The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the word petty is “twitter.” It seems that people of all types engage in social media with a sense of semi-anonymity, as if people don’t really know its them, and engage in back and forth with others over trivial things in a way that will not persuade anyone from any position to consider changing their thinking on any subject. It is futile, and honestly ridiculous and much of the time makes you wonder if the adolescence in the home have gotten a hold of their parents twitter feed and acted as childish as they possibly could.
It seems that this phenomena is not exclusive to any group. People from the highest echelon’s of government to the smallest business owner and even to the consistent church goer. Unfortunately it includes a lot of “leaders” or at least people in “leadership” positions.
However, this would be if we defined petty in terms of the accepted social meaning, but let’s look at what it means to be petty and why real leaders do not engage in pettiness. People commonly define pettiness as being snide, or rude, or tacky. These things can be included in being petty but what is it really?
Petty means A. Of little or no importance or consequence. B. Of lesser or secondary importance, merit, etc. C. Having or showing narrow ideas or interests. D. Mean or ungenerous in small or trifling things.
When we look at the actual definition of the word petty what we find is that it is far more than the way we view it, and real leaders have no business in the realms of pettiness.
It is about smallness, things that are unimportant, narrow-mindedness, and lack of generosity and a propensity towards being trifling. Real leaders have not time for such things. Real leaders are thinking about big ideas, and solutions to problems. They view people as partners and obstacles as opportunities. They engage in conversations about big ideals not small ideas about people.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
Charles Stewart
How Do Leaders Keep From Being Petty?
Know what is important, and focus on that.
As leaders it is paramount for us to set priorities but in order to do that we must know, based on our vision and values, what those priorities are. Once our priorities are set, that should be our focus. Which keeps us from entering into petty issues and circumstances. It is a fact that we move in the direction of our focus, so focus on priorities, and we will move towards priorities. Focus on pettiness we will move towards pettiness.
Think Big.
Leaders are, and should be big thinkers. In order to accomplish significant things someone has to be thinking bigger than the status quo, and broader than the narrow minded. When we think big it leaves no room for pettiness.
Be Kind
We can be aggressive, passionate, hard working, driven, vision based and values focused and still be kind. You can do all this at once. When we realize that caring for others is adding value and brings influence it will keep us out of the muck and mire of petty meanness and trifling attitudes.
Don’t spend time in the world of speculation.
This is one I have had to work on, especially when someone is being petty to me and wanting to draw me down to their level. I can easily get into speculation. When we spend time speculating why pettiness exists and why someone is being that way, we are wasting one of the most valuable commodities we have. TIME. So best advice I can give is don’t speculate, don’t assume, don’t engage.
Lead what you can control and don’t try to control what you can’t.
Spending our time honed in on what we can achieve, who we can lead, and what we are capable of accomplishing, keeps us from wasting our time worrying, engaging, and struggling with things we can’t control. The very concept of pettiness is placing things of little importance in a place of priority. Let it Go.
There are so many things I don’t agree with comedian George Carlin about, but this one thing I do, as he so famously said…
“Don’t sweat the petty stuff, and don’t pet the sweaty stuff”
George Carlin
