Stop Hating the People You Serve
Leaders get frustrated with the people they serve. You hear them grumble, “What’s wrong with people?” It happens in the business world, education, church world, and governments as well.
Dissatisfaction – apart from loving action – eventually morphs into hate.
10 symptoms of hateful leadership:
- Minimizing or ignoring your impact on others.
- Peevishness that won’t let go of small issues, faults, or offenses.
- Withholding help when you’re able to make work easier for others.
- Criticism that points to wrong without working to make something right.
- Complaining that camps in the past.
- Dispassion for the interest of others. Self-interest apart from other-interest is hateful.
- Comparative bragging.
- Unwillingness to adapt to others. You’re a hater if everyone adapts to you.
- Smugness when colleagues struggle, fail, or lose reputation.
- Temper outbursts and irritability. An irritable leader is a hateful leader.
You might be thinking you don’t hate. You DISLIKE.
Haters protect themselves by defining hate in terms of others. The hateful leadership list is my take on the opposite of love. I thought about love and wrote about the opposite.
Maybe you prefer to use UNLOVING instead of hate. Does that sting less?
7 ways to move toward loving leadership:
- Stop trying to control people. Focus on things within your control. Let go of everything else. Helplessness turns to hate.
- Expect to pour into others.
- Acknowledge that people ARE frail. Hate grows when you forget frailties, both your own and others’.
- Show up to serve for the joy of serving.
- Determine to spend most of your think-time focused on strengths, talent, opportunities, and the future. If you think focusing on failure and problems will take you where you want to go, you’re a hater.
- Celebrate imperfect progress. You’re a hater if nothing is ever good enough.
- Every morning start fresh with people, but don’t expect them to perform out of weakness.
What does leadership that seeks the best interest of others look like?
Excellent points to ponder. Thanks
Thanks Richard!
By your definition, every person that allows only “positive thinkers” in their orbit are, in fact, “haters.” Something to dwell upon.
I think here is a mistake in dynamic, if not logic,
in thinking that frustration leads
to anger leads to dehumanization and
thus ultimately allowing for hate.
People tend to “hate” those they have to lie to …
a well-proven dynamic, and relevant and material here.
Once you feel “forced” to lie to someone
(particularly with a lie of omission of something you know is materially important and relevant to the other),
you tend to [unintentionally &/or fearfully] project your own sins onto the other,
find fault, and lay blame (usually in a necessarily public manner – for the validation of your lying narrative);
which is how “love” inverts into “hate.”
What does leadership look like? …
It finds a way to lay bare the flaws in the assumptions underlying the frustration/conflict that are being unquestioned/taken for granted – and in a caring/empathetic/constructive [loving] manner and motive – w/o destroying anyone’s unspoken worldview.
It’s tough work, but, hey – if anyone could do it, then why not us?
Thanks Rurbane. Your idea about lying is important to this conversation thank you.
I’m with you. Frustration doesn’t have to end in hate. As a matter of fact, frustration – used well – is a great thing. Of course I’m not referring to loosing your temper and screaming at people.
As always, I’m thankful when you join the conversation.
Best
PS…. Originally I included a note that I was pushing the language about hate to it’s limits. But, decided to let readers make up their own minds.
I appreciate pushing the concept to the extreme, that’s why certain words are in ” …”
The overarching point, I suppose, is that the moment we begin to project our frustrations onto others (as a way to reduce our anxiety/fear – especially of conflict), we lose; once we begin lying to ourselves (by projecting feelings onto others rather than letting them run thru [privately] and inform us of something material that we’ve been avoiding &/or evading), we begin a grand self-deception (no matter how beautiful it may seem, or how good it may “feel”).
And once we are invested in our own “issue(s),” it’s very difficult to pull back, admit our shortcoming (the human condition, apparently), and effect constructive reparations (leadership at its hardest and finest), presumably in mutual affirmation (“love?”).
The [best] judges tell their juries right after they are sworn in – and then again just before deliberation – “Do not allow yourself to make up your mind until you have seen & heard EVERYTHING – and have had a chance to have fair discussion about it amongst yourselves. Only that way you won’t have to fight for something you may no longer truly believe.”
A leader that has others interest at heart is one who has taken time to learn about human nature, NLP and emotional intelligence so that they can better understand people and be able to draw the best out of them. Different people communicate in different ways if a leader is able to adjust leadership skills to fit the task he will most likely get the best out of people.
Your opening line “Leaders get frustrated with the people they serve”. This is something that is often lost, forgotten in the idea that once a leader, the people serve, not the leader.
“What does leadership that seeks the best interest of others look like?” – everything being looked at, treated equally, showing understanding & compassion.
This next comment is written with a little trepidation as well as with a little tongue in cheek, being that I am commenting on Leadership Freak, not having a title that infers leadership but one than is on the same par as everyone else. Sometimes, I wonder if titles were removed it could / would remove some of the frictions that can occur overall.
I love this. I love people and want to always meet them where they are at, accept them for who they are and see they get what they want.
These tips will help