MANAGEMENT
Knowledge@Wharton: Is there a level of insecurity within some of these people?
Tracy: I think insecurity is a big part of what drives hubristic pride. These are people who feel at some level, maybe it’s unconscious, some bit of
shame. “I’m not good enough, and what if people discover that I’m not good enough.” The way they cope with that is to bury it, hide it away and say, “No, no, I’m going to be the greatest, I’m going to be the best.” So, the pride you see is not authentic. It’s
a sort of inflated, aggrandized sense of self that leads to all this defensiveness that really I think is apparent.
Knowledge@Wharton: It almost feels like you come to a decision point, the fork in the road. You can take one path to the right and continue to be a very supportive person, or you could go to the left and be that kind of egotistical self where pride becomes a negative.
Tracy: I think that probably is what happened with Lance Armstrong, and I think it’s what happens to many of us. He’s an extreme example, but I think we all encounter that fork any time we have a success, any time we feel good about ourselves. We evolve to feel this way. We evolve to want to feel good about ourselves. It’s this really rewarding, pleasurable feeling. And then we’re at the decision point where, OK, I know I got here by working my butt off and having this great achievement. If I want to keep this feeling, do I think about the next big achievement, the next thing I need to do to keep this sense of self going? Or do I instead think about ways where I can kind of just maximize this feeling I’m having right now?
What if more people knew about
my success? What if I could advertise more broadly how great I am? That’s a nice shortcut that’s going to get me a lot of pleasure, but it doesn’t make me have to do all that work. I think that’s where hubristic
pride sets in, where people say, “You know, there’s an easier way. I don’t have to put in the work. I can brag. I can post about my success on social media.” Then all of the sudden, instead of feeling the authentic pride and actually becoming the kind of person you want to become, what you’re feeling is this sort of inflated pride that’s based on other people’s’ recognition of you.
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DOMmagazine.com | dec 2016 jan 2017
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