Put the ladder down

I saw a great quote recently. Strong people do not put others down, they lift them up.

It got me thinking - there have been several times in my career when I have either witnessed, or been on the receiving end of, someone purposefully attacking the confidence of another individual. It’s not a man thing, either. It’s something both men and women do, but why? Surely we women who are working hard to achieve our goals in both our careers and our personal lives should be putting the ladder down behind us, bringing other women with us, not kicking their fingers off the rungs.

As always, I wondered about the psychology behind putting people down - it’s certainly not something everybody does, so what triggers it in some people? As you would expect, the answer lies in our self-esteem. No matter the root cause (childhood trauma, past experience of being bullied, poor examples set by those around them) those suffering with low self-esteem are more likely to seek to put others down than those who are self-confident, sure of their skills and their value.

The problem for those, especially women, who put others down, is that it gets noticed. This behaviour eventually starts to isolate the ‘wrong-doer’, which in turn will, of course, peck away at their self-esteem. I had a manager once who was known as JFDI. Yes, her most common phrase was “Just effing do it” She’d sit in her office and issue basic instructions, without additional help or guidance, telling us if we couldn’t figure it out we were in the wrong job. Now, I’m actually a fan of that phrase, when it means stop procrastinating and just go for it. But in her case, it wasn’t about momentum, it was about control. She became more and more disliked and when she moved on to another company we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. In the meantime, those of us seeking help would collaborate, seek out others with the experience we needed and accomplish everything we needed to, without her input. Yes, we figured it out, but she never then got a handle on what anybody was doing. Not a good look in a woman seeking further promotion, which never came, hence her departure.

So right there is reason one why we never put others down: you can’t aspire to be a leader if there isn’t anyone willing to follow you. 

Reason two revolves around the ‘cry wolf’ concept. If you are always dismissing other’s ideas and opinions, people are likely to stop either seeking or heeding your advice. Your opinions may actually have value, but if you’re known as a negative Nancy, people simply stop listening. At its crux, this comes down to one simple question: what kind of reputation do you want, in business or in life? It’s the flipside of the person who always agrees with the boss, who always sings the praises of any idea or plan. This person, despite endless positivity, is also very easy to dismiss - at they clearly don’t have any opinions of their own, at worst they’re an absolute suck-up.

There is another saying I rather like: Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.  If you don’t take care of how you build relationships with your work colleagues, your friends and your family, you are likely to lose their trust, and it’s a bugger to regain once it’s gone. If you lose the trust of those around you - if people won’t come to you for guidance, or when the sh*t hits the fan – they also won’t come with great ideas and solutions and you will most definitely risk missing out on opportunities that might have been of huge benefit to you.

One of my work colleagues, in the marketing department of the business where I worked in sales, was once handed a direct report that a fellow manager simply couldn’t cope with any more. He’d launch himself into new projects, take on jobs, issue instructions to other departments all without checking in with his boss - and when stuff went wrong (which it regularly did, because no collaboration) all hell would let loose. In her first conversation with him, she advised him that she  was there for him to learn from, to grow and develop, and that her main aim was to get him his promotion; the next step on the ladder to a leadership role of his own. BUT, she warned him, this would only happen with two-way communication - he HAD to tell her everything: every thought, idea, plan, proposal, action he wanted to take. It was also made very clear that if he buggered anything up and she hadn’t known his plans in advance, when the shit hit the fan she would duck and run for cover faster than a hare with a greyhound after it. On the flip side, she told him, if things went wrong and she had been part of the planning, she would stand square and take the hit. 

They had twice-weekly one-to-ones. Double the amount her other direct reports had. He hated it - this was a young man of supreme self-confidence! - but over time he learned to appreciate how much he was learning, how many plaudits he was receiving and how, gradually, she was backing off and letting him go. And he really loved his year-end appraisal and subsequent promotion. She spent so much of her time on this one young man’s career, but it quickly gave her a reputation for being a go-to in times of pressure, for guidance and support, and for my business knowledge - and when she applied for a new, more senior role elsewhere in the same business, she got it.

Think of those who threw you a rope, particularly early on in your life or career; that one person who saw you might have been struggling and held out a hand to pull you up.  You don’t forget it.  Conversely, there is an old saying: be careful who you trample over on your way up, as they might be the same people you meet on your way down.  Pulling others down to make ourselves feel better is not, in the long run, going to be good for our self-esteem or our relationships. Instead, take time to build others up, to guide them to those first and higher rungs on the ladder, and celebrate their successes - which, of course, are your successes too.