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Reverse—Being Responsive in a Resistant World
One of the best TV shows available is a British show called Top Gear. It is funny, informative, and a bit crass—all the makings for mindless entertainment. One of my favorite episodes highlighted a three-wheeled car called the Reliant Robin, made by a U.K. car manufacturer in the 1970s.
There are numerous issues with a three-wheeled car, especially with the Reliant Robin. First, it was hard to turn, especially sharply. Second, it wasn't very wide, as it needed to hold the weight of the vehicle on one front wheel. Third, and most importantly, this vehicle on the show could not back up—it didn't have a reverse gear (or the reverse gear in the vehicle they were using was not working). Nonetheless, a car with no reverse would be difficult to drive and require a strategic eye when parking. Luckily, the Reliant Robin was lightweight and could be easily pushed back by a person or two.
In our 5 Gears metaphor, if vehicles represent people, then how many Reliant Robins are out there in the world, people who are not very nimble, whose lives are easily upended, and who do not have the ability to reverse, back up, and apologize. That sounds awful. To not have the ability to back up is like living with your right hand tied behind your back. And yet, millions of people live like this every day.
Reverse is a great gear. Having it in your car gives you the ability to parallel park or to hook up a trailer or fit into a tight spot. Without reverse, a driver is severely impaired. My family likes to boast about our ability to back up. That sounds funny, but my grandfather and dad both have shared memories of winning “backing up” ribbons from the county fair. I, too, think that I hold the genes of being a good “reverser,” as if that is something to put on a resume. To translate this into leadership language, reverse simply means to back up, pull back, or apologize—to be responsive.
Do You Know How to Apologize?
Do you know how to apologize? That is a funny question, isn't it? Asking this might even sound a bit demeaning. What I really mean is, have you learned the etiquette of apologizing to others when you make a mistake? Did your mother and teachers embed this simple concept in your younger years? More importantly, do you mean it when you say it? It is rather an art form, I think, and to master this (which you completely can) you need a few skills in your back pocket.
Can you admit your mistakes and ask forgiveness? Do you know how to do this?
When our kids were younger we were constantly refereeing between the three of them. “He hit me,” was a consistent phrase we heard in our house. When we would ask one of our children to apologize to each other they would give the obligatory “I'm sorry,” and then move on to the next activity. We think they began to understand social intelligence and the boundaries of right and wrong, but it really comes down to whether or not a child is responsive or resistant. The same goes for adults.
There are two types of people—responsive and resistant. You hire responsive ones and fire the resistant. Responsive people are self-aware and have a consciousness that is not steeped in victim mentality, but rather in responsibility. They understand that they are responsible for their actions and will make amends when they have clearly overstepped their bounds. Responsive people are the best employees, and spouses, and children.
Resistant people, on the other hand, are exhausting. They hate to admit their mistakes and will more easily pass the blame than admit a fault. Resistance is basically pride, which shows itself as insecurity. These people do not want to appear weak, so they would rather exasperate others than get to the peace that comes from admission. Resistance will fight rather than resolve, blame rather than admit, and run away rather than run toward reconciliation.
Through the years I have had the privilege of hiring dozens of executive leaders, and my strategy for finding the gems is to look for responsiveness. When I sense resistance I nicely finish the meeting and move on to another candidate. Hiring a resistant person is not worth the drama that inevitably follows.
Admitting mistakes is a fundamental part of being responsive. When you find a responsive person you will find someone with deep character and a person to build companies or initiatives around.
What Reverse Does to Influence
Have you ever seen a professional sporting event where a player makes an obvious mistake, but immediately points to teammates to shift the blame? Their words echo, “Man, what were you thinking? Why didn't you…?” That is a strategy of the resistant: shifting blame, getting the negative spotlight off of himself or herself and on to someone else. The problem with this is that in professional sports millions of people see through the replay that the initial player indeed was wrong, but now looks like the fool in front of the fans.
