As A Leader You Can’t Please Everyone. Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing.

I umpired exactly one game in my life, about at the age of 14. I loved working jobs in my youth; from moving lawns to selling newspapers and many other youthful employment opportunities — and I approached this newest position with a great deal of enthusiasm. I wasn’t quite a leader, but I had a lot more say than I did than in, say, what circular direction I would mow my neighbor’s yard in. I guess you could say I had some authority and a part of my brain embraced this idea.

No one was happy the game I umpired. I’d call a “strike” and 45 year old adults screamed at me like I was Joseph Stalin reincarnate. Next pitch I’d call a “ball” and the other 50% thought I was Idi Amin. With every decision it was a chorus of discord and by the end of the game I was appalled by umpiring, adults, and the human condition. It was a trial by fire that you can’t please everyone.

A lot has happened in the nearly 40 years since then. The most recent being that my mother passed away two weeks ago and with my father’s death years ago technically I’m now an orphan. A psychiatrist who I have known for many years asked me to sum of my thoughts on this to which I said; “I think it’s time to be a leader.” His response, in that classic way people in his field have, was “that’s interesting…you’ve been a leader for much of your life.”

It’s hard to be a pleaser, like so many of us are, and see yourself as a leader. And at some level, while there is certainly a spectrum, we are all pleasers. We have to be is evolutionarily hardwired in us. Just listen to 3x TedTalk speaker and best-selling author psychologist Dr Guy Winch on why this is and you’ll get why we have this super-sized gene to please.

The problem goes back to my umpiring story, though. It is nearly impossible to please everyone. Actually it is impossible other than a trapdoor way out — which is to literally do nothing.

That’s why one measurement of knowing you are leading is that some subset of people aren’t pleased with you. Famous GE CEO Jack Welch roughly articulated this could be up to 90%, which stikes me as far too high, but that percentage isn’t useful and it isn’t the point.

The point is we need to shift from wanting to please to wanting to lead. And perhaps that’s why with my mother’s passing my mind finally made that shift. The two people you want to please the most will almost always be your parents.

Make hard decisions. That is, at its foundation, your responsibility as a steward of any organization. In the process a subset of people will disagree, pushback, they will even attack or make up false narratives about you. In fact if you are making hard decisions I guarantee that will happen. And that’s okay. If your hard decisions are for the benefit of your overall organization, what better feedback than to know you’re putting them first, instead of a psychologically ingrained need to please everyone.

Of course listen to every single criticism. Then, and I’d suggest doing what we do at our firm, talk these out with others. Don’t just accept or dismiss each on there own as some will be patently made up and others will help you improve what you do. Always the goal.

But at the end of the day there is no greater sign that you are letting your organization or team down than if there is no disagreement to every action you make. Because this means you are doing nothing.

I want to end with something my dad did years ago. He came into my room when I was voted captain of my high school baseball team and pinned this quote on my wall. It took me far too long, but thirty years later I finally get it.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt.