Chapter 4: Seeing From the Valley and the Hill: Understanding People at Work

First Impressions in a New Office

Benedikt is twenty-four and recently started his first job as a junior engineer in a company that designs water pumps. In his first week, he formed quick opinions about the people around him. One senior engineer, Marguerite, seemed cold and unfriendly. She rarely smiled, answered his questions briefly and spent most of her time with her headphones on. Another colleague, Lorenzo, seemed wonderful. He was friendly, funny and always ready to chat. He invited Benedikt to lunch on his first day and told him all about the office.

Benedikt decided that Lorenzo was the person to learn from, and that Marguerite was best avoided. He followed Lorenzo's advice, copied his ways of working and laughed at his jokes about the managers. When he was stuck on a problem, he asked Lorenzo rather than Marguerite.

After three months, Benedikt began to notice something uncomfortable. Lorenzo's advice was often wrong. His ways of working were careless, and his projects were frequently late. The managers, whom he joked about, seemed to trust him less than his friendly manner suggested. Marguerite, on the other hand, was quietly respected by everyone. When a difficult problem arose, the managers always asked her. One day, Benedikt was stuck on a calculation, and in desperation he asked Marguerite. She took off her headphones, listened carefully, showed him exactly where he had gone wrong and then explained a better method that he had never been taught. It took ten minutes. She was not cold at all. She was simply concentrating.

Benedikt felt embarrassed. He had judged both colleagues by what he could see on the surface: a smile, a joke, an invitation to lunch, a pair of headphones. He had not looked at what they actually did, or at what others who had known them longer thought of them. He realized that he had made the oldest mistake in working life: confusing how people appear with who they are.

Machiavelli spent his career studying people, and he wrote about how to see them more clearly. He also wrote about how others see us. This chapter explores his ideas about perspective, appearance and judgment, and how they can help us understand the people we work with.

The Painter's Two Positions

Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to a young member of the family that had returned to rule his city. In the dedication, he explained why a man of his low position might presume to give advice to a ruler. He used an image from painting. Those who draw landscapes, he wrote, place themselves low in the plain to study the nature of mountains and high places, and high on the mountains to study the low places. In the same way, he said, to understand the nature of ordinary people well, one needs to be a ruler, and to understand rulers well, one needs to be one of the ordinary people (The Prince, dedication).

This image is a little flattering to the young ruler, but it contains a deep truth. Where we stand affects what we see. From the valley, the mountain looks tall and steep, and we can see its shape clearly. From the mountain, the valley looks small, but we can see how its roads and rivers connect. Each position reveals some things and hides others. Neither is complete on its own.

In working life, we are always standing somewhere. We see our managers from below, our colleagues from beside us and, if we lead others, our team from above. Each position gives us a particular view. A worker on the floor sees things a manager cannot see: the daily problems, the shortcuts, the frustrations, the small kindnesses. A manager sees things a worker cannot see: the pressures from above, the budget, the competing demands, the larger picture. Both views are real, and both are partial.

Machiavelli's image suggests a practical skill: deliberately imagining the view from another position. If you are a worker, you can ask, "How does this look from my manager's position? What pressures might she be under? What might she be seeing that I am not?" If you are a manager, you can ask, "How does this look from the floor? What are my staff seeing that I cannot see from here?" Doing this does not mean accepting the other person's view. It means seeing more of the landscape.

This skill also helps us understand colleagues beside us. Benedikt saw Marguerite only from his own position, as a new person looking for friendliness. If he had imagined her position, as a senior engineer carrying the most difficult problems in the office, he might have understood that her headphones were not a sign of coldness, but of concentration on work that others depended on.

Eyes and Hands

In chapter 18 of The Prince, Machiavelli made another observation about how people judge each other. People in general, he wrote, judge more by the eyes than by the hands. Everyone can see, but few can touch. Everyone sees what you appear to be, but few feel what you really are (The Prince, chapter 18). By "touching", he meant knowing a person closely, through direct experience of their actions over time.

