Many in today’s corporate working environment are encouraged to show signs of confidence, strength, and leadership. The problem arises when it’s said and not shown. Some people tend to make up their own definition of leadership, or take on roles from fictitious movies. Much like leadership, there are many types: tyrannical, autocratic, cross-cultural, or servant, etc.. As we can see there’s a lot someone can interpret as proper forms of character traits. Some might say that because someone likes to tell someone else what to do, that they have a strong sense of leadership. This is false, and is not necessarily the case as history will tell.

So when it comes to drawing conclusions about someone’s leadership style, the important factors to consider are the results they provide. Do they promote failure or success? Is that very person creating a lot of adversity? Sure sometimes adversity is healthy in working environments that require change or innovation. It builds up ideas and brainstorming on how to resolve problems. But otherwise, you may be staring down an inevitable rabbit-hole of high employee turnover in the workplace. For those who try to take the easy way out, the bullies, the power-mongers, they will likely search to find easy targets to blame or throw under the bus when things don’t go their way. With today’s widely diverse and geographically distributed workforces, this could also play out to be a recipe for disaster. Stating the obvious, there’s a big difference in cultures from one country to another across the world. Even-more-so, there are huge cultural gaps with neighboring countries that share the same border.

In previous articles we’ve advocated about the agile mindset, something that can be a bit of a culture shock for those who are new to agile especially. When a working environment with constant power struggles or command-and-control tactics, receive new members that are of the agile mindset, the newcomers may be perceived as passive, non-assertive, and weak. This may be the foremost biggest challenge to bringing a company culture to becoming agile, especially when agilists are outnumbered. With these perceptions there are inevitable easy outlets by those who don’t want things to change, and lead to dismissing agile implementation altogether.

This brings us to the “kindness as a sign of weakness” perception. Socially it is everywhere, the aggressors are always seen as the strong-minded, or heroic only to be hidden from the truth, when they are in fact bullies. So what does this mean for the humble, the kind, the polite, or more importantly the “professional?” When faced with such adversity, are they actually the ones with little or no confidence? When someone is kind to their fellow bully co-workers, this is not a weakness but a sign of perseverance, and by far it is the ultimate sign of confidence. Only a confident person can put up with the bully archetype, not be intimidated, and continue doing what they enjoy doing without the disruption of their weaker counterparts.

In much of today’s society, what keeps our minds at ease is to know that there is much more of the kind and humble, than there are those who are bullies. What is important for those in agile circles, is to make a sincere choice, if the workplace is filled with those who like to harp on those who are perceiving others who are kind and humble as easy and “weak” targets, make the choice to decide moving over to another workplace or company that appreciates you. Your strength will be appreciated in like-minded circles.

[Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

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