Articles
Do People Feel Threatened by You?
February 15, 2012 (Number 30) I recently consulted to a leader in India who was rather ambitious. In our first meeting, he informed me of several of his prodigious achievements, including having grown his division by double digits, year over year, for the past five years."That's very impressive," I said.
But, he complained, his peers running other divisions in the same company — and who were not performing as well — did not seem nearly as impressed. Worse, they seemed to oppose him at every turn.
"Could it be," I asked, "that they're feeling inadequate and threatened in comparison to you?" "That's a very interesting idea," the executive graciously replied. But it was a rather obvious point to me. I noticed that even I was starting to feel a little inadequate as he spoke of his myriad accomplishments.
You can safely assume that the great majority of your colleagues struggle with feelings of self-doubt. And those feelings will frequently get triggered when they experience others, including yourself, being "better" than them in some way. As a result, they may secretly hope that you stop being so successful — and they might even act on those wishes to your detriment.
Does this resonate with your experience at all? Consider not just colleagues, but perhaps even some family members and friends.
Then reflect on these tips for managing this thorny, but very human, phenomenon:
- Know that your own feelings of inadequacy can block you from seeing the full extent of your capabilities — and therefore how threatened your colleagues feel when they inevitably compare themselves to you.
- Don't make the mistake of diminishing yourself — as many people do — in order to protect others from "looking bad" or feeling bad around you. That's not kind. Rather, it's self-betrayal.
- Instead of using a self-diminishing subtractive approach, use an additive one. Specifically, include others in your success. For example, generously give as much credit as possible to your colleagues for every one of your accomplishments. One executive I know is particularly magnanimous in this regard. So he keeps on ratcheting up more successes. Everyone, it seems, supports him.
Dean Herman
