This got me thinking more broadly about the responsibility those of us with power and privilege hold. If you’re reading this, you’re likely in a good place in life. You’ve worked hard, established yourself, received work experience, education and, if you’re lucky, you’re enjoying the fruits of your labour. Naturally, it’s important to take time to celebrate and recognize your worth: As a medical professional, I’ve spent nearly a decade’s worth of time in school. I feel confident of my knowledge and experience as having worth. However, recognizing self-worth is not the same as entitlement — this is a sentiment that can ensnare and limit us, and which any business leader would be well advised to avoid.
In my last article, I wrote about the value of the arts — how they provide freeing, open creativity that can unbind the mind from prescripted paths, showing new possibilities. In my view, entitlement has the opposite effect. Rather than leaving the mind flexible to myriad potential futures, it constrains you to a specific vision of what you “ought” to get, what you “deserve.” There’s a trend in business to celebrate the big, brash personality, the ruthless entrepreneur who does what it takes and walks through life within this ego-driven mindset. However, this celebrates a very limiting version of success, ultimately closing doors to countless other pathways toward life.
There are numerous reasons a truly savvy business leader steers away from a sense of entitlement and opts instead for a balanced perspective of leading by example.
A Sense of Entitlement Is the Opposite of a Growth Mindset.
There’s plenty of scholarship on the growth mindset being crucial to business success and evolution. But as stated, entitlement is a limiting mindset that stunts you. It’s not just about being generous with yourself and polite; it’s actually better for your business to maintain a sense of humility and openness.
Entitlement Encourages Ego-centred Myopia.
Entitlement is “me”-focused. When you’re thinking constantly about what you’re worth and why you’re entitled to more, it makes you less likely to see the full complexity of the rest of the world. We only have so much cognitive energy: Entitlement turns your attention inward, while humility and grace turn your gaze outward, focusing on service to others and their potential, and the lessons you could learn from them. You can’t recognize the worth of others if you’re only looking at yourself. From a business perspective, this means you’re more likely to overlook talent that sits before you, which is an enormous missed opportunity any leader should seek to avoid.
Entitlement Is Demotivating, Both Personally and to Others
The couple at the restaurant is a good microcosm example of how entitlement plays out on a larger stage. First, their feelings of deserving more gave them little motivation to do better in their own behaviour, while doubtless, dealing with their absurd demands could not have been pleasant for their server.In the business world, we’ve seen the demotivating havoc of entitlement in the modern phenomenon of golden parachutes and huge corporate bonuses. It’s led to wild discontent amongst workers who feel under-compensated and doubtless has helped contribute to the Great Resignation. When you work for years without a proper raise and learn the higher-ups at your company are raking in huge bonuses, it doesn’t engender a strong sense of loyalty.
Companies with leadership that put the focus on spreading wealth and showing appreciation for the talents of those they lead are more likely to retain employees for the long-term — and the companies that did survive the pandemic did so by prioritizing meeting their staff’s needs and requests. This is not a new idea — on my wife’s side, our relative, Oscar Tietz, showed the immense impact this outward focus has in business leadership. Having founded warehouses in prewar Germany, he put securities and insurance for his workers into place. He was not only respected by his thousands of workers — who even remembered this after the war — but also by neighbouring organizations, and his legacy as a just and admirable business leader is still remembered to this day. Sadly, this is something we rarely see modelled by CEOs today — but we should.
So what should we do instead? There’s a theory in organisational communication called Leader Member Exchange Theory (LMX), which perfectly captures the kind of mindset that leads to a robust, healthy company culture focused on inspiring staff rather than supervising and policing them. In the entitled mindset, the boss makes demands: “I pay you so you have to deliver for me.” But in LMX, your privilege as a boss is treated like a responsibility, not entitlement. Instead of asking “why are my employees failing me,” you need to look toward yourself and ask, “How do I lead in a way that makes others excited to work and gets the most out of them?”
There is nothing inherently bad about power — what matters is what you do with it. As you reflect on your own role as a leader, focus on how you can be of service rather than how you are being served. A rising tide raises all ships: Respecting others and using your privilege for good won’t just benefit the rest of the world; it will benefit you, too.
