Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald Weinberg

Author:Gerald Weinberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-12T18:30:00+00:00

HELPING AND SELF-ESTEEM

As I look back over the sequence of messages, I’m struck by the way that “Love” dropped off after the first message, both literally and figuratively. It reminded me of the Golden Rule, which I’ve seen expressed in two different ways:

*Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.*

The first version is often interpreted as meaning,

Help your neighbor.

Based on my own experience with helping and being helped, I prefer to interpret it differently:

*Offer to help your neighbor only if you would want to be helped in

the same situation, and do it in the way you would want to be

helped.*

How do we want to be helped? I don’t want to be helped out of pity. I don’t want to be helped out of selfishness. These are situations in which the helper really cares nothing about me as a human being. What I would have others do unto me is to love me—not romantic love, of course, but true human caring.

So, if you want to motivate people, either directly or by creating a helping environment, you must first convince them that you care about them, and the only sure way to convince them is by actually caring. People may be fooled about caring, but not for long. That’s why the Golden Rule says, “Love thy neighbor,” not “Pretend you love thy neighbor.” Don’t fool yourself. If you don’t really care about the people whom you lead, you’ll never succeed as their leader.

I cannot teach you to care about people, neither people in general nor particular persons, but I have learned that caring about other people is impossible if you don’t care about yourself. The Golden Rule doesn’t say, “Love thy neighbor even though you think you’re a despicable worm.” The ability to love others—and thus to help others, and thus to lead others—starts with the ability to love yourself.

As we’ve just seen, the attempt to help others is not guaranteed to succeed. When you run into difficulty as a helper, your own feelings about yourself will determine how you react. If you care about yourself, you’ll be able to persist through difficulties and, if necessary, to abandon the project without destroying yourself. If your self-worth is low, you’re going to have to protect yourself. You may abandon the help just when it needs persistence. You may persist long after the attempt has proved harmful to the other party, or even to you. Or you may project the failure away from yourself, blaming the very person you started out to help.

If you hold yourself in low esteem, it will thwart your every attempt to motivate others. Before you set out to help others, you’d better work on yourself first, which is the subject of the next chapter.

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