In one of the book’s illustrative stories, a man is told to run the refreshment booth at a fair. He arrives to find two elderly ladies disgruntled because they feel their power has been usurped. So he hands one of them the cash box to manage and asks the other to show the teenagers how to use the soda machine. This supposedly gives them a sense of power and control and ensures that “the evening was very enjoyable.”

This is supposed to be a happy story, but it doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. You were in charge. You were handed the cash box. You’re new. The person running the event was a veteran. There’s probably a reasonwhy those ladies weren’t in charge.

That kind of behavior guide is all about giving insecure people something to make them feel good about themselves. But it’s so patronizing.

In another story in the book, a student in a beginning crafts class asks to go into the higher class. The teacher agrees. Everyone’s happy, and a lesson has been learned about “our deep desire to feel important.”

Well, I don’t know about that.

During my time as chair of the Fashion Design Department at Parsons, too many of my students would say on the first day of school, “I’m more advanced than this class. I need to take a junior rather than a sophomore class.”

I always responded, “We have four weeks to add/drop. I’ll speak to your faculty, and they will know within a month if you are so adept that you can go to the next level.”

Did it ever happen? Never!

In Life’s Little Instruction Book,which has sold more than ten million copies, the writer advises us to: “Compliment three people every day.”

Well, maybe, but only if they’re worthy. And do you keep a checklist?

“Buy great books even if you never read them.”

“Own a great sound system.”

“Sing in the shower.”

Really, it’s like: “Act aggressively happy whether you are or not.”

A lot of that book is about busting out of social constrictions and getting all touchy-feely and feel-goody. Well, I think a lot of people feel entirely too good about themselves and bust out of social constrictions entirely too much.

My now twenty-three-year-old niece, Wallace, much matured from the “Uncle Nag” days, often picks me up here in New York City and then we take the train together to see the rest of our family. I adore my niece, and I am so impressed with her great manners. She is so respectful of people. She sends thank-you cards. It’s great fun to do things with her and to have her visit because she’s good company and seems genuinely to appreciate a dinner out or whatever we choose to do together.

Also, the visits are planned well in advance, so there are no surprises. (One of the cardinal rules of visits: Don’t drop in.People who drop in drive me to despair. It’s simply not acceptable.)

People need boundaries and rules. Society does, too. You don’t flourish if you’re left to do anything in any situation. I say this about art and design all the time, and it doesn’t always make me incredibly popular.

A few years ago, I was at a conference of fashion design educators in Copenhagen. I was the only American, and I was reviled because I was from that place.What they hated about American design was that we look at design through a lens of commerce. They thought it constrained creativity. I maintain that having constraints is very helpful for the creative process.

On Project Runway,the designers do better work when they have a very specific challenge. And for me, it’s easier to discuss their work when there’s a real point of departure, rather than the do-whatever-you-want challenges, when all I can say is, “Well, if this is the look you wanted to achieve, you did it!”

With a certain amount of maturity, we can set up our own constraints. That’s a lot of what education is about—letting people set those assignments for us so that when we graduate we can start to set them for ourselves. Even now that I’m in my fifties, I still face certain situations where I have to admit that I need some rules to help me figure out what I should do.

Bosses should think of themselves as fulfilling this kind of boundary-giving function that school and parents do. They need to be clear about expectations and rules so everyone knows when an employee is doing well or not doing well. And when expectations are not met, there should be logical consequences, whether that’s the loss of the job, a decrease in salary, or something less drastic. There is no reason, in any case, ever to yell. And yet we’ve all seen it: bosses who lose their tempers constantly.

What I want to know is: What makes people abusive to their underlings? I don’t think people are born that way. Is there some role model for people who tells them this is the way they get to the top? Did Donald Trump’s “You’re fired!” catchphrase corrupt them?

My suspicion is that cruelty to those you have power over is insecurity, pure and simple. These bad bosses are afraid if they’re too nice to people, they won’t be taken seriously.

As anyone who sticks around in an industry for a while knows, the people who have the best careers and the best lives (and often who do the best work) are not the demanding, screaming, flinging divas. They’re the people who take their ego out of it and put all that energy into their creative life.

I remember in Season 2, we went to see Fern Mallis, who runs Fashion Week here in New York and worldwide, too. I think it was Daniel Vosovic who asked her, “What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a young designer getting into this industry?”

“Be nice,” she said without hesitation.

I thought: God bless you, Fern Mallis.

I’m sure some people thought she was joking or being flip, but she was dead serious, and dead right.

There is absolutely never any reason to be a fire-breathing dragon.

I would say this to faculty who yelled at their students: “You hold all the power. Do you think there’s a single student who questions your authority? Even if they do, you’re assigning them a grade. There’s no reason ever to raise your voice, to threaten, to storm around. You’re not competing for power; you’re holding it, all of it.”

When people have a choice between two similarly talented people and one is a drama queen and the other is responsible and friendly, whom are they going to pick?

Everyone wants to work with people who are low maintenance. You have a huge advantage over the competition if, in addition to being a talent, you are easy to work with.

I’d never met a fashion prodigy until Christian Siriano. He’s probably the most talented person who’s been on the show so far. But that’s not why I agreed to do the foreword for his 2009 book, Fierce Style.I did it because I respect and like him, and I want to support the careers of people who are both talented and decent to others. Christian has all of the attention and success necessary to create an unbridled diva, but he’s not, and I don’t believe he ever will be. Wisely and correctly, he knows that divadom will not advance his career.

If you got rid of everyone in the fashion world who was high maintenance, there wouldn’t be that many people left. But even if you’re in a crazy world like that, it doesn’t mean you have an obligation to drop your standards of behavior just to fit in.

Again, that doesn’t mean being a doormat. In twenty-nine years of teaching, I often had times when I had to have sit-downs with my students, but I did so calmly. I would say, “Look, things are not going well,” and explain what needed to change. If the students took what I said seriously, we all had a great time and they learned a lot. If they didn’t, then they got bad grades and we all moved on with our lives. That’s all you need to do.

Parents can take a lesson from this, too. The ones I know who are rough with their children are always saying, “I want them to know who’s the boss!”