The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

  25. Avoid overdirecting, overobserving, and overreporting: excessive “managing” (“micromanaging”) is the enemy of autonomy and creativity.

  26. Plan and budget appropriately for innovation: do not ask for people’s innovative best and then announce there is no money (or other resources), because the danger is that creative enthusiasm will dry up and be replaced by demoralization.

  27. Find out what the central interests of your people are and, whenever possible, match tasks and objectives with individual dispositions: give people an opportunity to do what they enjoy most and do best; build on people’s strengths.

  28. Ask your people what they would need in order to feel more in control of their work and, if possible, give it to them: if you want to promote autonomy, excitement, and a strong commitment to goals, empower, empower, empower.

  29. Reward such natural expressions of self-esteem as self-assertiveness, (intelligent) risk taking, flexible behavior patterns, and a strong action orientation: too many companies pay lip service to such values while rewarding those who conform, don’t ask difficult questions, don’t challenge the status quo, and remain essentially passive while performing the motions of their job description.

  30. Give assignments that stimulate personal and professional growth: without an experience of growth, self-esteem—and enthusiasm for the job—tends to be undermined.

  31. Stretch your people: assign tasks and projects slightly beyond their known capabilities.

  32. Educate your people to see problems as challenges and opportunities; this is one perspective clearly shared by high achievers and by people of high self-esteem.

  33. Support the talented non-team player: in spite of everything we can say about the necessity for effective teamwork, there needs to be a place for the brilliant hermit who is moving to different music, and even team players benefit from seeing this respect for individuality.

  34. Teach that errors and mistakes are opportunities for learning: “What can you learn from what happened?” is a question that promotes self-esteem; it also promotes not repeating mistakes; and sometimes it points the way to a future solution.

  35. Challenge the seniority tradition and promote from any level on the basis of merit: recognition of ability is one of the great inspirers of self-respect.

  36. Reward generously for outstanding contributions, such as new products, inventions, services, and money-saving projects: profit-sharing programs, deferred compensation plans, cash or stock bonuses, and royalties can all be used to reinforce the signal that your organization wants innovation and respects intelligent self-assertion and self-expression.

  37. Write letters of commendation and appreciation to high achievers and ask the CEO to do likewise: when people see that their company values their mind, they are motivated to keep pushing at the limits of what they feel capable of achieving.

  38. Set a standard of personal integrity: keep your promises, honor your commitments, deal with everyone fairly (not just insiders, but suppliers and customers as well), and acknowledge and support this behavior in others; give your people the pride of working for a moral company.

  I doubt that there is one principle listed above that thoughtful executives are not aware of—in the abstract. The challenge is to practice them consistently and weave them into the fabric of daily procedures.

  A Leader’s Role

  Everything I have said above clearly applies to leaders—the CEO or company president—as much as to managers. But I want to say a few additional words about the leader.

  The primary function of a leader in a business enterprise is (1) to develop and persuasively convey a vision of what the organization is to accomplish, and (2) to inspire and empower all those who work for the organization to make an optimal contribution to the fulfillment of that vision and to experience that, in doing so, they are acting in alignment with their self-interest. The leader must be an inspirer and a persuader.

  The higher the self-esteem of the leader, the more likely it is that he or she can perform that function successfully. A mind that distrusts itself cannot inspire the best in the minds of others. Neither can leaders inspire the best in others if their primary need, arising from their insecurities, is to prove themselves right and others wrong.

  It is a fallacy to say that a great leader should be egoless. A leader needs an ego sufficiently healthy that it does not experience itself as on the line in every encounter—so that the leader is free to be task and results oriented, not self-aggrandizement or self-protection oriented.

  If degrees of self-esteem are thought of on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 representing optimal self-esteem and 1 almost the lowest imaginable, then is a leader who is a 5 more likely to hire a 7 or a 3? Very likely he or she will feel more comfortable with the 3, since people often feel intimated by others more confident than themselves. Multiply this example hundreds or thousands of times and project the consequences for a business.

  Warren Bennis, our preeminent scholar of leadership, tells us that the basic passion in the best leaders he has studied is for self-expression.5 Their work is clearly a vehicle for self-actualization. Their desire is to bring “who they are” into the world, into reality, which I speak of as the practice of self-assertiveness.

  * * *

  It is a fallacy to say that a great leader should be egoless.

  * * *

  Leaders often do not fully recognize the extent to which “who they are” affects virtually every aspect of their organization. They do not appreciate the extent to which they are role models. Their smallest bits of behavior are noted and absorbed by those around them, not necessarily consciously, and reflected via those they influence throughout the entire organization. If a leader has unimpeachable integrity, a standard is set that others feel drawn to follow. If a leader treats people with respect—associates, subordinates, customers, suppliers, shareholders—that tends to translate into company culture.