Machiavelli used this observation to advise rulers to manage their appearance carefully, even when it differed from reality. A ruler, he suggested, should appear merciful, faithful, humane, honest and religious, even if he was not always these things in practice. This is the part of his advice that has made him infamous, and this book does not follow it. Deliberately creating a false appearance is a form of deception, and for an ordinary worker it is both wrong and, over time, self-defeating, because those who work closely with us eventually touch what we really are.

But the observation itself is useful in two honest ways. First, it warns us about our own judgments. Like Benedikt, we often judge people by what our eyes see: a smile, a manner, a style of dress, a confident voice. These are easy to see, and they are often misleading. To know someone, we need to "touch" them: to see what they actually do, how they behave under pressure, whether they keep their promises and how they treat people who cannot help them.

Second, the observation reminds us that others judge us by appearances too, especially those who do not work closely with us. This was part of Agnieszka's problem in Chapter 1. Her managers saw her only from a distance, by the eyes, and they missed the substance of her work. It is not deceptive to make sure that what others see of you reflects what you really are. It is simply honest communication. The problem arises only when appearance and reality are deliberately made to differ.

In the Discourses, Machiavelli adds a hopeful note about judgment. Although individuals may be fooled by appearances, he argued, ordinary people as a group often judge well, especially over time and when they can compare. He suggested that when people hear two capable speakers arguing for different choices, they usually choose the better one, and that the people are often wiser and more constant in their judgments than a single ruler (Discourses, Book 1, chapter 58). In working life, this suggests that the shared judgment of colleagues who have known someone for a long time, as with Marguerite, is often more reliable than any first impression.

Femi Works a Shift on the Floor

Femi is forty-seven and manages the production floor of a bakery that supplies bread to shops and supermarkets. He came to the role from an office job in planning and has never worked on the production line himself. For his first year, he managed the floor from his office, looking at numbers on a screen: output, waste, sick days, overtime.

The numbers showed a problem. Waste on the morning shift was high, and so were sick days. Femi sent several emails to the shift supervisors asking them to reduce waste. Nothing improved. He began to suspect that the morning shift workers were careless or lazy. He was considering stricter rules and closer monitoring.

Before he did, an older supervisor suggested that he spend a few mornings working on the line himself. Femi was reluctant, but he agreed. On his first morning, he arrived at four, put on the protective clothing and joined the team shaping dough. Within two hours, he understood things that no screen had shown him. One of the mixing machines was old and often produced dough of uneven quality, which had to be thrown away. The room was very cold at that hour, because the heating was set to come on later, and the workers' hands became stiff, which slowed them and caused mistakes. Several workers had colds that never seemed to go away.

Femi had been seeing the morning shift from the mountain, as numbers. Now he had seen it from the valley, as a cold room with a faulty machine and tired people doing their best. The workers were not careless. They were working in poor conditions that he had not known about. He arranged for the machine to be repaired and for the heating to come on an hour earlier. Within two months, waste had fallen sharply, and so had sick days.

Femi now spends one morning a month on the line. "I used to manage the numbers," he says. "Now I try to manage the work, and you cannot see the work from an office." The workers have noticed the change. They raise problems with him more openly, because they know he will understand. Machiavelli's painter, standing in the valley to see the mountain clearly, would have recognized Femi's lesson.

Femi also learned something about the numbers themselves. They had not been wrong. Waste really had been high, and sick days really had been frequent. But numbers seen from a distance tell us what is happening, not why. The why could only be seen from close up. Many managers rely heavily on reports and figures, which are useful, but which are a view from the mountain. Combining them with regular visits to the valley gives a much more complete picture, and usually leads to better decisions.

Oriana Imagines Her Manager's View

Oriana is thirty and works in the customer service team of a company that sells garden furniture. Her manager, Gerhard, has recently become irritable and demanding. He changes priorities without explanation, asks for reports at short notice and seems impatient in meetings. Oriana and her colleagues have started to complain about him over lunch. They have decided that he is a bad manager who does not care about his team.

