Pride

What does it mean to you? How does it make you feel?

The word ‘pride’ has a lot of connotations, a lot of different meanings to different people and a lot of emotion attached to it. Some people see pride as a good thing, others as the thing that comes before a fall. For some, pride symbolises a personal and cultural battle for recognition, fair treatment and human respect. Pride is something you can feel for yourself and for others.

To me, pride is overwhelmingly a positive emotion. Jump onto Google for a definition and we get:

“A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.“

A feeling of deep pleasure. Pride should, in my eyes, bubble up through you with a warmth that tingles, culminating in a smile that you just can’t keep in.

Why am I talking about pride though? How is it relevant to leadership? How can there be negative connotations to such a thing? Well, as you might have guessed, for me there is a very definite link between communication, understanding and the ability to feel pride or to have it misconstrued.

For me personally, pride is something I feel more passionately for others than I do for myself. I don’t think this is the way it ‘should’ be, but for me that is the way it is. I have questioned this and come to the conclusion that it is to do with my own need for external approval more than anything. I value external sources of information, in a lot of cases, more than my own personal opinion. This means that if I really do manage to create my own sense of pride, I still question on some level its validity whereas an external source (who typically has less to gain from expressing an opinion) adds a level of authority to the emotion which for me is important. Don’t get me wrong, I know people will, in some circumstances, say what they think you want to hear and so I am cautious of single sources of any information and always look to add supporting material. This desire or even reliance on external feedback does make me more generous and understanding when it comes to others. It’s a simplistic (and not truly empathetic) way of demonstrating empathy. I feel better with external validation so I am more keen than some to offer this to others. I also relate to the sense of nervousness around wondering whether you are worthy of something. Am I allowed to feel pride over this? Is it good enough? If I can add some strength to the argument that yes, you are, I love to see that emotional response in the other person.

How is this communication and leadership-related I hear you ask?

As with all leadership (and communication for that matter) it is a balancing act. In order to feel pride, there has to have been a lot of successful communication and understanding. As a leader, this is going to fall at your feet to a greater or lesser degree if you want your team to be able to feel collective and individual pride. It will also increase your ability to feel pride both for your achievements with the team as a whole and, for the individuals themselves.

The most important aspect of this from a communication point of view is that to be proud of something, you have to be able to acknowledge your importance to it. Being proud of others is about understanding how much they want something – this is often easier than opening yourself up to what you want, risking the disappointment of failure and giving yourself the opportunity to be proud.

In order for your team to be proud of their individual and collective performance, they must know their importance in any given outcome. As a strong communicator and leader, this is an essential skill. Making sure that people feel appreciated for what they do, are given the freedom to make it their own and are then commended for their achievements sets the foundations to allow them to feel pride.

All of this sounds incredibly positive so how do some people have negative experiences of ‘pride’? I am going to refrain from talking about the pride movement which has come out of the challenges the LGBTQ+ community have and continue to face. Here, pride, is again a positive symbol but born out of some incredibly negative experiences. It is a topic way bigger than, and more deserving of, a paragraph in my blog and I know there are many people out there in a better place than me to comment on it. It is also not related to the negativity I am referring to.

“Pride comes before a fall”. We’ve all heard it said but is it true? Why do we think it might be? To me, this is down to a combination of misunderstanding and a lack of support at some level. If pride really does come before a fall, the implication is that the pride itself was either misplaced or, the reaction to pride, alters future decision-making. In theory, pride is knowing that a job was done well, an achievement was made. Pride is a story of success so why would a fall follow? Arrogance, over-confidence or over-compensation are potential reasons. We need to remember not to knock people back by implying there is something bad coming as a result of something good but we also need to make sure that we and others don’t let the success of one thing lead to over-confidence in the future. It is relatively easy to see how success might go to someone’s head and maybe effect their decision-making. But what if the pride was misplaced in the first place?

If someone is not offered the support, guidance, reassurance, coaching and development they need, they may well seek validation their own way. As a general practice this isn’t necessarily a bad thing but in the case of pride, if the need to feel it, to taste success, to feel valued is so important that an individual convinces themselves they have been successful when they may not have been, it could be a bump back down to Earth when the next step doesn’t go to plan. We don’t want pride to turn into arrogance, we don’t want always want previous success to alter decision-making processes and we don’t want people lacking in support replacing it with pride without the associated success.

It’s a challenge to stay on top of all this amongst you teams but guess what is at the heart of it? Communication. Talk to your team, understand what they are going through, make sure they understand their responsibilities and accountablities and give them the space to be proud of themselves and each other.

Responsibility vs accountability is the next chapter in my blogosphere so watch this space and hopefully, it will add some framework to some of what we have discussed here.

#communication_is_king #understanding_is_everything

[tLC]