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The American View: Tattoos, Truth, and Taking Charge — A Case for Radical Workplace Realness

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There was a story circulating at Yahoo! Broadcast back in 1999 about a colleague who challenged management to own their policy positions. We were told in orientation that the office dress code was simple: “you must wear shoes.” So, the story goes, one day an unnamed sceptical worker put that standard to the ultimate test by spending the entire day working in nothing but her shoes and tattoos. It was said that her manager saw her in the cubicle farm, shrugged a greeting, and went about his day. This incident was, my teammates claimed, proof of the Dallas office’s leaders’ commitment to managing honestly and fairly (as opposed to the usual corpo practice of ruling arbitrarily based on bigotry, politics, and whims). 


While I believe that this story was apocryphal, the sentiment expressed was mostly corroborated by things I saw during my tenure. Yahoo! Broadcast (née Broadcast.com) was a classic internet startup. According to company folklore, the founders focused more on pragmatic progress than appearances. I can confirm that was usually true during the final days of the company. You could dress however you wanted, wear makeup or wild hair, or sport tattoos and piercings and nobody cared (officially, anyway). It was liberating to be able to focus on the job instead of fretting over how your peers and superiors might perceive – and, thereby, judge – you for aspects unrelated to your work. 


I’ve worked in a lot of places where management espoused the position that “perception is reality.” A supervisor once tried to convince me that this was a universal truth. “It doesn’t matter how good a job you do or even if you’re right,” he lectured me “If someone higher than you in rank thinks you’ve failed, then you really did fail. Facts and evidence are meaningless.” [1] The impact that this mindset had on operations in that organisation was as corrosive to good order and discipline as salt water on an exposed ship’s hull. The workers were so focused on pretending to be successful that they ignored everything required to actually be successful. 


I thought about these two examples a lot when I developed my initial working persona as a new squadron commander. The unit I’d inherited was in abysmal shape: rife with bigotry, graft, petty personal drama, dishonestly, and sabotage. My number one job was to clean the place up, full stop. The cavalier attitude I adopted helped me to move faster than my moaning menagerie of miscreants could keep up with. I essentially ran the legacy crew over (metaphorically) and dragged the survivors into a new reality. Those that refused to come along got replaced with mew troopers who could follow orders. It took a few years to bury the legacy culture and run off the worst offenders, but we managed. 


I feel it’s important to disclose that the wild, devil-may-care, cavalier personality I portrayed in that assignment wasn’t real. It was a character I played to achieve the results I needed. It wasn’t “me” in any real sense save one … and that one attribute that made all the difference in making the role seem sincere

All the working world's a stage, And all the people below Managing Director level are merely players; They have their onboardings and their redundancies, And one colleague in his time drafts many PowerPoint slides.

One attribute I’d evolved before taking over my squadron was a complete lack of modesty. I’d joined the Army at seventeen. Living in barracks and close quarters with dozens or hundreds of other soldiers complete ablated away any inhibitions I might have had prior to enlisting. Nudity was something routine that everyone ignored. The usual middle American Protestant regressive taboos against all things related to bodies and sex that we were all raised under died faster than an ice cream in a blast furnace. Soldiers who couldn’t adapt were chucked out. 


When I left active duty, I discovered that this indifference has translated into a very different risk tolerance to many of my corpo friends, clients, and co-workers. In one memorable exchange, a peer challenged a statement I’d made about digital evidence collection by asking “Well, how would you feel if it were your personal nudes that were leaked or stolen?” I looked my pal dead in the eyes and told him – truthfully – “If I ever had nudes and some idiot took them, I wouldn’t be the person needing therapy.”


In a context larger than simple personal exposure, I discovered I was less subject to embarrassment than the people I worked with. I didn’t have anxiety about admitting that I’d made a mistake or that I couldn’t accomplish a task. It didn’t see admitting to a shortcoming as a vulnerability; it was, I thought, the fastest and most efficient way to either learn something or to get assistance. Others, I discovered, would rather fail at a task than admit they weren’t up to it. 


What I’m trying to convey is that a leader’s sense of self consciousness and their fear of being judged by others hobbles their ability to lead effectively. When you self-censor and hesitate fear of blowback, it’s akin to drag racing with a foot on the brake. You’re making things unnecessarily difficult for no meaningful benefit save for assuaging your own anxiety. I believe strongly that effective leaders must live transparently; to be indifferent to others’ petty judgments. 


A good example of this came in my second month of command: a team from the Air Force Audit Agency descended on our base to investigate complaints about material mismanagement that had happened well before my time. I’d suspected that equipment and supplies were getting pilfered and that our equipment accountability was probably crap, but I couldn’t prove it. As my boss explained, if the auditors found a bunch of violations, I’d be the one to take the blame since I was the officer-in-charge … even though none of the bad stuff had been done on my watch. That was just how the game was played. 

