Getting angry doesn't do you any good. What if you didn't get angry to begin with? How would that feel? To remain serene and calm in the face of otherwise pressured, tense, and aggravating situations - that feels good. That's how to work for an Idiot Boss. Pretend again you've just marched into your Idiot Boss's office in a righteous rage. You plant yourself directly in front of his desk with your feet shoulder width apart. Open your hand up with fingers spread wide apart. Keeping it that way, shake it in his face, and say, "You miserable so-an-so. I'm smarter and more talented than you. I work harder and get more accomplished in one day than you do in a month. If you had half a brain you would treat me with the respect I deserve, double my vacation, give me a raise, and beg me not to quit." Feels different, doesn't it? It's clenched fist vs. open hand, tight vs. loose, anger vs. appeal, rage vs. reason. When all is said and done, the 12-step program for recovering idiots will open your hand, your mind, and your options. Clenching something in your fist requires energy. Letting something go taps the energy of the natural universe. Clenching something in your emotional fist squeezes much of the life out of it. Holding it in an open hand allows life to flow into it. Your reactive ego might prefer a two-fisted approach to life, especially with idiots. Your heart prefers the open hand. Your reactive ego wants to tighten up. Your heart wants to relax and let things flow. Your two-fisted self says, "I'm not going to give that so-and-so the pleasure and benefit of my best work or one drop of extra effort." Your heart says, "I can do what's in my job description with my eyes closed. I do my best work because it makes me feel good about myself. If it helps somebody else, so be it." Do you want to thrive or just survive at work? If thriving sounds good, open your fist and let go. "But, Dr. John," you say, "I'm familiar and comfortable with anger, frustration, and resentment." "Sure, you're familiar and comfortable with anger, frustration, and resentment," I agree. "But do they make you happy?" Didn't think so. Open your fist and let them go. Every day, when you wake up with clenched fists, open them up and let go. By midmorning when the idiotic restraints, constraints, and pressures of the system make you want to clench both fists, let go. By lunch, when you feel like a week has passed and you want to shake your fist in somebody's face, let go. By mid-afternoon, when you've about decided living with open hands is for the birds, remember birds don't have hands. Most creatures don't need opposable thumbs because they don't reflect on their circumstances and calculate how miserable and angry they are. Therefore, they don't need to clench fists full of anger, frustration, and resentment. They are truly in the moment, looking out for number one, living one day at a time, doing the best with what they have. Animals don't resent what they don't have. Look at the good things in your life, the bad things, and give them all to your Higher Power. If you find you just can't live without anger, frustration, and resentment, there is plenty more available. Once you feel the difference between living with clenched fists and open hands, you'll relax your fingers as soon as you notice they're closing.

Give Away the Credit

In the workplace, as anywhere, the old saying applies: Compliments are like fertilizer. They don't do any good until they're spread around. Distribute them liberally. You can never go wrong by spreading encouraging words. They might be nothing more than fertilizer, but fertilizer can make things grow faster and bigger. Don't act like a Machiavellian and feel as if you're robbing yourself just because you're allowing acclaim to flow to others. There is plenty of goodness for everyone. The more credit you give others, the more likely you'll receive some in return. If you extend credit for the sole purpose of receiving credit in return, you'll become resentful if nothing comes back. Give freely, expect nothing in return, and you won't be disappointed. Your emotional generosity, however, sets a tone that's likely to beget more generosity. If not, you have the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing. There is no limit to how many times you can do the right thing and there's no limit to the satisfaction. I've described how to give unwarranted praise to Idiot Bosses and others for the purpose of positioning yourself. Giving credit to others who deserve it is slightly different. It's always appropriate to congratulate superior effort and it's no more than you desire for yourself. Allowing credit for your ideas to go to someone else might make you feel like clenching your fists again, unless you put it in perspective. If you're living a big-picture life, you won't sweat the unimportant stuff and keep score when you do and don't get all the recognition you feel should be coming to you. If you make it a personal policy to intentionally allow your boss and other team members the first drink from the cup of recognition, you will impress yourself. You will also impress anyone else who is paying attention. And even if no one else notices, you won't feel resentment because you are exercising your own free will. As some of my Baptist friends say, you're adding another jewel to your heavenly crown. My Jewish friends would say, you're being a mench. I say it's like putting on your own oxygen mask first. Be Part of Something Big No matter what work you do or what industry you're in, you can take pride in being part of the big picture.

