Have you ever had this experience in a work context?
You’re loving, you’re enthusiastic, you’re positive and eager to help. In response, you are dismissed as a puppy, as a child, as toothless. You are subjected to condescension and disregard.
Only when this becomes impossible to ignore do you reveal your incisors, and then only a very little bit. You remove the affectionate tone and the good wishes and get straight to the point. You let the cutting edge of your intelligence become visible.
And only then do you receive deference and respect. You are someone who must be placated.
This is a seriously messed up dynamic.
Why is kindness interpreted as weakness or deficiency?
Why is sharpness and displeasure interpreted as intelligence and danger?
Years ago, a mentor told me that while she was a granny smith, I was a marshmallow. She advised me to start sharp, cold, and hard, and only later show warm, soft, and yielding. In many ways, she is right, and I see the utility of her counsel. No one asked her for extensions or exceptions; they knew she meant business and that the policies were the policies. Her granny smith quality created clarity and kept things professional.
At the same time, I’ve also noticed that my marshmallow qualities are the very qualities that create enough safety in a group to launch it into action. That safety is essential because real learning always involves risk of some kind. Those qualities help my classes become vibrant communities in which members truly care about one another and together can experience belonging, hilarity, vulnerability, and transformation. They learn, yes, but even more: they grow.
As I get older my tolerance for disrespect and time wasting has waned considerably. I still believe with all my heart in the power of fáilte – welcome – and the non-negotiable importance of kindness and humanity in work and learning contexts.
On this side of 50, though, and with a huge treasure-house of experience and results, I am less patient with shenanigans. My time is valuable. My mind is valuable. My heart is valuable.
Sometimes it’s necessary to become a granny smith to remind less perceptive others of that fact – and perhaps more importantly, to remind myself.
