The Approval of Those They Mock
Every single leader gets mocked behind their back. Your school teachers, the professor at the university, your parents, and even your manager at the corporate office. Everybody gets mocked and gossiped about by people. And yet, their approval is often the very thing those people crave the most.
Not all mocking is the same, and you should never take it seriously enough to change your personality. A lot of mocking is a coping mechanism. They cannot read a book, so they mock the person who does. They call someone boring because that person has interests in areas they cannot even dare to conquer. A calm person looks strange because their composure unsettles them.
One should look deeper and investigate the opinion being expressed. What are they truly making fun of in the person in question? What part of their personality or behaviour are they using as the subject of ridicule? This is a crucial piece of evidence because it tells you what actually disturbs them. Is it genuinely bad behaviour, or is it simply something about the person’s personality?
The next time you hear someone mocking a person in authority, observe how they behave around that same authority. If I were a betting man, I would wager my salary that they would behave as if they were seeking that person’s approval but failing to get it. That’s the tell. They cannot secure the authority figure’s approval, and that has triggered an insecurity within them.
A lot of the time, and for a lot of people, this triggers a hidden fear of rejection. The natural coping mechanism is to blame the person in authority, who is then accused of rejecting them. That is why rumours and gossip get spread: so that such people can prevent others from thinking highly of the authority figure. It is their twisted way of delivering punishment.
I am not saying all criticism is invalid. But a lot of it is. Not all bosses are assholes. Some simply think differently from you. They have no incentive to agree with you. They remind you that you are incomplete in certain ways. This is triggering for a lot of people, which then sends them into a spiral of resentment and hatred.
Don’t take mocking too seriously. It is usually temporary. If the person in question starts approving of them, you will often see that the very person they were mocking eventually becomes their darling too.