Leadership and personal optimization is not a popularity contest. It is not for the fainthearted. It is for the heavyweights. For the titans of industry. Why am I saying this? As you express more of your native genius, step out into the rare sensational domain of reverence, escalate your ironclad nobility, materialize your virtuoso spellbinding productivity, and scale your personal Mount Everest, you will attract critics, detractors, attention-seekers, and negative-sayers. All coveting to short-circuit your magical feats. You will be criticized, chastised, and perjured. Your sublime intellectual storyline will be conjured, twisted, and disfranchised. Nothing to worry about. These are dark forces of insecurity of the critics. “. . . how do I spot critics so that I protect and cure myself from their venomous spat?” You ask. I am glad you asked this question. Here’s the thing that I wish someone had tipped me off much earlier - a critic is someone you commune with who habitually judges you—awkwardly or harshly—for either holding a different opinion or making a choice that doesn’t align with what they would have done themselves.
You probably know or have come across someone in your orbit, who habitually belittles everything that others do. Someone who always opposes others vehemently as if there is a coveted trophy for a reward. You register a well-deserved achievement - they have eight that are ten times better. It is as if they memorized the lyrics of Jamaican reggae star Peter Tosh’s famous song, I am the Toughest ‘. . . anything you can do, I can do better. And I can do what you cannot do. You will never try to do what I do. I am the toughest . . .” They always try to find fault and obliterate anything that others do. You see a perfect partner for a relationship - they disapprove of your choice. You land a dream job - they tell the world 101 reasons why you are not qualified and why the job is not suitable for you. You develop a code for your company that will revolutionize the market and decimate the competition in your collective favor - they throw spanners in the works. You invite them to a birthday party, and they despise the occasion. When you celebrate how far you have risen, they hastily grab the limelight to remind you how far you are yet to go.
Critics view everything they do as a form of competition. Every accomplishment that comes from a colleague must be acknowledged with a heading for them. They always want to influence things as ringleaders to mobilize cliques and to throw pebbles at achievers and their hard-won accomplishments. Yes, it can be taxing and energy-sapping for the criticized.
Commonly referred to as faultfinders, critics are detractors of the highest grade. They are super-effective at suffocating and stopping other people from dreaming in color and making progress. They are technocrats at killing dreams in the bud. They ornately don’t want others to live their dreams and materialize their lofty blue-sky aspirations. Why? Because they never went for and realized theirs.
William Shakespeare was a gladiator at syllables and a super magician at conceiving meticulous literature materials. He was known for plotting absorbing scenes in plays and comedies, such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, and Midsummer Night’s Dream. Critics are two levels above Shakespeare. They are artisans at executing ploys and plots – they approach you, offering apparently ‘helpful’ opinions on why you should do or should not do something. Be alert. If you are not careful, you can yield to their plot, and they will plant and water seeds of doubt in your mind. This can, in turn, poison and ruin your self-esteem by believing in the satire and negativity that is thrown on your path. Caveat. You will start to question your abilities and capabilities to do things to move the needle. Protect yourself from this cancerous malignment. Simply put, don’t share your dreams and plans with nay-sayers.
Critics nag. They are good at censuring others. They are good at blaming innocent souls. When something is missing – someone else must have taken it. When the car is not working properly – the mechanic must have serviced it poorly. When the economy is facing economic challenges – the president and his cabinet must have stolen all the money and gotten macroeconomic fundamentals upside down. Verily, you cannot be at peace while blaming others. It takes an important amount of energy to engage in an emotional contest. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as attention residual which speaks of the amount of attention or focus that we release and leave on an activity before we move on to another one. Oftentimes, critics vent their anger, frustration, and unhappiness at innocent people. For instance, if they disagree with a spouse at home regarding a domestic incident, the rage from the incident is exported and poured at colleagues at the office and vice versa. Stop incriminating others. I am not advocating or writing a manifesto that we should condone mediocrity or that we should not hold others accountable for their actions. No. The larger point is that when we stop blaming others, we put ourselves in a pole position of power and focus. A position of choice. No reaction. When you are upset or blame others for everything that goes wrong in your life, you are merely playing a role in creating your own [negative] feelings. The result? Frustration. Bitterness. Stress. Depression. Stephen R. Covey put it more splendidly than I could, when he said, “. . . we see the world not the way it is but the way we are.”
No matter where you work or what path you follow, you’re bound to encounter—and even manage or lead—people who are expert critics, constant complainers, or unkind agitators. Some will be insolent, others distrustful and disrespectful, yet others resentful of you and your accomplishments. Learning to manage such types of people is an obligatory part of your leadership and personal mastery. If you don’t know how to handle them, then certainly there will be times when these folks will bring you down. Through emotional contagion and mirror neurons, their negativity will rub off you. You will, just like them, end up being frustrated, discouraged, stressed, negative and wrathful. Above all, you'll be doubtful of your personal abilities.
When you see someone being too critical of others, understand they are not doing it on purpose. They are probably negative merely because they are unfulfilled. Just like everyone else, they too would prefer to enjoy contentment. Every human being is naturally enthusiastic. We feel great when we are inspired, creative, positive, and uplifting others, not when we are tearing others down. If these traits are lacking, something is wrong. When someone regularly expresses negativity or criticism towards you, understand that it is not about you, but about them - something is missing in that person’s life. Something is eating them. The negativity stems from a lack that needs to be fed emotionally. They are looking for attention. They can only soothe and quench their negativity by you worshipping them. You praising them. You showering them with compliments and kudos. You saying nice things about them.
Get this. No one can circumvent the trap of reacting to criticism, especially when it is personal. Many of us unintentionally make things worse by reacting to criticism with defensiveness. As mentioned above, we naturally use a great deal of energy when we become emotional. A typhonic whirlwind of thoughts passes through our mind justifying our position that we are innocent. That we deserve more and better than others. That we are more popular and swankier than others. The more we engage ourselves in such rationalizations, the more energy we release, the worse we feel, and the more tired we become. We develop what psychologists call emotional fatigue. We, cognitively, become flat and less effective in providing sensible decisions and judgments, or making rational contributions to our environment and growing our sphere of influence. The negative state of mind that we embody fails us. Completely. We often make poor decisions, become less creative, and lose the sense of joy in a world of abundance. Was it not Jim Rohn who said, “. . . evil always rushes in to fill the void created by the absence of good.” We talk a lot to fill in the emotional holes that I alluded to above. We become known as someone who always wants to be glorified. Applauded. Worshipped. Deified.
Views from the top are that criticism is like trade tariffs – there is no winner. Criticism benefits neither the critic nor the criticized. Dear reader, in life, many problems can be averted through one practice and one practice only – that is: our willingness to be humble. When two people are working together or staying together, two possibilities ensue. Either the negativity of the negative fellow will lower the spirits of the positive person or the positivity of the positive fellow will lift up the spirits of the negative person. Oftentimes, the former ensues. Which end of the continuum do you find yourself at most of the time – the critic or the criticized? Pause for a second. Take a pill. The best medicine to take to protect and cure yourself from the negativity and criticism of a colleague is to be humble. Yes, be humble. Gracefully and graciously. Always. Humility is not a weakness. Humility is not a flaw. Humility is not a sign of fragility. Humility is a strength. Humility is a virtue. Those people who understand this doctrine rise to stardom and become great.
Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi
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