regretfully had to drop the hammer. Even if the confrontation is public, if the leader remains calm and controls the situation he is seen as effective and the subordinate is seen as out of line. And the subordinate’s unconcern never comes into play because he’s never given the opportunity to make that last gesture of defiance.

(Note added 8/15/2024: In my 2006 blog post Zugzwang and ultimatums I mentioned that issuing an ultimatum often puts the recipient and the person issuing the ultimatum in positions where they have no good options. It’s the ultimate lose-lose situation.)

I kind of like the new Enterprise series.  We’ll see how it progresses.  Oddly enough, I’m wondering how big the Captain’s dog is going to get.  That Vulcan babe sure is improbably constructed, isn’t she?

I’m kind of disappointed, though, at how often the Captain or somebody else has to say “…and that’s an order.”  You would think that the “cream of the crop” crew assigned to Earth’s flashiest new spaceship would understand that everything the Captain says is an order.  But then, that’s always bothered me, even when I was in the military.  Whenever a superior said “…and that’s an order,” I knew that he was somehow insecure in his ability to command.