One evening, Oriana thought about Machiavelli's painter. She had been seeing Gerhard only from below, as a source of sudden demands. What might the situation look like from his position? She did not know for sure, but she could think of some possibilities. The company had recently announced disappointing sales. There were rumours that the customer service department might be combined with another. Gerhard might be under heavy pressure from his own managers, and might be passing that pressure down without meaning to.

The next day, Oriana asked Gerhard, politely, whether there was anything happening that would help the team understand the recent changes in priorities. Gerhard looked surprised, and then tired. He explained that senior managers were reviewing all departments, and that he had been asked to produce many reports to show the value of the customer service team. He apologized for not explaining this sooner.

Understanding Gerhard's position did not make the demands disappear, but it changed how the team felt about them. They understood that the reports were helping to protect their own jobs. Oriana suggested that the team could help Gerhard by preparing some of the information in advance, and the team agreed. Gerhard's irritability eased, and he began to share more information with the team. "I had decided he was a bad manager," Oriana says. "Actually, he was a worried manager. Those are very different, and you can only tell them apart if you try to see from where he is standing."

It is important to add that not every difficult manager has a good reason for their behaviour. Some managers are simply unfair, and some are unkind. Imagining their position does not mean excusing everything they do. But in many cases, as with Gerhard, the view from another position reveals pressures and reasons that change the meaning of what we see, and open the way to cooperation.

Wiremu and His Young Colleagues

Wiremu is fifty-eight and recently joined a small company that repairs and maintains bicycles. He had worked for many years in a large car repair business before it closed, and he took this new job to stay active and use his mechanical skills. His colleagues are much younger, mostly in their twenties. On his first day, Wiremu noticed their casual clothes, their music playing loudly in the workshop and their constant use of their phones. He formed a quick impression: they were not serious about their work.

Over the following weeks, Wiremu found himself correcting this impression. He noticed that the young mechanics used their phones mostly to look up technical information about new types of bicycles, especially electric ones, which he knew little about. They played music, but they also worked fast and carefully. They chatted constantly, but much of the chatter was about solving problems together. When Wiremu struggled with the electrical system of an electric bicycle, one of the youngest mechanics, a woman named Kiri, spent half an hour patiently showing him how it worked.

Wiremu realized that he had judged his colleagues by the eyes, by the surface of their style, rather than by the hands, by what they actually did. The style was different from what he was used to, but the substance was good. In fact, they knew things about modern bicycles that he did not know, just as he knew things about mechanical repair that they did not.

Once Wiremu saw this, the workshop became a much happier place for him. He began to share his own knowledge, showing the younger mechanics old techniques for repairing frames and wheels that they had never learned. They showed him how to work with the new electrical systems. Each side saw the other from a new position, and both learned. "I nearly made the mistake of thinking that because they looked different from my old colleagues, they were worse," Wiremu says. "They were not worse. They were just from a different valley."

Wiremu's story shows that judging by appearance is a risk at every age and in every direction. Older workers may misjudge younger ones by their style, and younger workers may misjudge older ones by their pace or their habits. Machiavelli's advice to judge by the hands, by actual conduct over time, protects us from these mistakes, and opens the way to learning from people who are different from us.

Practical Steps: Seeing People More Clearly

The first step is to notice your first impressions and hold them lightly. When you meet a new colleague or manager, you will form an impression quickly. This is natural. But treat it as a first guess, not a judgment. Write it down if you like, and look at it again after a month or two. You may be surprised by how often it changes.

The second step is to judge by the hands. Look at what people actually do over time. Do they keep their promises? Is their work reliable? How do they behave under pressure? How do they treat people who cannot help them? These are the things that reveal character, and they take time to see.

The third step is to ask the people who know. Like the colleagues who respected Marguerite, people who have worked with someone for a long time often have a more accurate view than any newcomer. Listen to how experienced colleagues speak about others, especially about how they behave in difficult moments.

The fourth step is to imagine the view from another position. When someone's behaviour puzzles or frustrates you, ask what the situation might look like from where they stand. What pressures, responsibilities or information might they have that you do not? If it is appropriate, ask them, as Oriana asked Gerhard.