Conversely, have you ever noticed what happens when another player makes a mistake and then immediately pounds their chest and lifts their hand with an impassioned “my bad.” The athlete just admitted his mistake in front of millions. In this scenario normally what occurs is that the player who admitted his mistake gets grace and mercy from the fans and a rallied support from the other players. You can almost read their lips as they support the guilty player. “It's okay, keep your head in the game. It will be okay.” Responsive players get the respect of the team and the fans, while the resistant players lose respect from their fans and the team.
Influence rises when people admit their mistakes, unless of course they make the same mistake consistently (in this case a different type of jeering occurs). People respect people who admit their mistake and then hustle to do better next time. People do not respect others who refuse to own it when they mess up and continue to blame others. Respect, then, is gained or lost directly by the way we apologize or not.
So what causes some of us to be responsive and others resistant?
Why Self-Preservation Undermines Influence
Self-preservation undermines our ability to influence others. We could actually spend a lot of time on this. (In fact, a lot more has been written on self-preservation in my book Making Your Leadership Come Alive.) However, to dive a bit into understanding the basics of self-preservation will help us process why some people can apologize and be responsive and why others cannot.
The pressure in our society is on us to collect, aggregate, and protect what we have earned and what “is rightfully mine.” Self-preservation is a natural tendency to protect what we are afraid of losing. Thus, if we are afraid of losing our jobs, then we will work to do whatever it takes to not lose the job. That fear of losing can cause us to become irrational and overwork a situation or relationship in order to preserve what we have. This happens all the time and can be analyzed in our own lives by answering these three questions:
- What are you trying to prove?
- What are you trying to hide?
- What are you afraid of losing?
When you try to preserve yourself, defensive walls of pride pop up, which keep others from seeing the good sides of you. Instead they come up against a prickly, oversensitive person who is full of guarded talk, sarcasm, and impatience. This, then, leads to people running from you not toward you, as well as diminishing returns where respect is concerned. Influence in this instance dissipates, and you undermine yourself in the pursuit of protection.
Influence rises when people admit their mistakes.
Fear Is a Killer
Ironically, the end result of all this self-preservation is death; relationships cannot survive long term this way. All self-preservation is based on fear, which prevents us from being fully present with others because we are consumed with ourselves and our own insecurity.
I painfully remember a season when I completely undermined my own influence. We had just bought John Maxwell's events and content entity, Injoy, and merged it into our GiANT operations. I had just turned 35 and was full of myself in a lot of ways. We were in the middle of planning a Catalyst Conference event when I was asked to come to a creative meeting and just say a few words. My problem was that I wanted everyone to know who we were and that I was in charge, a very immature and insecure thing to do. So, I began by sharing my experiences as I worked to prove how much I knew about the business and why I was worthy to be leading the charge.
As I talked, you could just feel the people in the room cringing and thinking, “Really? Did you need to go there?” Afterward I felt weird as I reflected on what I had done. I wanted to establish myself and thereby allowed my insecurity to take over and make a mess of my influence. The truth was that I did not need to say a thing, but instead, if I had allowed my actions to take over, if I had simply served my team, then my influence would have grown exponentially. That struggle lasted for many years as I was trying to manage a lot of egos, brands, and events.
What fears are killers for you that lead you to put up walls of self-preservation? Ponder this list, and circle the ones that tend to cause the most damage in your life:
- Fear of being left out
- Fear of not being valued
- Fear of being embarrassed
- Fear of losing respect
- Fear of losing control
- Fear of failing in front of others
- Fear of being proved wrong
- Fear of not being known
- Fear of your ideas being rejected
All of these fears do nothing but keep you from your best. They steal your influence, kill your confidence, and destroy your relationships as they create a wedge between you and those you lead in your life. I know firsthand how damaging this can be, and I also know how secure I became when I took a sledgehammer to the walls I had built around myself.
