Margaret Yu (National Director of Epic Movement, the Asian American ministry of Cru) talks with DJ Chuang about how leaders can be debilitated by shame and become derailed. Not good. But there’s an antidote to shame that can help the leader to be honest with their humanity, to confess the occasional mistake, and to recover their rational capacity in order to better serve the organization, people, and community.
Show Notes
- Connect with Margaret Yu at margaretyu.com + on Twitter @CCCEPICMargaret
- Dr. Kristin Neff (University of Texas at Austin) has posted resources at self-compassion.org. Take this self-compassion test to see how self compassionate you are.
- Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, by Kristin Neff, PhD (2015)
- Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown: The link between guilt-proneness and leadership by Rebecca L. Schaumberg, Francis J. Flynn. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. August 2012, 103:2, 327-342.
- “… breakthrough research done on self-compassion by researcher and social psychologist Kristin Neff from the University of Texas at Austin. Among other things, Neff discovered that self-compassion can act as an antidote to self-criticism—a major characteristic of those who experience intense shame.” (“How Compassion Can Heal Shame from Childhood: The Antidote to Shame” in Psychology Today, 2013)
Although “guilt” and “shame” may seem quite similar to most people — and both are indeed negative responses to knowing you did something wrong — psychologists recognize a crucial distinction between the two: Whereas someone who feels guilty feels bad about a specific mistake and wants to make amends, a person who’s ashamed of a mistake feels bad about himself or herself and shrinks away from the error.
Why Feelings of Guilt May Signal Leadership Potential (Insights by Stanford Business, 2012) refers to the Schaumberg research above.