The fifth step is to visit other positions when you can. Like Femi on the bakery line, spend time in the places where others work, if you have the chance. Sit in on a meeting you would not normally attend. Ask a colleague in another department to explain their work. Each visit shows you a part of the landscape you could not see before.

The sixth step is to make sure your own appearance reflects your reality. Others may judge you by the eyes. Make sure that what they see is honest: that your real contributions are visible, that your manner reflects your care and that you communicate clearly about what you do. This is not creating a false image. It is helping others see the truth.

Understanding Is Not Excusing, and Appearance Is Not Deception

Two limits of this chapter are worth stating clearly. First, understanding someone's position is not the same as excusing their behaviour. If a manager treats people unfairly, imagining their pressures may help you understand why, but it does not make the unfairness acceptable. If a colleague is unkind or dishonest, seeing them from another position may help you respond more wisely, but you are still entitled to set limits, raise concerns and, where needed, seek support through proper channels.

Second, attending to how others see you is not the same as deceiving them. Machiavelli advised rulers to appear to have qualities they did not have. That is deception, and this book rejects it. What this chapter suggests is different: making sure that the appearance others see is a fair reflection of the reality. A worker who does good work and lets it be known is being honest. A worker who pretends to do good work, or takes credit for others' work, is being dishonest. The line between the two is clear, and it matters.

There is a practical reason, too, why deception does not work well in ordinary working life. Machiavelli wrote that few people touch what a ruler really is. But in most workplaces, many people touch what we really are, every day, for years. A false appearance may fool a distant manager for a while, but it rarely fools the colleagues who work beside us. And once they see through it, trust is very hard to rebuild.

It is also worth turning the eyes-and-hands idea toward ourselves. Most of us have habits of manner that give others a misleading picture: a serious face that looks unfriendly, a quick way of speaking that sounds impatient, a quiet nature that looks uninterested. Like Marguerite with her headphones, we may be judged unfairly because of them. We do not need to change who we are. But a small explanation, such as "I wear these when I am concentrating, so please tap my shoulder if you need me," can help others see past the surface to the person beneath.

A Short Exercise: Three Positions

This exercise helps you see a working situation from more than one position. It takes about fifteen minutes.

Think of a situation at work that frustrates or puzzles you: a decision you disagree with, a colleague whose behaviour you do not understand or a conflict that keeps repeating. Take a page and divide it into three sections.

In the first section, describe the situation from your own position. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you think is going on? Write freely.

In the second section, describe the same situation from the position of someone above you, such as your manager or the person who made the decision. What pressures might they be under? What information might they have that you do not? What might they be trying to achieve? You may not know the answers, so write what seems possible.

In the third section, describe the situation from the position of someone beside you or below you: a colleague, a member of your team, a customer. What might they see that neither you nor your manager can see? What might matter to them?

Read the three sections together. Has your understanding of the situation changed? Is there a question you could ask, or a small action you could take, based on what you now see? Write it at the bottom. Benedikt did this exercise about Marguerite after his embarrassing discovery. In the second section, he wrote: "She carries the hardest problems. Every interruption costs her time." His action was: "Save my questions and ask her at the end of the day." Marguerite later told him that she appreciated it, and she began to invite him to join her when she worked on difficult problems, so that he could learn.

Chapter Summary

In the dedication of The Prince, Machiavelli compared himself to a painter who stands low to see the mountains and high to see the plains, suggesting that where we stand affects what we see. In chapter 18, he observed that people judge more by the eyes than by the hands: everyone sees what you appear to be, but few touch what you really are. In the Discourses, he argued that people as a group often judge well over time (Book 1, chapter 58). Machiavelli used these observations to advise rulers to manage false appearances; this book does not follow that advice.

Benedikt with his first impressions, Femi on the bakery line, Oriana imagining her manager's view and Wiremu with his young colleagues all found that seeing people from more than one position, and judging them by their actions over time rather than by their surface, helped them understand others more truly and work with them better. Understanding is not excusing, and making our real contributions visible is not deception.

In the next chapter, we will look at one of Machiavelli's most famous images, the fox and the lion, and at how to use it honestly: to recognize traps, not to set them.