The Power of the Herd (39 page)

To clarify: projection is the act of attributing your inner feelings, perceived weaknesses, and even unrecognized strengths onto others because you're simply unable, or stubbornly unwilling, to see these qualities in yourself. Transference is a more specific type of projection that occurs when your thoughts and feelings toward someone are strongly influenced by attitudes originally developed in a significant past relationship. Both projection and transference can inspire intensely negative or deceptively positive emotions and reactions.

Yet even positive transference can wreak a certain amount of havoc: If a new employee has a hairstyle, smile, vocal tone, or more subtle mannerisms that remind you of your favorite college roommate, you may “intuitively” trust this new person because she reminds you of a long-lost friend. Then, when she acts differently (because she's
not
your college roommate), you may suddenly, “intuitively,” feel betrayed.

In Lacey's case, negative transference and/or projection prompted abuse that she would have felt justified enacting at the time. Who knows what tripped that trigger? Lacey may have been hurt by a black horse in the past. Or, as is often the case with stallions, she may have been acting out all her unresolved
feelings about aggressive male energy in general, perhaps because she was abused by a father, uncle, husband, or lover. Had she simply woken from the trance that kept her from seeing Merlin as an individual with his own unique history and needs, she could have stopped herself from unnecessarily harsh treatment that in the long run didn't benefit
her
in any way, let alone the “student” who became her whipping boy.

C
ONSTRUCTIVE
A
LTERNATIVES
.
People who face the Deadly Duo with courage and awareness turn potentially debilitating weaknesses into strengths. When we stop objectifying other people, species, and cultures, we can tap their unique abilities and perspectives to perform ambitious goals. It's doubtful that George Washington would have won the Revolutionary War if he hadn't been able to do just that: putting people with real talent, integrity, courage, and dedication in positions of responsibility, regardless of race, religion, or social status. And, as observed in
chapter 3
, if he had treated his war mounts as unintelligent, instinctual, interchangeable objects, he might never have recognized and further developed the talents of Old Nelson, that one horse in a million capable of withstanding cannon fire, inspiring panicking troops to stay in the fight on more than one occasion.

Projection has a silver lining as well. The people who inspire or irritate you the most are often mirroring qualities that you've rejected in yourself, spotlighting hidden talents or unrecognized skill deficiencies that would be useful if developed — and dangerous when left undeveloped.
I highly recommend reading Debbie Ford's
The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
for some simple yet powerful exercises in this arena.

Transference may also be at work. Whenever you experience unusually strong feelings arising in response to any person or group, take a moment to consider whether you may be triggered by past betrayals, difficulties, or traumas. Rather than lash out in anger or flee in absolute terror, analyze which emotions belong to the current dilemma and which belong to the past. You may realize, for instance, that a colleague innocently used a phrase that your father often uttered sarcastically right before he fell into a rage. The moment you make this conscious, you can avert an unnecessarily heated argument. If you unconsciously punish your coworker for something a parent said to you twenty years ago, however, you could easily damage a valued work relationship and spend weeks mopping up the mess.

When projection or transference infringes on interpersonal interactions, it helps to notice the phenomenon, then focus on the present situation, wrapping the meeting up early if you're too agitated to think clearly. Make an
appointment with a coach, confidant, or counselor to deal with transference from past relationships or explore any undeveloped personal qualities your colleague may have been mirroring. It also behooves you, as a leader, to notice when others are triggered and to help employees manage the confusion professionally. (Techniques for handling strong emotions, projection, and transference in others are featured in Guiding Principles 3 [
chapter 15
] and 9 [
chapter 21
].)

A C
ULTURAL
C
HALLENGE.
“Collective transference” adds a particularly destructive dimension to the Deadly Duo when activated in larger populations. Some people have been taught to treat an entire group as innately defective because of war-related trauma or an ancestor's negative past experiences with one or two members of that group. Yet the initial awareness that one subculture is objectifying, demonizing, or exploiting another marks the beginning of a long, often difficult process. Economic and political structures that allow people to benefit from objectifying others must be altered, which means enduring the discomfort of revising antiquated practices to meet the needs of everyone involved. Those acting as conquerors or dominators will initially resist giving up the few dubious advantages they receive from exploiting others. Those social groups oppressed through objectification and/or projection will have to regain their autonomy and self-esteem while resisting the urge for revenge.

Because most socially sanctioned forms of the Deadly Duo take generations to alter, cathedral thinking is also essential. Without a long-term approach in mind, sensitive, well-meaning people can become frustrated and complacent, blaming the oppressors while doing little or nothing to help the oppressed.

Yet every little bit does in fact help. George Washington saw that the objectified populations of his era (including slaves, Native Americans, women, and horses) possessed intelligence, self-determination, and individual (noninter-changeable) talents, literally saving his life at times. As discussed in previous chapters, he made some dramatic efforts to treat these populations humanely while realizing it wasn't possible to change their legal or social status during his lifetime. In this way, he modeled behavior that others were inspired to emulate, making a difference to countless marginalized individuals, who, as they felt valued and increasingly empowered, positively influenced others in turn.

Washington's evolving response to slavery in particular offers insights into our own limitations in altering widespread, culturally reinforced forms of objectification. His family and friends were slaveholders immersed in a plantation system that traded African captives as cheerfully as twenty-first-century Americans buy and sell high-performance horses. Yet after Washington fought
for the British in the French and Indian War and allied with the French against the British during the Revolutionary War, his ability to objectify any culture was seriously eroded. By the time he retired his favorite warhorses, high-born officers had betrayed him, and talented slaves like Billy Lee had served him loyally, sometimes in intermediary leadership positions.

