Prideful: Habits that Reveal You’re a Prideful Leader
Everyone needs leaders. Leadership is important for a number of different things: Direction, motivation, knowledge, order, and other things necessary to manage a team and accomplish tasks. When groups of people have leaders, they have somebody to turn to for guidance. Unfortunately, a prideful leader can prove detrimental.
Pride can turn great leadership into something terrible. In this case, being a leader that is prideful can often be frowned upon in the community. To some leaders, it can be hard to realize how far they go to show pride and arrogance as a leader, as they often just want to assert themselves as one that leads with duties separate from everyone else’s.
A leader with pride, however, can be detrimental to your team and community. A prideful leader can shift focus away from the team, rub people the wrong way, limit the team’s potential, and can deny the church the opportunity to grow. Furthermore, it’s just not fun to be around or take orders from a prideful person.
Do you think you or your church leader is a prideful person? Read these five telltale signs and judge for yourself.
1. Sense Of Entitlement Shows Pride
A leader is proud when he or she is satisfied by simply having an official leader role. They enjoy situations where they can tell others what to do and not really be thankful for their work. Just by having this role, a prideful person can have the impression that they are the hardest-working and smartest person in the entire community. Often the case, they feel like they’ve rightfully earned their status as leader. Even if they won’t admit out loud how entitled they feel, they’ll occasionally express how they should get what they feel like they deserve.
Rather than show a sense of entitlement, a humble leader is more aware of the importance of a team rather than an individual. Good leaders want good team players, and recognizes people for what they can offer in projects. They do not see themselves as the hardest-working, smartest, and most-important people in a group, and rather treat one another as equals. Instead of feeling entitled, a good leader can feel grateful that they have multiple people to do a multi-person job. Showing gratitude helps members of a team understand that their help is welcome and they aren’t just doing assignments for you.
2. Pride as Highly Privileged Actions
A prideful leader loves getting the VIP treatment. Perks like their own office, their own parking spaces, and a big important title, are all what can make a leader feel self-absorbed when he or she gladly embraces them. Truth be told, a leader doesn’t need these things, and having these things does not make one in a league apart from other team members. This shows exclusivity, hierarchy, and isolation from the rest of the group. At first being part of a group, new members can feel intimidated by leaders when they have these perks, but over time, members can find out that behind the perks have more to do with personality and less to do with actual success. When a person leads a team and the leader benefits more than the other members do, it’s simply an act of selfishness.
A good leader knows simply being a leader doesn’t mean getting the biggest slice of the pie. It rather means each person including the leader gets the same amount of praise and rewards. Leaders, for example, don’t need their own office, and instead can work in the same room as everyone else. Or if leaders are generous and have the budget, he or she can reward every member their own office. So long as everyone gets their fair share, it will feel like being part of a real team to each person involved. When some people get more or bigger benefits than others on a team, it rather feels like a job that the team doesn’t get compensated for. In a well-functioning team with a humble leader, there is no hierarchy and no VIPs.
3. Ignorant Of Others
Prideful leaders are individuals who love being right, love getting their way, and hate when they are challenged by others. What prideful people believe when being a leader is they can do no wrong and make no mistakes. This means they think whatever choices they make are always the right ones, regardless of what others think. They do not feel the need to ever learn from others. When other people try to debate, question, or correct a prideful person, they hate it. This is because of one or two things: 1. They always want to do things their way, and they want to be the ones who are always right, get to solve problems, and receive credit for when positive outcomes occur. 2. They’re the leader, and thus, they feel as though help is something they should never want or need.
Good leaders listen enthusiastically to people around them. As a matter of fact, they do not stop listening. They value the input of other team members to look for the best solutions to problems. When multiple options are considered, time is taken to prioritize on the best decisions, not just your decisions. Leaders should also use team input as a learning experience. We never stop learning, so by keeping an open mind to people who have ideas and solutions, we learn faster and become wiser. Prideful people on the other hand never want to learn, so they will tend to continue ignoring valid input and feedback from others. For those that are curious about how to value others’ input more, have your smartphone in hand and jot down other people’s opinions or ideas in a notepad app.
4. Narcissism Shows Pride
A prideful leader likes to put his or her name and face anywhere they can. Their face is constantly on fliers, programs, websites, ads, and more. It takes a long time for them to leave the stage or podium when they should. They love their own face, and they love hearing themselves talk. While it is good to get heavily involved with church services and functions, self-exposure can always come off as egotistical. People would bet if prideful church leaders had the chance to name the church after them, they would. The reason prideful leaders are like this is that they want to be their own stars, and as mentioned previously, they want to take credit for all the church’s successes. The more a prideful leader self-promotes, the more blatant it would be for the majority of the church’s community, and it wouldn’t paint a pleasing picture.
Rather than narcissism, good leaders share the spotlight and give credit where credit is honestly due. When it’s the leader’s turn to speak, he or she says all that they need to, and then the focus shifts to the next person or act. Leaders deserve as much attention as other members of a team, and they typically should not receive the most attention. In fact, a good leader would put him or herself last, and would credit the entire team when a milestone or accolade is reached. The team should be the most important thing to a leader, and not the leader itself.
5. Targets The Flaws Of Others, But Never Themselves
Prideful leaders will also “address before they confess”. Knowing prideful people that are placed in leadership roles, they can easily observe flaws of others and moments where they underperform. They like to lecture others on how to be a good parent, how to be a good worker, and so on. All while under the assumption that they make no mistakes, never sin, and simply have no need to improve. This can actually make it difficult for workers and church attendees to want to be around the leader. Prideful leaders tend to target the flaws of other people because it makes them feel better about themselves, even if they also have crosses to bear themselves.
The truth is, we are all God’s people, and he makes no exceptions. We are still learning, encountering new experiences, and come with strengths as well as weaknesses. We all sin, we all make mistakes, and leaders who do not identify their own mistakes are not genuine. Good leaders admit to making mistakes and learning from them, since that is how we improve, after all. In many cases, good leaders do not hold mistakes against others, either. We often provide discipline and reinforcement when appropriate, but we don’t gloat how we are better than those that sin and have flaws.
How To Be A Better Leader In Five Easy Ways
If you want to know how to be humbler as a leader, simply follow these five steps:
- Prioritize on your team rather than yourself. There is no “I” in team, after all.
- Give others praise when needed, and give everyone in your group the same amount of credit.
- Be more open-minded. If you believe there are others that can help you, don’t be afraid to ask. You have a team of role-players for a reason.
- Give everyone a fair amount of attention. Don’t be the star of your own show and don’t take time and attention from others.
- Admit you make mistakes. You are only human, but that means you can always be improving.
Conclusion
A prideful, arrogant individual is not what church communities hope for in a leader. Instead, do all you can to give back to the community, allow others to serve and assist you, and never show any negativity.
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