One of the more regrettable incidents in my life was when I was in high school. Due to some incident that happened, the principal of the school felt that I needed to be removed from my 'prefectship'. I felt very bad about it but I also remember that he called me about a week or two later and said that there was an elocution competition that he thought I should be a part of. He trained me for it; I had to talk on Mahatma Gandhi. I remember thinking too at that time, on how he was able to be a disciplinarian on one hand and yet still show me that he cared about who I was as a person so that I was able to have an opportunity to take part in some of the things that he thought that I would do well in. he called me back a few months later and said, "I've been watching you and feel that I need to reinstate you." When I think back to that time, I realize that I don't have anything against him for what he did. What I have is tremendous respect for what he did for me as an individual, looking at me and thinking that there was something in me that he could mold and could inspire me to greater heights. I always look back to my high school days when I learnt about acting and public speaking and my love for English.
I came across an article in Harvard Business Review called "The Fine Art of Tough Love" by Joanne Lipman. She starts by saying, "What does it take to achieve excellence?" She talks about spending her entire career chronicling top executives as a business journalist. But she says, "Here's what I've learned: When it comes to creating a culture of excellence, the CEO has an awful lot to learn from the schoolteacher." Basically she is going back to a music teacher she had when she was growing up – Jerry Kupchynsky. She chronicles it in a book she wrote called 'Strings Attached'. "There is room in today's world within corporate settings for tough love, and the two must go together."
Tough love is an expression coined by Bill Milliken when he wrote his book in 1968 entitled "Tough Love'. It symbolizes two things that must come together: "There must be actual love or a feeling of affection behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug-addicted child financially until he or she enters drug rehabilitation would be said to be practicing tough love. Athletic coaches who maintain strict rules and highly demanding training regimens, but who care about their players, could also be said to be practicing tough love."
Joanne Lipman goes on to say that tough love can be, and must be practiced in the corridors of corporate settings because that is a key ingredient in motivating and inspiring people. But she says, "We need to be careful about four things when practicing tough love.
1. Don't give empty praise. If there's no reason to praise someone, don't do it.
2. Set the expectations high. Keep the bar high. She talks about her music teacher saying, "His standards were uncompromising – while at first we students found that intimidating, we ultimately understood that it was a sign of his confidence in us." What a beautiful line! Sometimes I think that we are defeated by the high standards that people set for us and yet forget that that's a standard that is set because of the potential that they see in us. It's better to look at it from that perspective than that it is a high standard. They are so absolutely certain that we can attain it.
3. Articulate clear goals – and goal posts along the way. Set intermediate goals as well. Sometimes the ultimate goal is so far away that we lose hope of getting there. So set intermediate goals, which are little goals that we can celebrate along the way in getting to the ultimate goal.
4. Failure isn't defeat. Failure is simply part of the process; not an end-point but an opportunity for us to learn how to improve the next time.
5. Learn to say thank you. She says, "My old teacher passed on that gratitude on to us, with a huge heart, empathy for the underdog, and a commitment to public service, taking us frequently to perform at hospitals and nursing homes and then insisting we stay to visit with the patients. In the press of business, that sense of gratitude is often the first casualty. We tend to forget the things that have been given to us and we forget to give back.
Tough love is so important in our lives and yet sometimes we forget. We give love and dish it out so that it creates weak people who are not trained to stand for something, not trained to push for high standards, not trained to understand their own potential. I think in today's world, there is room for us to exhibit tough love. Always in the context of love, the people that we work with must know that we care for them. In the context of caring, the standards that can be set will be striven for because it is always in the context of love, of people knowing that we believe in them and believe that they can attain that kind of platform.
I love eagles and maybe you've heard me talk about eagles and eagle stories but I keep coming back to how an eagle trains her eaglet to fly. When the eaglet is ready to fly, the mother eagle makes the nest very uncomfortable for the little one. Then one day she just pushes the little one out and hovers around as the little one plunges down not knowing what its wings are for. If it doesn't begin to open its wings and just before it hits the ground, the mother eagle will fly underneath and let it land on top of her, then fly back up again and drop it until the little eagle begins to realize that its wings are meant to be flapped and starts to fly. When the mother eagle feels that it is too tired, it picks it up and brings it back to the nest.
So often, we need to look at the people around us, look beyond some of the things that so often are easier to find fault with and look and see what nuggets are underneath. I'm always reminded of the sculptor who takes a piece of wood or metal and can see a beautiful sculpture underneath. That's what tough love does. We look beyond faults and idiosyncrasies and see the person underneath if they can only recognize their potential – that they can become a wonderful person who is a great asset to the community we live in.
So today, I want to leave you with this thought. Tough love! To be tough, set the standards for people around us and yet, couch it in love and care. Then watch as these people become all that they were intended to be, all that God intends for us to be. Ultimately that's what counts, that we recognize who we are, why we are here and then become the people that God wants us to be so that we can bring change in ourselves and in the people around us and in this world that we live in.
Friends, have a wonderful Christmas and as we get into the last couple of days of the year, my prayer is that you would just enter the year 2014 with high confidence knowing that God is with you and will take you into the New Year.
May I pray with you? Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. Teach us today what it means to exercise tough love, to never settle for mediocrity, but to set high standards and yet, to be able to motivate people around us through love. That's how You motivated us, Almighty God, through love. And that love is what we think about at Christmas. Help us to do the same for people all around us. I pray a blessing on each one of these precious ones on this call. Help us to be tough love people, exhibiting tough love in all that we do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
• Joanne Lipman, "The Fine Art of Tough Love," http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/the-fine-art-of-tough-love/
• "Tough Love" origin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love
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