Stop Promoting (How Giving Authority to Others Impacts Your Self-Worth)

---

Last Updated on November 18, 2024 by Bill Truby

This Nudge might cause you to demote a few people – maybe even fire them. Not in the traditional sense, however. It’s a bit strange. I’ll explain.

Achieve Greater Freedom by Not Giving Authority to Those Who Shouldn’t Have It

Imagine a strange, make-believe world where a person in a business promotes someone ABOVE them. Follow me here…

Jane wants to know how she’s doing in her business and whether she’s liked. To find out, she promotes Peter to a rank above her and then asks Peter to evaluate her. Jane doesn’t like what Peter says, so she promotes Ann to a high rank, too, then asks Ann what she thinks. Ann conducts an evaluation of Jane and agrees with Peter. Now Jane is devastated.

Jane’s feelings of peace and well-being, her happiness and confidence, and her ability to be positive and achieve are strongly affected by the evaluations she receives in her business. Since she feels horrible about the evaluations Peter and Ann have given her, she promotes another person, Sam, and asks him to conduct an evaluation of her. Thankfully, Sam gives a glowing report about her, which makes Jane feel great…temporarily…but she can’t fully trust Sam’s evaluation because of Peter and Jane’s evaluation.

What does Jane do? She keeps promoting people. It’s her business, after all. She can do whatever she wants with it. It’s not long before she has hoards of people who have been promoted to a rank with authority over her, who give evaluations of her, and who affect her positively or negatively with their evaluations, which go into her ever-growing personnel file.

Strange? Naw… It happens every day. Let’s change the make-believe story just a wee bit, and you’ll see what I mean.

Jane overhears her brother-in-law saying some devastating things about her. Without thinking it through, Jane promotes her brother-in-law to a place where his words make a difference in how she feels about herself.

Jane doesn’t like what she has heard or how she feels because of what her brother-in-law has said. Her answer? She promotes her sister and asks her what SHE thinks. But her sister agrees with her brother-in-law. Yuk!! She’s devastated. Forgetting that SHE gave her brother-in-law’s words power and that SHE promoted him and her sister to a rank that has authority over her feelings…forgetting that SHE has control over her life and can make choices about the INPUT of others; forgetting all of that, she simply keeps promoting others in the business of her life and falls victim to their input.

It happens every day. It happens to most people. It may be happening to you. If it is, here’s the Nudge: STOP promoting people! If someone says, “You are a tree!” it doesn’t make you a tree. If someone says, “You are a failure!” it doesn’t make you a failure, either.

Listen to others. Take their input. Determine whether it’s valid or not, whether it’s opinion or fact, whether it’s important to you or not. Then keep the authority over the business of your life where it belongs – in YOU! YOU are the CEO of your own business. Tell others to mind their own business.

STOP promoting others to levels of seeming authority that make their opinions more powerful than yours. In fact, instead of promoting these people, you might want to fire a few!

---

This article is part of our ongoing Achievement Nudge series—short, witty, and often inspirational articles to spark your personal and professional growth. Explore more nudges on our blog, or sign up for our weekly Nudge and News email. Each edition includes an Achievement Nudge plus leadership, professional development, and personal growth videos and articles to keep you inspired and on track.

---