Secure Confidence Wins
Security is a gift. The most secure people I know are normally calm, cool, and collected. When you know what you are good at and what you are not good at, then you can settle into your strengths and delegate the areas where you are least effective.
Security also breeds confidence. One of the best leaders I know understands that he is best at apprenticing young leaders and molding them in the college environment. He has great successes in the business ranks and has dabbled in the start-up world, but at the end of the day, because of his security in who he is and confidence in his role on earth, he has refocused on what he is the best in the world at—apprenticing young men and women in a university setting to become world changers. I was one of the first young, eager students whom he mentored and his guidance made a huge difference in my life. This secure and confident man poured secure confidence into me and helped me and other partners start our first business in Moscow in 1993. I am indebted to him and proud to know him.
When you are confident and secure, then you can step into roles that others may see as unglamorous or unfulfilling. Secure people can take a role in the small company rather than the large corporation; start a small nonprofit because of the mission burning in their hearts and choose things that are humble rather than boasting. Secure and confident leaders are truly humble at heart, as they are not trying to prove themselves to anyone. They are who and what they are and they have nothing to hide. Therefore, they can move confidently into what they were made to do and enjoy the fruits of their hard work in peace.
Secure, confident people are those that people want to follow. Humble leaders are responsive and therefore have more time to be present with others as they are more focused on serving others than on being served.
People are enamored with confidence, security, authenticity, and transparency. Think about the people you are most impressed with. Do they have any of the attributes above?
Secure, confident leaders are those that people want to follow.
To be authentic and transparent is to be real. People like real people. If you want to increase your influence then I implore you to become more transparent, and to do that you must learn how to apologize and use your reverse gear.
How to Say I Am Sorry
It is hard to say “I'm sorry.” That was a popular Chicago song from the late 1980s and, yes, I realize I have just dated myself, but it is true nonetheless. Because of our natural personality tendencies, some of us have a hard time saying this, so we will slow down for a moment, put our car in reverse, and practice. (No fair skipping to the next chapter here.) Take a deep breath and say these three words out loud: “I am sorry!” They are not menacing. Try it again, you can do it! I am being funny here, but my point is that it is really that easy to insert this phrase into your life. It might be even more helpful to give you some scenarios where you can imagine incorporating this relationship repair response:
- When your spouse says something that is hard to hear but true, take the time to pause, thank them for their comment, and say, “You are right; I do that often. Will you forgive me?” Once you pick them up off the floor you can hand them a copy of this book and ask them to read this section.
- When you are overly harsh with your kids because you are busy and they are loud, stop, gather them, and apologize like this: “Kids, I am so sorry for blowing up. Will you forgive me? I have been stressed at work and just need a little calmness tonight.”
- If a co-worker infringes on your turf and you blow up with some inappropriate sarcasm, quickly learn how to apologize with a brief, “Susan, I am sorry I blew up. I'm working on getting better at communicating. My sarcasm was uncalled for and I apologize.”
Every vehicle needs to be able to back up. Without reverse, a car is not worth much. Neither are leaders. If you learn the art of backing up well, you will learn how to traverse the hardest roads ahead of you and the most complex relationships.
Learn the skills of reverse and add them to your gears to become a secure, confident, humble, responsive leader.
Warning Signs: You know you have an unhealthy reverse gear if…
- You use apologizing as a way to get what you want.
- Self-deprecation or false humility is consistent in your communication.
- You use apologies to manipulate other people.
How Do You Get Healthy?
- Understand what a sincere apology looks like.
- Don't over-apologize, but be clear and concise and authentic.
- Use a journal to write down what you have learned. Reverse should lead you to epiphanies on your character or competency so that you don't continue making the same mistakes.
Key Question: What would happen in a key relationship if you started being responsive by taking responsibility for your actions and apologizing where appropriate? What would the other person do?
The Reverse Challenge
Make a list of people in your life and see if there is anything that you need to do to restore the relationship and be responsive.