As a result of his increasing awareness, Washington refused to callously sell off the family members of his own slaves. Over time, of course, this meant that he was feeding and clothing more people than he needed for labor, and losing money in the process. Toward the end of his life, he realized that slavery had one major strike against it: the practice wasn't economically feasible if you treated slaves as intelligent beings with their own social and emotional needs.

So why didn't President George Washington promote legislation eradicating slavery? Letters suggest that he thought it was inevitable, though unrealistic at the time. During the tempestuous postwar era, he couldn't even inspire Congress or the American people to raise funds to pay the back salaries owed to soldiers who freed the country to begin with. He just barely passed the Jay Treaty while dealing with severely contentious attacks from the press and the public alike.

And though he wouldn't have been able to put his finger on it at the time — as the terms weren't invented until the early twentieth century — Washington's effectiveness as a leader was seriously compromised by positive
and
negative projection and transference. More than any president since, Washington was praised as a savior by the very same people who feared that he was, at any minute, likely to become an American version of King George or Genghis Khan. The horrors that some immigrants had experienced with conquerors and inquisitions simply could not be soothed by the promise of a new democracy, especially with slavery proliferating in the South.

During Washington's presidency, Americans also began engaging in the now timeworn tradition of projecting their darker qualities, and deepest transference-related fears, onto the United States government. To this day — even among those who haven't been directly oppressed — the association of
central control
with
tyranny
appears to be a collective concern passed down from immigrants to descendants, carrying an intense emotional charge of fear and mistrust that takes generations to fade. After all, in the United States, we have a mere 230 years' experience with a tenuous, sometimes violent, sometimes enlightened democracy — compared with 5,000 years of overtly oppressive social structures. Yet, just as some female abuse survivors objectify all men as predators, we
must be careful not to scapegoat a government that has, from the beginning, been trying to find a better way.

Public figures
and
social structures serve as projection screens, worshipped and vilified as people work out their previously unresolved experiences with authority figures (transference) and their own personal power (projection) on the models they have in front of them. Anyone promoted to a leadership position must realize this. Knowing up front that the extremely positive reviews and violently negative reactions you encounter daily are not necessarily about you goes a long way in helping you decipher and endure the chaos that accompanies success.

When used as a weapon to defend ourselves, intimidate others, or control their behavior, shame is the most archaic and heavy-handed of all the conversational power tools. Injecting shame into a discussion is like hitting someone over the head with a club during an otherwise reasonable negotiation, causing people to become confused and defensive and shutting down communication, empathy, understanding, and thoughtful problem solving on both sides of an interaction.

As a personal emotional message, the related feeling of guilt helps us recognize when we're overstepping boundaries, manipulating, hurting, or neglecting others, helping us “course correct” and learn from our mistakes — if we're willing to alter unproductive behavior. If we're not willing to take responsibility for our actions, however, we look for others to blame, a practice that discourages personal accountability and quickly leads to projection and objectification.

We often think of shame as a personal-development issue or a tribal, religious, or cultural issue, but this social emotion wreaks all kinds of havoc in professional, educational, and political contexts too. The human habit of shaming others to influence behavior or to discredit or disempower them is so ancient and insidious that many people honestly don't notice when they're using this tool in business-related conversations — or when it's being used on
them.
Yet studies have shown that shame does not change behavior in productive ways. In fact, it adds unnecessary resistance, mistrust, and resentment, causing people to attack or humiliate each other or to stay quiet when others need help.

Social worker Brené Brown calls shame the “silent epidemic.” In her best-selling 2007 book
I Thought It Was Just Me (but It Isn't): Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power,
she draws together numerous studies and
anecdotes showing that
“shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive behaviors
than it is to be the solution.”

Like other shame researchers, Brown compares this problematic emotion with the more constructive feeling of
guilt,
illuminating the difference between the two with the following contrasting statements: “I am bad” (shame) versus “I did something bad” (guilt). When shaming people to gain control, we convey similar sentiments: “You are bad” versus “You did something bad.” Brown observes,

Shame is about who we are
and guilt is about our behaviors. If I feel guilty cheating on a test, my self-talk might sound something like “I should not have done that. That was really stupid. Cheating is not something I believe in or want to do.” If I feel shame about cheating on a test, my self-talk is more likely to sound like “I'm a liar and a cheat. I'm so stupid. I'm a bad person.”

Guilt is holding an action or behavior up against our ethics, values, and beliefs. We evaluate that behavior (like cheating) and feel guilt when the behavior is inconsistent with who we want to be. Shame is focusing on who we are rather than what we've done. The danger in telling ourselves that we are bad, a cheat, and no good, is that eventually we start to believe it and own it. The person who believes she is “no good” is much more likely to continue to cheat and fulfill that label than the person who feels guilt.

In working with leaders, innovators, community and nonprofit organizations, parents, educators, and professional teams of all kinds, I find the rampant use of shame as a power tool to be the most shockingly unproductive behavior I encounter. Of course, we see this technique used in politics, with each side looking for all kinds of ways to shame the other. And the intent is truly to show that the other side
is
bad, in other words
hopelessly defective.

It's common to hear insulting, shaming statements in corporate contexts. Many religious leaders use shame to control the behavior of congregation members and most certainly to discourage people from exploring other faiths, even those based on the same original founders and holy texts. Atheists shame believers, and vice versa. Doctors shame their interns. Academic experts use shaming statements to assert dominance over students, colleagues, and innovators. Riding instructors commonly shame their students into submission. And although animals are highly resistant if not immune to this uniquely human power play, I've seen many equestrians try to shame their horses. (The subsequent lack of response to this “tool” usually precipitates a severe beating.)