Do you feel like you have been too nice to people sometimes, but they don’t seem to care?

Are you craving for approvals and compliments, yet they never come?

If you’re like most people, the answer is yes to both questions.

Colin Powell, the Ex-US Secretary of State and retired 4-star general, said this in his leadership presentation,

“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”

A good leader needs to make tough decisions that will inevitably piss some people off, for the good of the entire group. If you want to do something great, you need to be strong and do what is right for the group even though you might upset some people.

It takes courage to open yourself to criticisms and attacks, sometimes personal. It takes a lot of EQ to respond in a responsible way and not react. It takes persistence to do it again and again, even though you are alone in this journey.

Intelligent people like leaders who are willing to do unpleasant things to fix a situation. If someone is intentionally not doing his fair share of work, the leader is naturally the person that should confront him. Morale will go up, everybody will be happier, and the leader will be seen as an authority.

It’s often easy to just ignore the problem and let others deal with it. But if you want to step up as the leader, you need to be the one who takes control and do what you need to do.

Similarly, Seth Godin, a famous author of business books and a marketing blogger, said this in a recent interview with Personal MBA,

“Try to find things people will criticize.”

If you are putting yourself out there, whether it is starting a business, writing a blog post, marketing your products, you will be bound to piss someone off and face criticisms. As much as you hope they would be constructive, but we all know that it’s not the case sometimes.

If you get flared up whenever you read or hear a criticism on yourself, you will not go far in whatever you are doing. Sure, sometimes they need to be dealt with. But most of the time, you are better off cooling your head down before deciding what to do next.

It takes a lot of good and bad feedback to grow, and it takes a lot of emotional maturity to sustain the growth.

It’s freaking uncomfortable

I won’t lie and say that it’s easy to do. It is not.

It’s easy for me to write them down.

But I did it. I wrote this blog post. No, I’ve written more than 50 blog posts. And I don’t think you would agree with every single one of them, and I don’t need you to. You see, I’ve had my share of doubts too. It was especially scary when I posted my first post.

What would people think about it? Do they think it sucks? Will they leave nasty comments?

All kinds of questions floated in my mind. Yet the secret of success is action. Once I got through the first obstacle, it was smooth sailing. Nothing bad happened. Sure some people might think it sucks (and they leave, which is cool), some people have criticisms, but many others learn and benefit at the same time!

So I tell myself to focus on the good stuffs, and learn from the bad stuffs.

What happens if you don’t piss people off?

Nothing. Your life will be the same as it is.

But don’t expect it to change because you might go insane. As Einstein might say, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I’m not saying to go piss off somebody on the street for the sake of pissing them off. But you will inevitable piss someone off along your journey to be a great leader and a better person. And that’s cool.

Things you can start doing today

1) Decide now to do something you’ve always wanted to do, but stopped because you are afraid of criticisms. Once you make the decision, go do it. It is not as scary as you thought it would be.

2) Don’t try to please everyone. If you do that, the people you should care about will hate you, and the people you don’t really care about will not respect you.

And if you’re on the other side of the coin, when you’re about to criticize someone, remember this quote:

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.”

–Dale Carnegie–

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