Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening to a podcast for coaches. I've had several experiences over the last few weeks that reminded me of my time in a specific kind of territory, a specific kind of state, and it's a state that I call superiority. Now, of course, I didn't make up superiority, and I don't have a technical definition for you. But I'm referring to what some people call a superiority complex. Others might call it grandiosity.
Others might call it going one up or being one up but the idea here is that. There are certain relationships and certain interactions where one person in the relationship will come from a clear sense that they are right and the other person is wrong. That they are ahead and the other person is behind that they are above, and the other person below that, they are kind of in a parent role and the other person is kind of in a child role. That they are evolved and the other person is not.
And in a real way, these things could be true. But I'm not talking about the scenarios where they're true. I'm talking about the scenarios where I. The person who's bringing that superiority to the interaction or to the relationship is doing so from a place of distortion, dishonesty, fear, and the way it expresses itself in the relationship is really through contempt. Now I bring this up because this is familiar territory for me. Thanks to coaching and thanks to a loving and patient wife.
I would say over the last five years or so, I've become more and more aware of this pattern in myself. I. And I won't speak for anyone else, but here's what it looks like in me. What it looks like in me is that I have an internal, in some domains, not in every domain, but in some domains, I have a basic sense of not feeling like I'm good enough or feeling like I'm behind, or that I'm actually deep down kind of a loser.
The way I cope is by reaching for an attitude of superiority, an attitude of criticism, and contempt for self that then gets expressed as contempt for others, and the way it shows up in my life and in my relationships is that when I'm in an emotionally activated interaction. Whether with a spouse or with a client. In a situation where I perceive risk, you could say, because with my spouse, I perceive the risk of maybe being left or maybe being unloved or something like that.
And with a client, I perceive the risk of finding out that I'm actually not very effective in my work and that I'm not gonna be able to provide well for my family. These are emotionally activating situations, and when I get emotionally activated, what I do is I reach for my favorite tool and my favorite tool is I have the ability to rapidly take in and process ideas and then. Express them back. I'm a rapid processor mentally and verbally.
Well, that can serve me and my clients very well, but when I'm emotionally activated and feeling fragile and feeling insecure, or feeling fearful or feeling angry, what it looks like is a very well-spoken, fast talking bully. This is just how it expresses in me. It's using my strengths, wrapping them in insecurity and contempt, and sort of smashing the people in my life over the head with them, all the while pretending that I am in some way, doing them a favor.
I understand this is very personal, what I'm sharing with you right now, and. I don't want you to think that I'm being hyper self-critical. I think one of the reasons I can say this in this setting is that as I've become aware of this over the last five plus years and in collaboration with, a loving wife and great coaches, I think I'm making amazing progress on this. Hopefully that's not just grandiosity sneaking into today's episode. I check with my wife often and I say, how am I doing?
do you feel that your voice is welcome in the relationship? Do you feel that you have the time and space you. Want and need to process ideas without having me pounce and tell you the right answer or give you the sense that I want you to hurry up and see it my way. And I'm very grateful to say that as the years go by more and more often, she's saying, yeah, you're doing great.. And we can be there for each other in that way. Because I have this issue with superiority and Kate.
Will say that she tends to go the other direction. Kate's my wife, Kate will say that she tends to go the other direction. Well, I can't speak to that 'cause that's not familiar territory for me. I'm not struggling with that. But superiority and inferiority both have their own ways of expressing themselves and they have their own penalties basically. But the superiority thing has been mine, and I can come to you and speak about it today because I really do feel like I've. Made huge progress.
The way I'm observing that progress in myself is that I am much more open to the ideas of others. I'm much less quick to go to criticism of others even when I am feeling insecure, because that's my favorite time to get superior is when I'm feeling insecure. I I'm much more. Calm and open in emotionally activated situations, both with my wife and kids and with my clients.
I'm not incurring the internal penalties of superiority in the way that I have in the past, and it's a much better way of being for me. But it still does get sneaky, and I observe it sometimes in myself, and I observe it sometimes in my clients where it's subtle, but still limiting and harmful.
Just because I don't engage in fast talking bully behaviors anymore, or not nearly as often, I and others with my same struggle of superiority is that the superiority may still be there, but maybe it's internal. Maybe I'm still having the thought. Oh, well, if they would just see what I see, if they would just look at it the way I look at it, if they would just do the work that I've done, if they would catch up to me, I. Then we could really grow together.
And you could say that equally about a client, or you could say that about a spouse or a romantic partner. You could say that about a child or a friend or a sibling. If my internal voice is still saying, uh, if they were just on my level, wouldn't they be better off? Even when there are clear and agreed upon improvements, that a client, a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a romantic partner, might want to make, if my internal voice is.
