Leaders are not victim to what others think
Years ago, a man by the name of Conrad Salas, who was raised in the deserts of New Mexico, was visiting Galveston, Texas. As he passed through a fish market, he saw a shallow pan of crabs outside a shopkeeper's store.
Conrad went inside and warned the shopkeeper he better get a deeper pan or the crabs would get away. The shopkeeper told him not to worry about it, explaining that whenever one crab tried to crawl out, the others would always drag it back into the pan.
Although any crab could easily have gotten out of the pan by itself, none ever did. Conrad thought that pretty much summed up his life.
From his viewpoint, he had been brought up on the wrong side of the tracks. Every time he tried to change, someone would try and pull him back saying something like, "Who do you think you are?" or "We liked the old you better."
You too, will face such crabs. Every time you risk, there will be someone trying to prevent you from changing. Many times, it is from those who care about you the most. It's not that they don't love you. It's that they are afraid of losing you by being left behind.
You will be faced with the decision of allowing yourself to be pulled back in the pan or continuing to crawl out.
Obviously, I support you on continuing to change and crawling out. The good news to that option is that, usually, you pull a few crabs out of the pan with you.
Take 15 minutes right now and take an inventory of the people you hang out with. Are they pulling you back into the status quo or encouraging you to take risks and move forward?
It doesn't mean you have to cut them out of your life, but you may want to move certain people from your inner circle to a more outer circle of influence in your life and spend less time with them.
Everyone has support groups, but we need to ask ourselves what they are supporting us in doing. Sometimes we have friends supporting us in drinking a lot or being lazy or in listening to negative talk.
TAKEAWAY!
There are people, places, and things that pull us back from our growth to keep us comfortable. Others don't want you to change, not because they don't love you, but because they are afraid for you or for themselves.
Action Step #1
Pick one person who is a friend you spend a large amount of time with that does not support you in changing.
Pick someone who lives at a higher level than you in terms of relationships, financially, spiritually, or the difference they make in the community.
Consciously reduce the time you spend with the former and increase the time you spend with the latter. It's just like breaking a habit. It's easier to replace a habit with another, better one, than to simply try to get rid of a bad one.
Action Step #2
Look around you in your professional life. Do you have people that are stuck in the old way of doing things? Look at your spiritual life. Do you have people that do not support your growth, because it scares them or threatens their power in the bureaucracy of the organization?
Do you have friends who don't want you to leave for better opportunities? Find a group or form a mastermind that will support you in your growth regardless of the consequences to them.
An Example
My wife had a friend from her early adulthood who always overspent her personal budget. Whenever they went out together, she would encourage my wife to buy things.
Roma, my wife, would get home and look at the things she bought that she really didn't want or need and feel bad.
Whenever my wife would try and bring the subject up to her friend, the other woman would get very defensive.
This friend had been a convenient friend because she was single and when I was traveling on business trips it was more awkward for my wife to mix with couples when she was alone.
Finally, my wife decided that she had to reduce the amount of time she spent with this other woman. It was uncomfortable for my wife to make new friends, but that is what she did so that she didn't have the negative pull any longer.
I experienced a similar thing in my business as we grew. In the early days, everyone had plenty of my attention, because we were few in number. As we grew larger I had to delegate and couldn't be everywhere.
Some of my leaders didn't want us to grow simply so they could have all of my attention.
We discussed the situation so they were clear that less of my time did not mean I didn't care for them as much.
This reduced some of their fear and some of them changed because they were committed to our growth, and some ended up leaving.
I kept focused on the growth.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"
--Albert Einstein
via: Brian Klemmer http://www.klemmer.com/
