Stand your ground
The good you do in the world may well be wasted if you give ground in the face of evils, small or large. It takes some courage to refuse to bend to the will of others, particularly those who have more formal power.
For most of us in the developed world, it is the little evils that we give concession in our daily lives. The sum of these little evils erodes our experience of life and ultimately our self-respect.
During coffee break we praise a colleague’s work to be met with a statement maligning his character. We change the subject to avoid conflict. After all we know the truth. But what of the audience? By giving ground we have left an open question in the minds of others. We have become complicit in the act of character assassination by gossip. And we have most certainly surrendered power over our own speech to another.
But "Stand your ground" is important beyond questions of good and evil. It is important in matters of opinion, fact and perspective.
Stand your ground does not mean to be stupidly stubborn in the face of corrective information. Such behaviour amounts to standing in quick sand. Being open to changes of opinion, new facts or different perspectives is not a stance of surrender, but one of constructing solid ground on which to stand.
But if, for example, your view is that a new four lane expressway planned next to an historical site is a bad idea and you have reasons for that view, you should not pretend to accept the opposite or, by diverting conversation, avoid holding your view.
Avoidance is an injury to you, an insult to any honest conversationalist and a victory for the dishonest.
The injury to you occurs whether or not your view ultimately is the best one.
Consider the expressway example. You believe that the amount of traffic will contribute to structural damage that has been occurring to an historic site through on-going shaking that has been factually demonstrated to occur in other places. From reading an interview in the newspaper, you believe the historic site is one of only three examples of its particular architecture. And you believe that the expressway will dramatically impede access by the public to the site.
You hold these facts and views but when the person you are with expresses loud disagreement with your initial statement that the expressway should not be built, you decline to put those views forward. Instead you make a comment intended to be amusing and deflect the conversation.
What you have lost is the information the other person would have provided, had an exchange of views been allowed to continue. You would have learned that he was greatly concerned because the congestion the expressway would alleviate had been responsible for many fatal automobile accidents. You would have heard that the expressway would provide direct access to the regional hospital which currently sits at the end of an old two-lane road consistently in grid lock. You would have learned that the architectural style of the building was only represented by three structures in this particular neighbourhood, but that it was as common as row housing in other parts of the state; and that the person who gave the interview had a financial interest in trying to get the expressway shifted to an alternate location. Finally you would have learned that the structural damage you were concerned about had already proceeded so far as to make the site a public danger in line to be condemned. There is no public access allowed right now, let alone if there were an expressway.
Knowing these facts, you would have changed your mind and decided to support the expressway. But because you do not stand your ground, you never get the opportunity to learn the new information and on voting day, you vote in favour of something you live to regret.
Standing your ground is important not only to learn, but to teach. You have acquired a great deal of information and a unique perspective in the years you have lived. You diminish their value and ultimately the value of your presence on earth by refusing to share that information and perspective. Failing to stand your ground usually arises out of two kinds of fear: reprisal fear, and fear that is a vestigial appendage of evolution.
The fear of reprisal can come in the form of actually fearing active harm: "I won’t get that promotion" or in the form of emotional harm "He won’t like me."
Addressing these kinds of fear is well and all a part of popular culture. Here suffice to recognize that you are acting out of fear and consider whether it is warranted or if the thing that you fear is worthy of such power over you. If a supervisor truly is capable of denying you a promotion over a genuine disagreement, then you can manage that by not respecting him enough to even start real conversations with him. Limit yourself to small talk about the weather or any other subject about which you do not care. As to the fear of not being liked; the old cliché is true: do you really want to be liked by someone like that?
The vestigial fear is a different beast which can be tamed with practice and understanding. I suggest humans are upset by shouting, some so upset that it borders on physical pain, as a direct result of evolution. Screaming was a critical danger signal in a species that was relatively small, soft-bodied and in comparison to its predators, weak.
The more intense the screaming, the more severe the danger. Therefore, today when a person is being subjected to screaming, their body reacts as if their life were in danger. This of course gives rise to the flight or fight response, neither of which is actually available. So the intensity of the experience escalates and the discomfort can become unbearable. Hence people break down under screaming.
I was witness to a young woman being screamed at by her supervisor. She was physically shaking and when the supervisor left, the girl collapsed in tears. Here is the counsel I offered:
"Wait, wait now. Did he break your arm?” No, no. "Did he punch you?" No! "Did he blind you somehow?" No (blubber) I see fine (moan) "Well where does it hurt" Inside (whining) "My god, (exaggerated tone) internal injuries, I’ll get an ambulance right away." (laughing a little) No, I’ll be okay. "Remember this,” I told her, “When someone is screaming at you, the only one who might actually be getting hurt is the screamer. Hopefully he’s doing some damage to his vocal chords. When it’s happening, there’s not much you can do to stop it. But you can say to yourself, `My arms and legs are still attached. Yep. My skin remains unbroken. No blood. Check. My eyes are clear. Check. Though I might sue him for harm to my ear drums. I’ll deal with that later...’ "Try to remember that if he has a purpose it is to intimidate you and that you can choose not to be intimidated. I know it feels like he’s hurting you, but there are no tigers in the neighbourhood and no one is coming to gobble you up. Just stand your ground until it’s over and then take whatever formal action you have at your disposal. File a complaint, threaten to go to human rights, insist on an apology at the very least. If it’s happened before, do talk to a lawyer. Stand your ground and be satisfied that no one gets to make you cower through rage alone."
It is not only employees that fail to stand their ground. I worked with a man who coveted the CEO position desperately. He had worked as the accountant for for a number of years and he felt it was his entitlement. He had no real understanding of the industry in which the business operated and had really contributed almost nothing other than his basic job of doing the accounting.
But he had it in his head that he had earned it.
I had no interest in the position precisely because I believe the top leader must approach issues with balance. My preference is to attack things with abandon and have an institutional provision as a containment device. The previous CEO had operated as that device, allowing me to launch new ideas and new products with great enthusiasm and pulling me back when my ideas went too far or represented risks he thought disproportionate to the potential gain.
So I thought if I could make the same arrangement with this accountant I might continue to thrive in my job and enjoy the work I was doing. He approached me one day, concerned that I would apply for the position. I explicitly explained my thinking to him and he embraced the idea.
Less than two months after he was given the position, I sat in his office and witnessed his melt down. He threw all the papers off his desk and shouted “Fuck it! I quit! Fuck it all!”
This was supposed to be the balanced guy keeping my extremes in check. What he was exorcised over was the fact that he had two managers disagreeing about a particular course of action. It was not even an issue that bore real significance for the company. He had related his frustration at having to deal with the disagreement and I made the mistake of telling him, “But it’s part of the job. You’ll always have managers disagreeing at different points in time. You need to manage them and lead them to a decision that either you get them to agree on or that you decide is right for the business. It’s the nature of being in charge. You stand your ground without being threatened or stubborn stupid.”
At which point he had his fit. Because I had promised to support him, I talked him down from resigning. By stroking his ego and soothing him with platitudes, I earned my reward: he was the worst leader I have ever worked with then or since.
I failed to give weight to the principle of standing your ground, not just in my own character, but in the character of this man who felt he deserved to be the leader, to be paid as the leader, but not to stand his ground as the leader.
He nether paid his way nor stood his ground and as a result transformed a job I treasured into one I loathed.
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