Two People
Leaders get a lot of feedback on what they do, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned through the years it’s this. There are two people that every leader needs to ignore.
#1: People who ALWAYS agree with you and do nothing but sing your praises. It’s nice to have people who will give you the confidence you need, but these aren’t the people who you should be looking to for that confidence. Their unbiased approval can be your undoing if they lead you to believe that you are never wrong.
#2: People who are NEVER happy and only complain. If the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, it’ll just keep on squeaking. It’s good to have people that are going to give you criticism to help make you better, but these aren’t the people you should be taking that criticism from.
Even though it’s impossible to remove these people and their influence from your life completely, leaders need to distance themselves from these people. The people that leaders need to keep tight are the people who are going to always love and respect them, their hard work, and their leadership, but aren’t afraid to properly offer advice and criticism to them when it’s warranted. Balanced support builds great leaders.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
This may be your best post ever.
You know me enough to know that I’m a bit of a complainer. But while some may disagree with this statement, I say it confidently: I am a great supporter of my leadership when they are not around. I may be a complainer to their face more than I should be, but I have always tried hard to talk people off the fence and give them a chance when people are complaining behind their backs.
What I really get disheartened about is blog post where leaders basically trash the complainer without ever giving the fact that the complaints need to at least be heard (not listened to necessarily) to make sure you don’t have any blind spots. I’ve seen a church leadership so blind to the ‘support’ they didn’t really have that when they got a 35% no vote on what was basically a referendum on them… they were shocked. Consequently it took 66% to pass the measure that leadership was passing, so it failed.
But a great post.