One of the times I premeditatedly and with forethought turned the credit for one of my ideas over to my boss was during a consulting assignment for a major defense contractor in California. I was hired to help integrate the technical trainers with the soft-skills trainers to create a unified training department. The task was similar to the cultural integration required to bring the audio and lighting techs out of the Disneyland Maintenance Division and into the Entertainment Division, and would have been simple if not for the web of hidden agendas, old grievances, and grudges built up over the years. In my usual manner, I looked for commonality among the players. That's what sets the stage for cooperation among individuals and factions that, underneath the feigned civility of the white-collar workplace, really want to beat each other with tire irons. These people were so deep in their own tar pits they had long ago lost sight of the importance of the work they were doing. They built rocket engines for NASA. Their products propelled men and women into space. They were part of space exploration, past, present, and future. So, why did they walk around like post-lobotomy geeks with vinyl protectors in the breast pockets of their short-sleeved Oxford shirts? My first thought was to restore these guys into pre-lobotomy geeks with vinyl protectors in the breast pockets of their short-sleeved Oxford shirts. As an outsider, I could see the forest and I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be part of something like the space program. When I worked for the Disneyland Entertainment Division, I felt proud to be part of something so extremely important and widely recognized. In the Disney Way management programs Mike Vance initiated around 1970, management candidates spend time in the Park as Disney characters. It seemed like a cutsie idea when I heard about it. But it was more than that. I walked out of the various gates between the backstage areas and the onstage areas a dozen times a day. The signs at each gate reminded us we were going onstage. Underneath each sign was a full-length mirror. Even as a "suit" who drew no attention from Park guests, I had a sense that I was part of a proud culture. Everyone did. Popcorn vendors, performers, and street sweepers, all felt the Disney pride when they went "onstage." Yet, I didn't fully understand it until I stepped onstage with my fellow Disney Way seminar participants dressed in character costumes. The costumes were assigned based on height. I wore Eeyore.

We walked onstage in Frontierland near the Country Bear Jamboree. I had walked through that gate a thousand times before. This time, I saw everyone for 100 yards turn and light up at the sight of me and the other Disney Way participants. They charged us. It took me almost a full minute to grasp what was happening. People of all ages and all nationalities ran up, hugged me, and started talking as if they'd known me their entire lives. Of course they were talking to Eeyore. One lady reached around and handed me my tail. "You need to hang on to this so you won't loose it again," she said in all seriousness. The same thing was happening to the other characters. In those few minutes, I realized as never before how I was part of something woven into the fabric of people's lives the world over. In character costume, you don't talk. I just listened and experienced what it was like for my identity to dissolve into this much bigger thing. Harboring resentments and hostilities means it is all about you. When it ceases being about you and starts being about the bigger picture, resentment and hostility go away. After I had helped move the theatrical audio and lighting functions from the Disneyland Maintenance Division to the Entertainment Division, but before my Machiavellian Boss had made his brilliant blitzkrieg move to seize power, an airline ticket holder was dropped on my desk. "What's this?" I quizzed the runner from the Walt Disney Travel Company, across the street at the Disneyland Hotel. "You're on the 3:30 nonstop from LAX to Kennedy," he said as he headed out the door. I would have called after him, but my phone rang. "Did you get your ticket yet?" It was the Show Development director, the one with the desk-diving secretary. "Y-y-yeah," I stuttered. "What's this all about?" "We just got the green light to do a target market tour starting in New York City, then Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Seattle, and San Francisco. We need you to article theatrical venues in each of those cities. You leave for New York this afternoon. Good luck." At 8 a.m. the following morning (5 a.m. California time) I was standing in front of Lincoln Center. I started trying doors. One building after another was locked. I walked around to the side street and tried the back doors unsuccessfully until I reached the stage door at Avery Fisher Hall. I tugged at the door handle and it opened. I walked inside and into the first open door in the long hallway. It was the office of the house manager - just the person I needed to see. "I need to article a theater," I said. He stared at me as if to say, "Sure you do, kid. Pardon me while I call Bellevue and find out if there are any psych patients missing this morning." I wasn't sure why he doubted my sincerity. He looked more annoyed than amused as he reached for the telephone to call security.

I pulled out my business card and laid it on his desk in front of him. He glanced at it curiously and stopped dialing. He picked up the card with one hand and hung up the receiver with the other. He looked at the card, then at me, and then the card again. The card featured a gold foil embossed Cinderella's Castle along with my name and the words "Disneyland Entertainment Division." I could almost hear him thinking, "This is a horse of a different color." A radical attitude transformation registered on his face and within 20 minutes, I had my date and my venue. Less than 16 hours after the airline ticket folder had been plopped on the top of my desk in Anaheim, California I had booked a date at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on the power of my business card and the company it represented. It was the world-renown reputation of Walt Disney and his organization that made people sit up and take notice. Within the week, I returned to Anaheim with theaters booked from New York to San Francisco and all the way across Canada. In some cities, I landed, grabbed a cab into town, booked the hall, and immediately hopped a flight to the next city. No one questioned that business card. Nobody asked for additional identification or a down payment. They reacted to me as part of the Disney organization, not as John Hoover. It wasn't until after I left Disney that I began to fully realize the incredible power I was able to wield as a member of that team. I had greater financial success after Disney than I would have had inside, but I never again achieved the pure status I had as a young person representing that firm. Like the space program, Disney was greater than the sum of its parts.