  For these reasons, a person who wants to work on his or her “leadership ability” should work on self-esteem. Continual dedication to the six pillars and their daily practice is the very best training for leadership—as it is for life.

  The Power to Do Good

  Can the right organizational environment transform a person of low self-esteem into one of high self-esteem? Not very likely—although I can think of instances where a good manager or supervisor drew out of a person what no one had ever drawn out before and at least laid a foundation for improved self-respect.

  Clearly there are troubled individuals who need a more focused kind of professional help—I am speaking of psychotherapy, which we will discuss in the following chapter—and it is not the function of a business organization to be a psychological clinic.

  * * *

  The policies that support self-esteem are also the policies that make money.

  * * *

  But for the person of average self-esteem, an organization dedicated to the value and importance of the individual has an immense potential for doing good at the most intimate and personal level, even though that is not, of course, its purpose for being. And in doing so, it contributes to its own life and vitality in ways that are not remote and ethereal but are ultimately bottom line. The policies that support self-esteem are also the policies that make money. The policies that demean self-esteem are the policies that sooner or later cause a company to lose money—simply because, when you treat people badly and disrespectfully, you cannot possibly hope to get their best. And in today’s fiercely competitive, rapidly changing global economy, nothing less than their best is good enough.

  16

  Self-Esteem and Psychotherapy

  In the 1950s, when I began the practice of psychotherapy, I became convinced that low self-esteem was a common denominator in all the varieties of personal distress I encountered in my practice. I saw low self-esteem as a predisposing causal factor of psychological problems and also a consequence. The relationship was reciprocal. As I said in the Introduction, th
is was the realization that ignited my fascination with the subject.

  Sometimes problems could be understood as direct expressions of an underdeveloped self-esteem—for example, shyness, timidity, and fear of self-assertion or intimacy. Sometimes problems could be understood as consequences of the denial of poor self-esteem, that is, as defenses built against the reality of the problem—for example, controlling and manipulative behavior, obsessive-compulsive rituals, inappropriate aggressiveness, fear-driven sexuality, destructive forms of ambition—all aiming to produce some experience of efficacy, control, and personal worth. It seemed clear that problems that were manifestations of poor self-esteem were also contributors to the continuing deterioration of self-esteem.

  Consequently, it was my view from the beginning that a primary task of psychotherapy is to help build self-esteem. This was not the perspective of my colleagues. Self-esteem was rarely considered at all, and insofar as it was, the traditional assumption was (and is) that self-esteem will benefit indirectly and implicitly, as a by-product of psychotherapy: as other problems are solved, the client will naturally feel better about him- or herself. It is true that when anxiety and depression are diminished, the client feels stronger. It is also true that developing self-esteem diminishes anxiety and depression. I thought that self-esteem can and should be addressed explicitly; that it should set the context of the entire therapeutic enterprise; and that even when one is not working on it as such, even when one is focused instead on solving specific problems, one can do so by framing or contextualizing the process in such a way as to make it explicitly self-esteem strengthening. For example, almost all schools of therapy help clients to confront previously avoided conflicts or challenges. But I typically ask, “How do you feel about yourself when you avoid an issue you know, at some level, needs to be dealt with? And how do you feel about yourself when you master your avoidance impulses and confront the threatening issue?” I frame the process in terms of its consequences for self-esteem. I want clients to notice how their choices and actions affect their experience of themselves. I see this awareness as a powerful motivator for growth; it often helps in managing and transcending fear.

  * * *

  It was my view from the beginning that a primary task of psychotherapy is to help build self-esteem.

  * * *

  My purpose in this chapter is not to discuss the technique of psychotherapy as such, but merely to offer a few general observations about building self-esteem in a psychotherapeutic context and to suggest something of my approach. This chapter is addressed not only to the clinician or to students of therapy but to anyone thinking about therapy who would like to understand the self-esteem orientation as a frame of reference.

  The Goals of Psychotherapy

  Psychotherapy has two basic goals. One is the alleviation of suffering. The other is the facilitation and enhancement of well-being. While the two projects overlap, they are not the same. To reduce or eliminate anxiety is not equivalent to generating self-esteem, although it can contribute to that end. To reduce or eliminate depression is not equivalent to generating happiness, although, again, it can contribute to that end.

  On the one hand, psychotherapy aims to reduce irrational fears, depressive reactions, and troublesome feelings of every kind (perhaps from past traumatic experiences). On the other hand, it encourages the learning of new skills, new ways of thinking about and looking at life, better strategies for dealing with self and others, and an expanded sense of one’s possibilities. I place both these goals in the context of aiming to strengthen self-esteem.

