Accepting People

 

Accepting People is the first quality that Brady and Woodward include in the Trilateral Leadership Ledger's factor of Relationships.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines Accepting as: 

1. able or willing to accept something or someone : inclined to regard something or someone with acceptance rather than with hostility or fear

2.  tending to regard different types of people and ways of life with tolerance and acceptance

 

The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines accept as: to consider something or someone as satisfactory.

 

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines acceptance as: the act of accepting something or someone

 

 

In order for effective leaders to build lasting relationships, they have to be willing to accept people for who they are and where they are.  That does not mean that they have to blindly accept anything and everything that a person says or does, but it does mean that they have to accept that it as a starting point from which to build a relationship.  People want to be heard and they want to feel like they matter.  As Dr. Hana-Meksom so eloquently pointed out, "People do not want to be tolerated but they want to be accepted.".

 

Far too often in this age of tolerance and inclusion, people and leaders talk the talk but do not walk the walk.  I have seen too many cases where tolerance was preached but only if you agreed with and thought like the people in positions of authority (I won't call them leaders because this violates so many tenants of leadership I don't have the time or space here to go into it).  People need to be accepted at face value and differences need to be able to be discussed in a civil and productive manner.  Too many times this just does not happen.

 

If people do not feel that you accept them, they simply will not follow you!

 

Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward: "Launching a Leadership Revolution."  Business Plus. New York. p.97