Freedom, Not Exemption

I’m tired and it’s not because of all the hours at work, football practices, waking up at 4 am to kickoff each day and workout, and not from spending time with my family. I’m emotionally drained and mentally tired from seeing the way society is imploding. We have social media, we have opinions, and somehow along the way people have decided their opinion is now law or the only one that counts and those that don’t see it the same way get ripped a new one on social media.

Allow me to show you how this works. Person A makes a post. Person B refutes that post because their opinion is opposite. Person C chimes in with support for B and further comments with negative remarks towards A for having this opinion. Now the fun kicks in! Person D calls C and B idiots, lists support for A. Person E joins, gives support for B and C while proclaiming it’s unfair the treatment B and C are getting and what happened to freedom of speech. Now Persons F, G, H and I all gang up on D and take strong political agendas, argue no freedom of speech, and we have name calling and daggers being thrown.

Actually, this reminds me a little of middle school, eventually the fight breaks out in the bus line and everyone is friends again a week later. Perhaps politics should eliminate all the debates, enlist Vince McMahan and we can have Tuesday night wrestling instead of debates.

Anyway, let’s get back on track. The draining part to all this is we’ve forgotten how to have varying viewpoints and work through differences. We’re also in no position to say we don’t have freedom of speech. Have you seen social media lately? Listen world, you can say whatever the heck you want whenever you want however, you are absolutely NOT exempt from judgement on what you say. We are all judged everyday by our words and actions. Inevitably some will agree, some won’t.

How do we live with this? Well, first stop complaining about the freedom, which you have, and start figuring out how to express your thoughts and lead through the immense adversity we are living through right now. We have a global pandemic, social unrest and injustice, school shootings, and to make it all worse it is a political season.

As leaders we can make a difference by setting firm foundations that can host difficult conversations. We can’t keep tip toeing around all these uncomfortable issues, and I don’t believe social media serves as a good control group. At work, in sports, at home we can enhance society by hosting these talks and expressing our FREEDOM to share viewpoints. All our viewpoints matter and all of them help us to understand each other better. The DiSC profile assessment is done so people learn about one another’s styles and can work better together so why on earth wouldn’t we host these conversations and help each other?

While we’re not exempt from judgement in the world, within our meetings we need to set clear ground rules that create a safe space for everyone to share and while some opinions may differ greatly, we need to hear them and learn with and from each other.

I pray we can all listen better, learn to love one another, and build quality work teams!