Leaders - before you judge someone, remember this -- When we build a culture where we're providing support, as opposed to passing judgment, that's when our organizations change.

That's how we get better performance, that's when we get better connection and cohesion within our organizations, and that's when we feel better about ourselves.

I'm also going to admit something. Sometimes the things that I see or hear people do can be frustrating. I'm sure you've been there right?

Whether you're a leader, manager, or supervisor in an organization, or you're just living your life, I'm sure there are times when you get irritated by things that people do around you and begin passing judgement.

How do you stop doing that, and learn to think before you judge someone? Because we DO need to stop judging people. Well, that's what I'm going to cover and try to explain today to help you reduce your tendency to judge others, have more empathy, improve your leadership, and be able to support people who need it.

When we build a culture where we're providing support, as opposed to providing judgment. That's when our organizations change. That's when we get better performance, that's when we get better connection and cohesion within our organizations. And that's when we feel better about ourselves, okay, I'm gonna admit something. Sometimes the things that I see or hear people do can be kind of frustrating, and I'm sure you've been there, whether you're a leader or a manager or a supervisor in an organization, or you're just living your life and you get really irritated by things that people do around you. How do you stop doing that? And one thing I can certainly say is that we need to stop doing that, but how well that's what I'm gonna cover and try to explain today to help you. And I do less judging and have more empathy and be able to support people who actually need the help from us that were able to give to them.

So let me share with you a story. Back when I was taking a NLP certification, there was a story that my instructor taught me that really hit me pretty hard. And it was a simple story about this young kid who was walking through a neighborhood on the sidewalk with his head down and his hands in his pockets. The best way you could describe him was that he was looking kind of shifty. I mean, his eyes were glancing right and left, even though his head was down, he kept looking over his shoulder as if he was checking to see if somebody was watching him or not. And sure enough, after about a minute or two, he pulls his hands out of his pocket. And there's this big rock. I mean, this kid couldn't have been more than 10, 11 years old, but he's got this baseball size rock in his hands.

And after turning another corner and walking halfway down the block, suddenly he stops in front of a house and he slings this rock through a window and it shatters. Now let me pause this story there at this point, what could we claim that we already know about this young man that he has no discipline, that he doesn't care about other people's property, that he doesn't care about other people, because obviously if he's destroying other people's property, he must not have much of a conscience. We can make assumptions about who his parents are, who his friends are, who his family is, what kind of upbringing he had. Because obviously when we can, when we can observe this kind of negative behavior, we can make some logical assumptions, but let's continue the story. And this kid takes off running. He runs down the street and around the corner down three more blocks where he finally stops in front of this group of kids that were just a couple years older than him.

And what you can see in the middle of this cluster of slightly larger kids is a small boy. Who's maybe seven, eight years old, and the kids start laughing and they push the little kid away towards this young man who just broke a window. And what we find out is this, this young man was walking down the street through the neighborhood every day for the past year, this young kid who had just broke a window, was getting bullied every single day. By this same group of kids, they would chase him after school. They'd push him, they'd beat him up. They'd throw his books in the trash. And every day he just sucked it up. He didn't tell anybody. He just went about his business, the best that he could. And he just dealt with it similar to the way that many of us have our own challenges.

And we kind of just suck it up and deal with it. And sometimes don't even tell anybody. But then the day came that something changed one day, instead of picking on him, this same group of kids found his little brother and they start bullying him. And they make this ultimatum to this young kid that either he proves himself by breaking a window, or they're gonna keep beating up his little brother every day until he does fast forward to the beginning of the story. That's why this young man was walking with his head down with his hands in his pocket with a rock in his pocket and winds up, throwing a rock and breaking a window. So it turns out this young man didn't actually break this window and calls this destruction because he didn't have a conscience because he didn't care about anyone. He actually did this because he did care about someone.

Now setting aside any discussion about morality or what a better option may have been, or that he should have told somebody told his mom, told his dad, told a teacher. The point of the story is as human beings, we have this innate tendency to make a lot of assumptions about the things that we observe. And we claim to know things because we observe behavior, but the truth is negative behavior. Isn't usually the problem. The negative behavior is usually the symptom of an underlying problem. And what I mean by that is as we observe people who do things that we don't like, or even do things that are destructive, we don't have to agree with the behavior. But what I encourage you to do is recognize that there is an underlying problem there. And if you have the ability and opportunity, I encourage you connect with someone, not necessarily to be their counselor or to talk to them about the behavior, but to learn more about them, what they love, what they care about.

And eventually you may find out what their challenges are. And eventually you may be able to find an opportunity to give support, because just like you, everyone you see is going through something that you don't know about. And this is especially important to note for us as leaders, because when we're responsible for people in our organizations or in our companies, there's a tendency that when we see behaviors, the reaction instinctively is often to discipline that behavior. But one of the reasons when I do keynotes and workshops, one of the first things that I talk about as the leading skill that we need to learn as leaders is relationships. Because when we build these relationships, then we can have a better understanding of who our people are, what they care about, what they love, but also what their challenges are and what our opportunities are for providing support to them.

And when we build a culture where we're providing support, as opposed to providing judgment, that's when our organizations change. That's when we get better performance that when we that's, when we get better connection and cohesion within our organizations, and that's when we feel better about ourselves. So I encourage you. And I encourage myself before we take the time to judge someone, let's make sure we've taken the time to learn about them, because I don't know about you, but I know for me, if I'm having one of my off days and I'm exhibiting behavior that I'm not proud of, I hope somebody takes the time to do the same for me, because the way I see it, we're not truly leading until we're leading with humanity. And if you agree with that message, please do me a favor. Go ahead and share it. I'm Aaron Keith Hawkins.

And thank you so much for being a part of this. Welcome to leadership family. I will talk to you next time. Hey, this is Aaron. Did you like that episode? If you did go ahead and hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you're using to listen to this episode, that way each new episode gets delivered directly to you. And second, if you have about 30 seconds, go ahead and leave a quick five star rating and review and share this episode with two people that might also find it valuable, just like you did, because given that five star review and sharing an episode may seem like a very small thing, but in reality, it does make a big difference in helping more people get this message and helping us continue to give you more useful episodes. I appreciate you and I will see you soon. Would you like the option of watching the video version of welcome to leadership? No worries. I've got you covered. Just head over to youtube.com and search for my name. Aaron Keith Hawkins. You'll see my channel as their first search result. Then you can just click my profile and click the red subscribe button and you'll keep getting new episodes as they come out delivered directly to your YouTube account. Go ahead and leave the channel on play like a few of the episodes, and I will see you there.