- Leaders, consultants, facilitators and educators must attend to their own healing before they can contribute to the collective, which means staying committed to ongoing self-knowledge and spiritual practice.
- Victimhood is a pact with the immature inner child, the part of a person that refuses to accept its share of responsibility for the inner and outer transformations a more authentic life requires.
- It is remarkably common for professionals to see only the shortcomings of others while remaining blind to the fact that many of those behavioral gaps reflect their own posture.
- Repeatedly exposing someone to humiliating and embarrassing situations during the workday is far more common than imagined, and a leader anchored to behavioral patterns from an era that has passed may commit moral harassment without realizing it.
We need to examine our personal shadows and honor the forces calling us toward growth. Asking ourselves what we cannot yet face in ourselves, where those blind spots show up, and which internal complexes are driving our behavior is an essential and indispensable task. The responsibility is enormous.
It is easy to deceive ourselves, taking comfort in our years of professional experience, our credentials, or our title. Our ego can convince us that we have nothing left to learn, especially about ourselves. Then life arrives with a wave of change and invites us to rise to new internal heights, to higher levels of consciousness.
Why is victimhood a trap?
Victimhood is a temptation, and also a pact with our immature inner child, that part of us that, out of laziness or pride, refuses to accept its share of responsibility and make the inner and outer transformations needed for a more authentic and, above all, happier life. The interior work never truly ends. We are the ones who settle into comfortable existential positions, denying and masking pains that our idealized self cannot admit.
We must be more committed to our own growth and authenticity, engaging with the deeper layers of our multiple sub-personalities. Let us become more lucid and mature instruments in the development of those entrusted to us, whether in the professional or personal sphere.
Why can leaders fail to see themselves?
It is remarkably common to encounter professionals who have eyes only to see others' shortcomings and ears only to hear others' needs for improvement, while remaining completely blind to the fact that many of those behavioral gaps are often reflections of their own posture. It is striking to see emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually unprepared leaders delivering demagogic and hypocritical speeches, running counter to evolution, and in some moments committing moral harassment without even realizing it.
It is no coincidence that workplace harassment cases are growing constantly. People no longer accept harassment, and they certainly do not welcome it. However, many continue to endure it because they lack the opportunity or the means to abruptly break the employment relationship. It is important to know that legislation criminalizing moral harassment is actively advancing in various jurisdictions.
What is unconscious harassment in the workplace?
Exposing someone to humiliating and embarrassing situations, repeatedly and over time, during the workday and in the exercise of their functions, is a practice far more common than we imagine. Even worse, we may be engaging in it without realizing it, anchored to behavioral models and patterns from an era that has already passed, without having updated our internal operating system to reflect the respectful communication and interpersonal treatment that relationships in the workplace now require.
Let us advance on these fronts. Let us ask for candid feedback about our communication style and our interpersonal relationships. If not out of love for growth, then, as the saying goes, we will have to learn through pain.
The short answer
Moral harassment is often committed by leaders who are emotionally, psychologically and spiritually unprepared, and who do not realize they are doing it because they remain anchored to behavioral models from an era that has already passed. The safeguard is not a better speech but self-examination: asking what we cannot yet face in ourselves, where the blind spots show up, and which internal complexes are driving our behavior. Asking for candid feedback about our communication and our relationships is how we advance on this front before pain teaches us instead.