PEDESTALS? Is it OK to put people on PART ONE

In part one of this two-part articleTrainer and conference speaker Frank Newberry explores how easy it is to put people ‘on a pedestal’. Frank is not just talking about sporting legends and war heroes who perhaps deserve special respect, but our talented colleagues and bosses are also easy to place on a pedestal.

In part 2 (in the next edition of Pitchcare), Frank will look at the ‘Abundance Mentality and the Scarcity Mindset’ which flowed from his tendency to put people on a pedestal.

Frank starts: I have to confess that I have put people on a pedestal my whole life. Always attributing qualities to them that maybe they never had. Always defending them and trusting that they:

1. were worthy of my professional respect

2. would always have my best interests at heart, and

3. would at least be sensible – most of the time.

In reality, my reasonable expectations of others were, quite often, not met at all. Bosses especially were not always very professional; they had their own best interests at heart (not mine) and they were not always sensible at work.

Yet my first instinct, then and now, is to trust people to meet my expectations, even if it involved them extending the range of talents or abilities they possessed. A fantasy world of my own making I was told, more than once, that I was too trusting and made too many assumptions about people. One friend said, on the question of trusting people and having positive expectations of them, that I had ‘created, and now lived in, a fantasy world of my own making’.

Now, I have been pondering this tendency for some time: Why do I put people on a pedestal? Why do I still trust people? Why do I still believe in their capacity to make valuable contributions to the work? Or to their careers? Often when the evidence is to the contrary.

Personally, I blame my mother for this state of affairs. She tended to put her father and her brother-in-law (both called Frank) on a pedestal. In her eyes they could do no wrong, and if they did do anything wrong, it was ‘understandable’ and any errors were forgiven by her immediately.

In my mother’s eyes they were totally trustworthy, and yes - both did have a highly developed sense of duty to family. For example they could, and frequently did, resolve a family member’s problems - with a good word here and there, with a loan perhaps or even an employment opportunity.

As a consequence, I learned to trust people and, just like my mother before me, I put both my grandfather and my uncle on a pedestal. I would also put my school teachers on pedestals and (for a long time) my bosses at work.

Discounting myself and inflating the worth of others

Regarding the latter, I thought it was quite logical that if a person was my boss it was because they were better than me and, if they ever made mistakes, I was understanding and forgiving. It was a while before I saw them up close and realised that I had been discounting myself somewhat, and inflating the worth of others around me.

I wonder if it is just me? Maybe you are a little like this yourself?

In part two of this article (July/August 2023), Frank will take a look at the plus side of putting people on pedestals.

© 2023 Frank Newberry.