Letter 29: The powerful poison of intimidation as a leadership practice.

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What I’m Reading:

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne and loving every moment of this modern Irish novel.

Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage by Rob Delaney. It is ridiculous and hilarious and exactly what my funny bone ordered. His were the only tweets I ever thought worth reading.

What I’m Listening To:

Boys for Pele by Tori Amos. And you bet your ass I’ll be visiting the church in Ireland this summer where it was recorded.

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I hung out with a very dear friend of mine last night who has been having a bit of a hard time lately. His job is incredibly stressful and it’s been getting to him, like it gets to all of us.

He’s in a very senior role, and as we were walking last night to grab a coffee he said “a colleague of mine told me that some new hires have mentioned that I’m intimidating.”

He laughed a little. “I mean, I guess that’s good, right? I want them to respect me.”

I stopped walking and looked at him, tilting my head a little. “Well, do YOU think intimidation is the way to get respect?”

He thought for a moment and said, “I guess not. But I want them to take their jobs seriously, so I probably come across like a hard ass, but it’s so they mature faster.”

I laughed and we kept walking down the street.

“You know what I do for a living, right? I help teach people to NOT do that.”

He shrugged. “Why not? Sometimes intimidation works.”

Herein lies the dangerous assumption that so many of us, myself included, have fallen into thanks to insecurities and an overactive ego.

And it’s a trap.