It is the afternoon on a normal school day, not that much different than any other day. The 2nd grade classroom is a bit chaotic. We are all a bit out of control probably from having had to sit so long in our learning process. I am playing some form of tag, which is clearly not on the teacher’s lesson plan. It is a nice break for us. Suddenly a large hand grasps the back of neck. It is too big to be a fellow student’s. I am turned forcibly and marched aggressively by the school principal to his office. He is a tall black haired man who is known for his meanness. Everyone in school is frightened by him, and now that I am sitting in his office, I am all the more terrorized. He reminds me of another incident a few weeks earlier in which I accidentally broke the handle of a school gate. Then he opens up his bottom drawer, slowly pulls out a large paddle, which he uses for punishment. There is no discussion, no pleading my case. There is only the paddle and fear. He tells me that the next time I am caught doing something wrong the paddle will be used. I totally believe him. He has absolute congruence. It will take me another decade before I have enough courage to question authority and stop complying to that kind of leader, but today I will do whatever he asks.

For some absurd reason, our culture, maybe the world culture, has a penchant for putting people who are highly critical and mean in places of leadership as if being mean and critical makes you a strong leader. If you can fire a lot of people, it means you are tough enough to do the work. It does have its downside however, as history can attest.

The problem with this kind of leadership style is that it is constantly scanning for what is wrong with others and then attacking it believing that if you get rid of the negative or in the case of religion, the evil, then everything will be great. It becomes very conservative. Solutions to problems are simplistic mostly negative. Creativity and a positive future are seen as enemies. The goal for this type of leader is to always go backwards to a safe place. They are terrified of positive possibilities and completely unable to cooperate with others.

The mistake that those of us who are more possibilities oriented often make when dealing with a leadership style or group that is primarily “against” is to get into a fight with them. We get angered by their actions and then attempt a counter move. We usually lose out because they are so much better at being against than we are and need no logical rationale for staying against. Logic doesn’t work, and being against them publicly makes things worse. They know how to find out what is wrong with you, where you are weak, and then exploit it to their own ends. The first thing we can realize is that their underlying goal is safety. They feel unsafe in the world all the time. People like us who are full of possibilities are a threat to safety because there are too many unknowns when we do something new and different. Equality is a threat to safety, for instance, because it will upset the way things currently are. An unknown future is full of fear of things going wrong.

The leadership style that is actually much more effective than the “against” strategy of my grade school principal combines cooperation, looking for positive possibilities, finding the strengths in others and utilizing those strengths, keeping positive things that are producing good results, and having firm boundaries. “Against” leaders find it extremely challenging to work in a cooperative environment because there are too many unknowns. Unknowns make them feel insecure. It doesn’t take a huge cognitive leap to realize that people with an “against” style have a history of feeling extremely unsafe when they were attempting to be their own unique selves usually when they were children. If you can accept that “against” leaders are trying to protect themselves from feeling unsafe, then you can understand that getting into a conflict or using logic with them does not work. And because they rely so heavily on being against others, they usually end up losing the people who were once closest to them. This is because they cannot cooperate even with the people who are supposed to be their friends. They try to control environments and agendas so that negative doesn’t come to them as it did in childhood.

So we know now that conflict with “against” people sets you up to be trapped because they are never going to be in a “shared space based upon equality” and do not want to allow new possibilities to flourish. It is too dangerous psychologically for them because their own trauma gets stimulated when they go for their areas.

What can we do?

The first and most important step is to feel safe and secure in your own true self. When you are secure in who you are, the “against” people cannot move you in any way. At 7 years old facing off against a big scary principal I had no security in myself at all. No one had even begun to recognize who I was and what my strengths were. As I matured, I began to recognize that I could think for myself, was very adventurous, and had lots of friends. I started to develop a growing confidence in who I was. Then when I faced “against” leadership styles like when I was in the military, I didn’t have the same kind of fear that I had as a 7 year old. I had a lot more choice in dealing with them. When I left the fight with them, remembered who I was, then lots of new and positive doors opened up for me. The positive doors are waiting when we leave the conflict zone.

Be secure in your own self by remembering your strengths, let go of the box you are currently in with “against” leaders/people, and then new doors will open. Believe me when I say that this is sure formula for success.

Where do you feel insecure in yourself? Where is yourself vulnerable? This where we do our inner work. Then the “against” people do not rule over us.