Reputation Shattered Due to Ugly Anger; What Actor Michael Richards Learned
Bonus: Keeping support when grieving and the reality about dangerous habits
When people feel attacked they can lose their mind and impulse control in the moment and react in such a highly-negative manner that it seriously impacts and damages trust with other people, resulting in a gaping hole in reputation.
Actor Michael Richards, who played the character Kramer in hit television series, Seinfeld, experienced this misery and suffering himself after self-destructively causing extensive damage to his name in 2006 for using the N-word slur towards hecklers at his comedy stand-up set.
Gillian Telling of People magazine wrote about it. There’s a lesson I will get to shortly.
"The man who told me I wasn’t funny had just said what I’d been saying to myself for a while,” Richards said. “I felt put down. I wanted to put him down."
We passionately defend our ego as if we are in a war against other people. We might, retrospectively, once our brain has cooled, even be surprised at how strongly we lashed out, even if it feels justified, even if we rationalize.
"I was immediately sorry the moment I said it onstage," Richards told Telling.
That said, he added that he is not expecting forgiveness now and isn’t dependent on it for his peace or career ambitions.
He did however explain what was going on emotionally in his life before that night and what he had to accept. Richards is not alone in the following explanation. Many people have exploded — or are still doing it — at others whom they feel have disrespected and attacked them.
"My anger was all over the place and it came through hard and fast," Richards admitted. "Anger is quite a force. But it happened. Rather than run from it, I dove into the deep end and tried to learn from it. It hasn’t been easy."
There’s always something that created and drives anger as a reaction. Richards didn’t tend to it sufficiently well before that day in time when he reacted in a manner that publicly and privately led to so many people changing their viewpoint of him as a professional and human being.
Richards interestingly decided not to follow the advisory he was given about how to intelligently respond to the mess he created for himself and his career.
"Crisis managers wanted me to do damage control,” he remembers. “But as far as I was concerned, the damage was inside of me."
Richards decided that he wouldn’t focus much on changing the narrative about him in the media and more so, court of public opinion. Instead, he focused more on the core problem to be acknowledged and addressed: the roots of his experiences, emotions, pain, psychology, coping skills and healing.
As he said, the process “hasn’t been easy.” It rarely, if ever is, which is important to remember when anger leads us to severely or permanently damage trust, relationships, our reputation and hopes for prompt or eventual forgiveness.
At one time in my life, I helped people with their stress that led to their angry behavior and subsequently, significant personal and legal troubles. It was extremely surprising to learn that most of those people did not see themselves as having a dangerous, costly problem.
It was equally surprising to learn that almost every one of them believed that one brief session of coaching could easily, fully change their lives for the better. Richards speaks more honestly when it talks about the difficulty and time component.
He’s accepted what he did, the consequences from it, the professional loss and personal humiliation.
He’s fighting his demons and probably himself, maybe too much, to learn, heal and move forward.
One moment in time was all it took to bring on almost two decades of suffering.
Bonus
*A painful revelation this past week was made by professional-and-college basketball broadcaster Stan Van Gundy, who told a national audience that his wife’s death was a result of a suicide.
Van Gundy went on to talk about receiving emotional support for his grief and trauma and what you might not know.
"... if you want people to be there for you — this is the way I feel anyway — and support you, you don't want to make that support be the most miserable damn thing in their life."
If people care enough about you because of who you are and what you mean to them and they have compassion they wish to bring to you, make it a positive experience in some way.
A lot of people will likely vehemently disagree or make assumptions about what he communicated. Yes, it is true that everyone grieves differently and needs whatever they need to cope and they don’t have to give anything to anyone emotionally.
Van Gundy is saying however, if you want people to be there for you, you’re going to experience more support, compassion and what may be helpful to your emotions and psychology if you find some way, even if small, for it not to be miserable for the givers who care about your pain.
You’ve earned their desire and willingness of others to care about you enough to where they want to extend themselves and offer assistance if you will show them that it means a lot to you. They do it because of who you are — or are perceived to be to them. Don’t suffer without support if you don’t want to do it all alone.
*A valuable-and-smart-to-remember piece of wisdom I came across this week that is worth sharing here in the Reputation Intelligence newsletter:
"Bad habits are hard to break even when you see how harmful they are."
Isn’t that more often true than not, whether we’re talking about what we have observed in others or learned about ourselves?
That’s why it seems helpful to do all we can to either prevent an error in judgment from becoming a habit — and additionally investing fully in thought and wise, effective response to stop a bad new habit from continuing and getting a foothold in our lives to where it causes harm, now or eventually, when it becomes devilishly difficult to change behavior and the dangerous path that leads us down.
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Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Intelligence: Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically and responsibly protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
Professional Opinion, Consulting (about a particular situation),
Ongoing Advisory, Public Speaking and Communications.
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