Harmlessness and the Leadership Spectrum

The ego ideal is formed by projecting one’s own personal quality or one’s own hopes for personal qualities onto another person: “I fear that I am not perfect and perhaps even know that I am not perfect. This is very disconcerting, so I project these positive characteristics onto another person – so that at least one of us is perfect.” Often this projective process is first engaged with our own parents. We consider our father or mother to be perfect, until reality creeps in (or leaps in) and we see our parent as being a decent but inevitably flawed human being.

Harm is done when the ego ideal is shattered—and the real person is revealed. With the withdrawal of projected identification, the emperor is found to have no clothes (or at least to be clothed in ordinary clothes that are often a bit disheveled). With this withdrawal comes a sense of betrayal: “why has this person been so dishonest, such an imposter. I placed my trust in them and they abused this trust. I believed them to be competent and find that they are no better than I am (and probably a whole lot worse).”

In identifying sources of temptation in life, Palmer (1990, p. 118) similarly noted that there is a tendency to project onto a leader: “a quality that they want to possess but are unable to find in themselves, so they burden their hero with the impossible task of living out a part of their lives for them.” Palmer further suggests that “one can resist the destructive projections that people often make, by being relentlessly honest about one’s own reality. . . . One can fend off the illusions of others by staying rooted in one’s own truth.”

While we fully support Palmer’s solution to the problem of projection, we would suggest that this honesty and search for one’s own truth is never easy, for the temptation to accept, uncritically, the soul-stirring projections being placed on us is great. As Palmer (1990, pp. 128-129) himself notes: “our activism sometimes breeds the arrogant belief that nothing exists except as we make it, buy it, sell it, or get grant for it.”  With this acceptance comes a sense of personal entitlement—even arrogance—that inevitably increases the level of harm we have done in our work.

Who is Harmed?

As we explore the nature of harmfulness, it is important to ask a question that seems to have an easy answer: who is really harmed when a harmful act takes place? Of course, it is the person to whom the harm is directed!  Yet, as Resmaa Menakem (2017), the author of My Grandmother’s Hands, has noted, the harm is often much more widespread. The harmer often feels the effect of the harm, themselves, and the trauma created by the harmful event can spread to other people associated with the harmful event.