Challenges of Arrogance Revisited

What is best or right, is often overlooked by what is convenient. One of my pet peeves is finding myself revisiting the same challenges over and over. My mantra is “Tomorrow’s challenges better be different than today’s”. I’ve been receiving a lot of feedback to remind people about prior messages and encourage discussions about them. This week I provided a couple of topics I am sure you are facing. I hope this sharing will help you move forward on your biggest challenges.

Some situations are like the unusual itch that only the truth can scratch. Fact finding before responding can be the difference between making a smart decision or an embarrassing one. The internal battle between pride and truth often ends in a way that a sound mind wishes was different. “Are your actions justified or are you justifying your actions?”. 

Too many times clear evidence is disregarded and learning is lost in situations where arrogant people are questioned. They turn it into the emotional battle that they are insulted that you even are asking. This is to their own demise. This new focus of the discussion takes away their ability to learn from the challenge, keeping them ignorant. This is a very real risk, like a ticking time bomb, especially for a person with responsibility. If authority came with a label, my recommendation would be “Warning! If you can’t recognize the lines that you’ve grayed, the ticking may come to an unpleasant end”. 

Humility should be given out to all managers and leaders when they receive responsibility. But of course that would be too easy, so prepare yourself, you will we need to deal with the chaos caused by the untamed wrecking ball of under-informed arrogance. I’ve found arrogant people are fast out of the gate – quick to defend and try to intimidate off the masses but are riding weak horses and often cannot finish the race, and if they do, are left gasping for air, weaknesses fully exposed. Humility doesn’t face such challenges. It always finishes the races it decides to finish.

I hope you discuss your challenges that relate to the topics above and find ways to move forward. With mutual respect clearing the way, you can cover much ground.

I hope you have a great week.