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Undue
emphasis on self-esteem leads to blindly pumping yourself up. True
self-esteem is built up gradually layer by layer taking pride in
real accomplishment, say Steven J Stein and Howard E Book
You
want to like and think highly of yourself, but what’s really
important is to know the pluses and minuses involved. Self-esteem,
as we know, has become a buzz-phrase in both the classroom and the
workplace, not to mention a multi-billion-dollar industry. There
are a multitude of books, audio and videotapes, software and Internet
sites devoted solely to increasing it. Some of them, alas, are way
off target.
We
certainly aren’t minimising the idea of feeling good about
yourself. The problem is that an undue emphasis on self-esteem leads
to blindly pumping yourself up. Telling yourself how great you are
may or it’s not an end in itself. This is why educators and
psychologists have recently begun to re-examine the two-decades-old
inculcation of self-esteem in young children that was supposed to
serve as a sort of inoculation against aggressive tendencies and
other emotional difficulties.
Low
self-esteem may indeed be dysfunctional, but artificially high self-esteem
may be almost as problematic. The child who learns the “I am
special,” mantra without simultaneously building necessary
life skills has done a tremendous service. Ladling out lavish and
indiscriminate praise without making sure that you’re helping
the child actually achieve something that merits approval can lead
to devastation when the world fails to continue to pat him or her
on the back for success that wasn’t earned. Real self-esteem
is built up gradually; layer by layer, through taking justifiable
pride in real accomplishment, not through a third party’s weaving
a cocoon of unrealistic positivity.
As
for the idea that self-esteem necessarily puts a damper on aggression
and other disorders, we’d point out that Dr Robert Hare; the
serial killers and other violent repeat offenders who languish in
prisons around the globe. Many claim to enjoy extremely high self-esteem
(an example of what Hare terms their “grandiose” behaviour)
and picture themselves as absolutely wonderful human beings. Their
mothers love them; their girlfriends worship them. Plainly, you
can have far too much of a good thing.
Like
yourself,
warts and all Of
course, you don’t want to fixate on weaknesses, either, which
is every bit as unbalanced as denying shortcomings (out of fear
that they somehow as cancel out your strengths, no matter how demonstrable
those may be). Nor do you want to either blow your strengths out
of all proportion or fall into the trap of fearing that they’ll
never be strong enough. The idea is to like yourself as a total-and
sometimes contradictory-package.
Besides,
self-esteem is all too often built on shaky ground. Let’s think
back to the airport scene described earlier, and Sam’s verbal
assault on the ticket agent. His opening gambit was to tell her
how important he was. What were the odds that this would advance
his cause-that is, to get aboard a plane? Did he really believe
that she’d be impressed or intimidated by his boastings? The
only result of his self-puffery was to turn her off. Among his other
problems, Sam has an inflated sense of his own worth. Informing
people how rich and famous and powerful you are, especially in the
middle of a crisis during, which you need to enlist their support,
is bound to work against you.
Sam’s
behaviour also gave a very strong message that he cared not a bit
about the ticket agent’s predicament—a message that certainly
alienated the agent and undercut any chance of his making that next
flight. It made him appear a fool, and weak into the bargain. In
fact, this behaviour is often a sign of deep insecurities. Sam quite
probably has inflated his own worth in numerous other circumstances.
If, on the other hand, he had high self-regard, he’d also have
the wit to behave politely and further his ends, as did John, the
next passenger in line. In sum, then, self-regard means that you
feel comfortable enough about yourself that you don’t have
to go around attempting (and usually failing) to bowl people over
with fancy titles or the other trappings of oversized egos. If you’ve
really got it, you don’t need to flaunt it.
Don’t
bite off more than you can chew
Consider
the thousands of would-be entrepreneurs who set wildly unrealistic
goals, declaring that they’re going to be “ the next Bill
Gates.” By this, they mean not only that they’ll do it
their way but that they’ll do it their way but that they’ll
do it all themselves. They envitably fail, because they don’t
acknowledge their blind spots and shortcomings, those areas where
others could give them a hand. If they do get a business up and
running, they very often can’t delegate or collaborate effectively,
because they are, at root, insecure.
In
fact, they haven’t been paying attention to what made Bill
Gates so successful. He’s perhaps the world’s richest
self-made billionaire. He arouses strong and not always positive
reactions, but no one denies that he built a uniquely successful
company from scratch, at the same time serving as a pioneer in the
transition to personal computers. His enormous contribution to the
information and communication age may not be fully appreciated for
many years to come, but he may yet he ranked along with Henry Ford
as a 20th century business icon.
Surely
someone as intelligent and accomplished as Gates must be extremely
self-absorbed, conceited and full of himself. Anyone who could make
that much money that quickly would be entirely justified in thinking
that he or she is exceptional. Gates’s ego must be boundless,
as big as the moon.
On
the contrary Gates, like most truly successful people, isn’t
like that at all. Those who know him reveal that he always flies
economy class, instead of business or executive—in part because
he doesn’t feel the need to advertise who, and how great, he
is. Besides, as he sees it, he’s pretty thin and doesn’t
need the wider seat that you get up front.
Mike
Sax, a personal acquaintance of Gates, recently told a trade newspaper
that Gates “can appear cocky sometimes. But he doesn’t
have too much ego to acknowledge that there are people who know
more about specific topics than he does. He’s smart enough
to surround himself with people who know about technology, business
and marketing.” We suspect that Gates, if he took the EQ-I,
would score rather high when it came to self-regard.
Much
importance—perhaps too much—is attached to the importance
of projecting an air of all-encompassing confidence in the workplace.
But there’s a fine line involved. People who act like know-it-alls
are more likely headed for a rough landing. By thinking that they’ve
got a handle on everything, they over-extend themselves. The more
they venture into unfamiliar areas, the more vulnerable they become.
It’s knowing what you don’t know, finding out who knows
it and capitalising on that knowledge that separates the successes
from the could-have-beens, should-have-beens and almosts.
(Excerpt
taken from The EQ Edge by Steven J Stein & Howard E Book Macmillan
India Limited)
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