  Raising self-esteem is more than a matter of eliminating negatives; it requires the attainment of positives. It requires a higher level of consciousness in the way one functions. It requires greater self-responsibility and integrity. It requires the willingness to move through fear to confront conflicts and discomfiting realities. It requires learning to face and master rather than withdraw and avoid.

  * * *

  Raising self-esteem is more than a matter of eliminating negatives; it requires the attainment of positives.

  * * *

  If someone enters therapy and at the end of the process does not live more consciously than at the beginning, the work has failed. If in the course of treatment the client does not grow in self-acceptance, self-responsibility, and all the other practices that support self-esteem, we would also have to question the therapeutic experience. Regardless of school, any effective therapy promotes growth along these dimensions, at least to some extent. But if a therapist understands the importance of the six practices and cultivates them as a conscious project, he or she is more likely to produce consistent results. He or she is challenged to develop means—cognitive, behavioral, experiential—that will promote self-esteem.

  If one therapeutic goal is to encourage a higher level of consciousness in the client, so that the client lives more mindfully and with better reality contact, then through conversation, psychological exercises and processes, body and energy work, and homework assignments, one can work at removing blocks to awareness, on the one hand, and stimulate and energize higher consciousness, on the other.

  If another goal is to inspire greater self-acceptance, then one can create a climate of acceptance in the office, lead the client to identify and reown blocked and disowned parts of the self, and teach the importance of being in a nonadversarial relationship to oneself and its parts (see my discussion of subpersonalities below).

  If another goal is to strengthen self-responsibility, then one can frustrate the client’s maneuvers to transfer responsibility to the therapist, facilitate through exercises the client’s appreciation of the rewards of self-responsibility, and convey by every means possible that no one is coming to the rescue and that each of us is responsible for our choices and actions and for the attainment of our desires.

  If another goal is to encourage self-assertiveness, then one can create an environment in which self-assertion will be safe, teach self-assertion through exercises such as sentence-completion, psychodrama, role-playing, and the like—work to defuse or neutralize fears of self-assertiveness—and actively encourage the client in facing and dealing with threatening conflicts and challenges.

  If another goal is to support living purposefully, then one can convey the role and importance of purpose in life, assist in the client’s clarification and articulation of goals, explore action plans, strategies, and tactics and their necessity for goal attainment, and work to awaken the client to the rewards of a life that is proactive and purposeful rather than reactive and passive.

  If another goal is to encourage personal integrity, then one needs to focus on values clarification, inner moral confusions and conflicts, the importance of choosing values that in fact do support one’s life and well-being, the benefits of living congruently with one’s convictions, and the pain of self-betrayal.

  I shall not elaborate further on these points. I mention them primarily to suggest a way of thinking about psychotherapy when the cultivation of self-esteem is a central goal.

  The Climate of Therapy

  As with parents and teachers, an unrelenting attitude of acceptance and respect is perhaps the first way in which a psychotherapist can contribute to the self-esteem of a client. It is the foundation of useful therapy.

  This attitude is conveyed in how we greet clients when they arrive in the office, how we look at them, how we talk, and how we listen. This entails such matters as courtesy, eye contact, being noncondescending and nonmoralistic, listening attentively, being concerned with understanding and with being understood, being appropriately spontaneous, refusing to be cast in the role of omniscient authority, and refusing to believe the client is incapable of growth. The respect is unrelenting, whatever the client’s behavior. The message is conveyed: A human being is an entity deserving respect; you are an entity deserving respect. A client, for whom being treated in this manner may be a rare or even unique experience, may be stimulated over time to begin to restructure his o
r her self-concept. Carl Rogers made acceptance and respect the core of his approach to therapy, so powerful did he understand its impact to be.

  I recall a client once saying to me, “Looking back over our therapy, I feel that nothing else that happened was quite so impactful as the simple fact that I always felt respected by you. I pulled everything I could to make you despise me and throw me out. I kept trying to make you act like my father. You refused to cooperate. Somehow, I had to deal with that, I had to let that in, which was difficult at first, but as I did the therapy began to take hold.”

  * * *

  A therapist is not a cheerleader.

  * * *

  When a client is describing feelings of fear, or pain, or anger, it is not helpful to respond with, “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that!” A therapist is not a cheerleader. There is value in expressing feelings without having to deal with criticism, condemnation, sarcasm, distracting questions, or lectures. The process of expression is often intrinsically healing. A therapist who is uncomfortable with strong feelings needs to work on him- or herself. To be able to listen serenely and with empathy is basic to the healing arts. (It is also basic to authentic friendship, to say nothing of love.) When the client’s need for emotional expression has been met, then it sometimes can be useful to invite him or her to explore feelings more deeply and examine underlying assumptions that may need to be questioned.