Returning often to and fixating on my assessment of their performance that is that sneaky grandiosity coming back in to poison me against the person I love the person I'm in relationship with, and to rob me of increased insight and connection. With that person. So it's wonderful to not be a fast-talking bully.
To the extent that I've eliminated that from my character, it's also wonderful and probably the next project to raise my awareness of the internal voice and to see if it is still indulging in this criticism. Contempt. I wanna be clear about something. If a person in service of not being critical or contemptuous of the people in their life swings the other direction and becomes critical and contemptuous of themselves, we've accomplished nothing.
All we've done is gone from an attitude of superiority to an attitude of inferiority, which is its own losing strategy. What's between those is self-knowledge, self-acceptance. Openness and honesty. When we're engaging with our spouses, there are strategies we can use to raise our awareness of these things and to try to adopt a new way of being.
Uh, thanks to the work I've done with my own coaches, I've developed a much greater sense of my physical sensations when I'm slipping into the emotional place where this grandiosity manifests itself. And what I mean by that is I know how I feel when I start to be a bully. I know where the emotion lives in me. I kind of know the vibe I. And I've learned to recognize it and to say, oh, this is familiar territory, and whatever comes into my head next, and whatever comes outta my mouth next.
If it's fueled by that feeling, it's not where I wanna be. There are also practical things that if I have a habit of grandiosity, superiority, criticism, contempt. Then I can actively go in the opposite direction of my old patterns. For example, when Kate and I have dealt with the Fast Talking bully, one of the ways to. Limit my effect is to do things like 24 hour processing periods.
So if Kate and I are having an interaction where we are both feeling activated, we're both feeling like there's disagreement and it might be disagreement about an important thing. We already know that Kate is a slower processor than I am now. This is a key insight. It's not that she has a longer, slower process for getting to the truth. It's that she takes more time in an appropriate way to reason through her thoughts and feelings about the topic.
I might be quicker to a response, but it's not necessarily the truth. That's the whole thing. So we have done things like 24 hour processing periods, and in those 24 hours, all that emotional activation goes away. We both have an opportunity to organize our thoughts and feelings about the subject and then come back together and now have a much more clear and open conversation in pursuit of insight and common ground. It works amazing In client work. If you have a tendency to fill the space.
With your answers and crowd out your client's opportunity for insight for self-discovery, then one of the best strategies you can, employ is just shut up. If you're on zoom, mute yourself and listen. And while you're doing that, do some breathing. Do something internally to reorganize yourself, to regulate your emotion, and to be in a position to collaborate with your client in pursuit of insight.
It would be totally reasonable to say to a client., I have this tendency, here's a thing I do when I get emotionally activated. The truth is sometimes it's hard for me to differentiate between when I'm at my best and when I'm actually at my worst. Sometimes I have a hard telling the difference between the two, so. If I feel like I'm gonna share an idea with you, I'm going to give it some extra space.
You and I are gonna have a shorthand about it where I say, okay, I'm about to do the thing that I do, not so that we both brace against it, but so we both locate, locate it in its proper place, which means we might decide it's a great thing and run with it, and we might just immediately deposit it in the garbage can. That's pro relationship, that's collaborative, that works for all of us who struggle with this superiority and this grandiosity.
I. While we're figuring out whether we have the issue, while we're figuring out to what degree it has seeped into all of our relationships, it's a good idea to just check in. Often I. And ask ourselves, was that me being superior or was that me being collaborative? The way I just acted in that interaction, was it self-soothing and indulgent because I was feeling fearful? Or was it open and confident and loving? Sometimes saying things that are really difficult for the other person to hear.
It's still open, confident, and loving. But for those of us who struggle with this kind of contemptuous superiority, we have to be willing to check with ourselves and others. Which one was I just then? I the person I wanna be, or was I the indulgent person I wanna leave behind as we practice our sense of which is, which will improve, and our ability to collaborate in an open and easy way with people we care about will improve as well.
I think that we as coaches are more prone to superiority than to inferiority. I think a little bit of a superiority complex ,may have been a contributing factor to our desire to get into coaching in the first place. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. What I'm saying is if as we get into coaching, instead of using coaching to move ourselves to a healthier, less indulgent, more collaborative place, if we use coaching to add to the arsenal.
Of weapons we pull out in interactions with those we love, and those we're serving as clients. That's not what we want. We want collaboration and connection. We want insight. We don't want our sense of superiority. To rob us of increased insight and growth within ourselves. So let's raise our awareness of it. Again, I can say all this today and not feel emotionally activated while I'm saying it because now I know what it is. It has a name, it has a certain emotion for me.
It doesn't mean that I never fall back into it. Now I have so much awareness around it that when it happens, I can quickly correct, I can apologize, and I can decide to be better. But on average, this is becoming less and less a part of my life. I wish the same for all of us who are fragile in this way. And with that, I will talk to you next time.