Getting screwed over by your predecessor and then screwing over your replacement is a time-honoured tradition for military commanders. Not a good tradition, but …

Rather that freak out over the colonel’s naked threat, I shrugged and met the delegation head on. As the auditors filed into the Big Boardroom, I stole a seat next to the lead inspector [2] and guaranteed him that he could stay as long as he liked and would never be able to find a problem that we hadn’t already told him about. That stopped everyone in the boardroom cold. Admit that you have problems? Pre-emptively disclose the ugly stuff before you’re forced to? Sacrilege! 


Except no; that “radical transparency” tactic paid off. Our “one week” audit became a six-month residency. Yes, the auditor found a bunch of legitimate stuff to ding us on, but as he wrote in his formal findings “No matter how hard I tried, I could never discover an issue that I wasn’t already informed about beforehand and that didn’t already have a remediation plan in place.” Sure, years of petty bureaucratic harassment followed, but no one got fired over the legacy screwups and most of the major problems we had finally got fixed thanks to the auditors’ attention. 


I got away with that gambit in large part because I wasn’t afraid of being embarrassed by the auditors’ findings or concerned about their opinion of me as a person. I preferred that the issues be found and exposed under controlled conditions so that I’d get a mandate from the auditors to mitigate them. That’s exactly what wound up happening. I prioritised candour over career … and it worked. Mission accomplished, moving on.


Call it “naked confidence” if you like. Sure, it’ll backfire on you sometimes. I got chewed out at Fort Lewis for donning my uniform after taking a shower in a 50-soldier bay because some female troopers were outside talking. The cadre sergeant felt that someone might be upset if they chanced to spy my unremarkable and uninspiring buttocks. We didn’t so much agree to disagree as I did lots of push-ups while the sergeant experimented with new insulting profanity. Oh, well.


I understand why some people find this approach challenging. Portraying confidence while you’re embroiled in chaos and uncertainty can come across as arrogance or ignorance, especially to someone who lacks confidence themselves. It’s hard to understand something that you crave but don’t know how to develop. 


More importantly, demonstrating greater confidence than your boss can sour your working relationship or even drive your boss to paranoia. [3] I’m not suggesting that you attempt to domineer your superior; that’s usually a fast track to redundancy. Rather, I’m advocating for straight talk, honesty, clear expectations, and a refusal to be intimidated by social dynamics in the superior/subordinate relationship. You’re both professionals with jobs to do, not feudal vassals. 

You’d never know that by watching how executives act, though. I swear, some of them really believe that they hold divine right to rule and that HR policies allow them to decapitate their minions on a whim. Just look at the “business leaders” currently serving in the American government …

Additionally, I understand that many people can’t afford to risk their position, especially right now. The global economy seems to be melting down like the aforementioned ice cream. Geopolitics in 2025 seems more like a wild fever dream than a rational endeavour. Nuclear brinksmanship is back and is about as welcome as the polyester leisure suit. I get it: if you’re one of the millions of people who simply can’t risk losing your gig for fear of losing everything else then do what you must to protect yourself and your own. I empathize and definitely don’t judge.


If, however, you have some manoeuvre room and have the risk appetite to give “naked confidence” a try, I heartily recommend it. Adopt a indifference element to your work persona because it will help enhance your leadership sklills. To put it bluntly, take away your workplace enemies’ ability to hurt you before they try to. Defang your adversaries by comfortably owning your reputation so that you’re free to act on your principles and pursue your objectives without caving to the threat of reputational damage. 


I swear that most of your detractors don’t have that sort of immunity; people that that heavily weight the negative judgment of others over their own needs and beliefs are forever vulnerable to the threat of embarrassment. So much so that they’ll sabotage themselves rather than risk letting someone else smear their reputation. That’s no way to live. 


I know it can be scary. Staring your detractors down and shrugging off their personal attacks requires a measure-and-a-half of willpower and confidence. I’ll let you in on a secret, though: you don’t have to be a stoic or a megalomaniac to pull this off. You simply need to prioritize your principles over your pride. As I explained to my junior officers, “always take your mission seriously; never take yourself seriously.” Really, It’s like wearing Iron Man’s metal jammies all the time … no one can hurt you, and knowing that intimidates the hell of them. That change in dynamics will give you the leverage and power imbalance you need to push through reforms.


Remember, in corpo land the bullies – thugs and Mean Girls™ alike – that physically and emotionally harassed you in school can’t lay a glove on you in the workplace. All they have is spite and rumour. Weak weapons in an environment where operational success trumps all other factors in a dispute. Achieve your objectives and leave your rivals behind you … toothless, irrelevant, and forgotten.

 

 

 

[1] I utterly despised that feckless jack-wagon. 
[2] Traditionally, the home team sits on one side and the visitors sit on the others to clearly demonstrate which team holds the power in the confrontation. Sitting on the other group’s side of the table was more offensive to cultural ethics than showing up to the meeting starkers. That’s why it worked. 
[3] Been there, did that. It sucked. 

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