<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><a href="http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/define-yourself.jpg"></a>His public message to me was terse even by Twitter standards for brevity:</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">“@thehrgoddess Your tweets are drivel. #unfollow”</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">My first thought after reading that message was <i>how rude</i>. </span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">Curious, I reread the tweet that prompted this attack (how I was feeling) – it was a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, <i>“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”</i></span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">I love quotes. I see them as succinct storytelling at its best. So, in that frame of mind, I responded, <i>“Guess you don’t share my love of quotes.”</i></span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">To which he replied, <i>“Didn’t expect you to respond but like I said they are drivel so don’t want to associate with you.”</i></span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><i>How judgmental, </i>shouted my brain. My feelings were a bit hurt, too. Thinking there was a lesson to be learned, I made a note in my ‘write about this’ file to explore what the exchange had meant to me.</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">Several months passed before that note surfaced and I began my research. Little did I realize at the inception of my writing how hard it would be to write about being judgmental without being judgmental myself. I didn’t see that result coming.</span></span>
<blockquote><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">The road of life is rocky and you may stumble too. So while you </span></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><em>point your fingers someone else is judging you</em>. ~Bob Marley and The Wailers</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">As I read and reworked my draft, everything I wrote sounded sanctimonious and smug. The very attributes I had initially ascribed to drivel man. I found that circle shocking, insightful and pretty darn humbling. I had, as the poet William Blake wrote, opened the “doors of perception.”</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">In retrospect, my initial Twitter response to him smacked of unconscious judgment, implying there was something superior about loving quotes. When I wrote that, I was wallowing in the same mud as he, oblivious to the fact that we were warring with words and doing so within individual bubbles of self-perception. I obviously had much to learn in leading myself to avoid unintentional judgment.</span></span>
<blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><em>I am firm, you are stubborn, he is a pig-headed fool.</em> ~Bertrand Russell</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">As I thought more about assessing what people say and my doing so without coming across as self-righteous, three going-forward points surfaced:</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Don’t confuse opinions with facts.</b>  In my first response back, I implied that he, too, just like me should find value in quotes because that’s the <i>right</i> thing to do. Using words like should, right, wrong, fair, etc. convey a morally superior stance (my views are better than your views) which diminishes the other and closes the doors to learning, engaging and connecting.</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Labels don’t build, they destroy</b>. The gentleman’s use of the word “drivel” hit a hot button. Who wants to be labeled as silly nonsense?! We’re hard-wired to categorize so we can make quick sense of a complicated world. Yet using that hard-wiring to condone substandard behavior is an excuse. As character-based leaders, we have the power to over-rule and rethink our unconscious biases.</span></span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Let others find their own truth</b>. So many of our life, love and leadership experiences push us toward either/or outcomes. I’m now going to be judgmental:  reducing our behaviors, thoughts and actions to either/or results is wrong. The path another takes may be different than mine. And that’s all it is – different, not better or worse, just different.</span></span>
<blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;"><em>Except as we venture to create, we cannot project ourselves beyond ourselves to serve and lead</em>. ~Robert Greenleaf</span></span></blockquote>