For every coach, business owner, manager to be aware of to avoid potential peril.
An important lesson in leadership. Underestimate the power of this ticking time bomb at your peril. Manage it early or risk seeing everything you build damaged.
The phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” implies that the more you know someone increases the likelihood that you will develop a lack of respect or appreciation for them. This can happen because familiarity exposes people to deeper, less superficial aspects of someone personality, values and core beliefs. People fart in private but rarely on first dates or in job interviews. Familiarity can lead to taking someone for granted, noticing their flaws, and becoming overly critical.
It can often be unfair because the contempt built is usually from an unrealistic, idealistic view of a person first expected when you meet your first coach, your boss, your mentor or anyone in a position of respect or power. The principle highlights how intimacy or close association can diminish admiration or respect. I suggest that this is inevitable in some relationships, as contempt can go both ways and people are easily let down by false expectations. When an identity is superimposed on a person when that person does not appreciate the depth of the role you are fulfilling in a subordinate’s mind, familiarity can bread contempt over time. It can be a cancer that builds slowly without symptoms kills suddenly.
The basic notion of contempt is: “I’m better than you and know more than you, which entitles me to be recognised as better than you and therefore look down on you”. While contempt is a standalone emotion, it is often accompanied by anger, usually in an early form, such as annoyance, that will escalate to disgust.
For any leadership position, your role is identifiable to the subordinate and both people are aware of the balance of power/role in the relationship at the start. The leader has an expectation to lead, and the boundaries of the relationship are pre-set as part of an institutional norm expected at the outset. As people spend time together, experiences bond people and bring them closer, this is unavoidable. In my experience, it is the student that changes far more than the coach.
It is a warning sign to all leaders to manage familiarity, as each person in the relationship’s role develops, the student will measure their current knowledge against original expectations and can become envious, let down or disillusioned when their needs change. As a leader develops someone from beginner to intermediate, to athlete, to coach, to employee, the roles constantly change and become more intimate. Friendship is required and often seen as a necessary bond however it is the seed of contempt if either side loses perspective or doesn’t develop as the other side expects. If you increase a student’s involvement, you risk them not coping with their new expectations or them seeing their own development as surpassing the need for you as leader. Being friendly is not the same as being a close friend.
Every team building course, leadership training and sports team develops a bond between participants. Every relationship develops a familiarity for it to function. Close nit teams outperform weak teams in sport and business. The relationship between employer/coach and employee/student requires team work to be effective, lasting and beneficial for everyone. Intimate relationships will only be successful with familiarity and acceptance of the most intimate details of daily life. If contempt develops, the relationship will eventually fail. It is pretty much irreversible and must be solved up stream, so don’t waste money on counsellors after contempt is entrenched.
Contempt is when you go from thinking someone is funny to wanting to choke them, every time you hear the annoying laugh. Contempt is when you go from being inspired by their words and encouragement to spewing up your lunch if you hear their voice, from liking everything they do on social media to enjoying scenarios of their death. From smiling when you see them at work to looking for a new job, in a new country.
The challenge faced is when any relationship includes growth of individuals and during the process of relationship development, familiarity grows. This is unavoidable. It develops when inspiration, ideals, expectation (at times unrealistic) are not meet. When regular people are inspired by rock starts, royals, motivational speakers and inspirational leaders, it only works when we don’t know those people. We don’t go to the toilet after them, we don’t hear them snore, fart and swear. We don’t see them in a family argument with their children or under real financial stress. We don’t see how they live; we don’t know their lives and what they did and sacrificed to be who they are. We don’t know their soul, their depressive days, angry moments or what movies they cry to or what triggers piss them off. The very personal things we hide from people is to not burden others, but it is also to keep our mask in place and public identity intact.
We all wear the mask we need for the role we have at the time, and when the mask is unveiled, we can be seriously disappointed in what we see. We can also grow stronger together when we know each deeper motivations, that is the challenge to manage. What causes contempt vs strength and further growth? Perspective, honesty, integrity, communication and an identification of unified values early in the relationship whilst always maintaining respect for each person’s role and a maturity for self-analysis.
When you commence a relationship as a student or employee, your mentor/boss is a very important person in your life, and you have expectations about them. They have them about you, but the relationship is defined as one of development, education and training through experience with a formal structure. The more often people interact, the more familiarity will develop. You start to learn what people laugh at, what they like to wear and listen to. You have drinks after work, Christmas parties, team building camps and as you develop, other new people arrive, and the hierarchy chain is developed in every team. Contempt is rarely evident as it creeps up on you as one aspect of a person become something your core values grate against, or your expectations are not met (whether fair/real or not).
People are often one way in front of others and another way at home. We all act differently in different roles and areas of our life, but our core values shine though and start to eat away at us. We worry about what we tolerate. We often look deeper when we get closer to someone. We look for flaws, we look for hypocritical behaviour, we look for fairness and equity in the treatment of others compared to us. Some people look for fault to damage a relationship out of fear and a lack of self-esteem, in order to ruin it before their expectations of it inevitably failing are met – before they get hurt, as expected. A self-fulfilling and self-damaging prophecy. Some people also become blinded by people as they get closer and refuse to (or do not) see flaws in people they are infatuated with and are then disgusted if someone else points them out. An example of this is when you see some people in love, as they blend into each other and become the same person or when people blindly follow cults, pop stars or religious leaders. Despite the evidence against Michale Jackson, many fans do not acknowledge any allegations of paedophilia. President Trump is another person who could shoot someone with 50 witnesses and his fans wouldn’t believe it to be true.
We can lose context and perspective the closer we get to people and the very reason we followed and listened to them so dependently and enthusiastically can be the very reason we develop contempt for them. People get jealous of success in others and don’t understand the struggles they had to get there. People grow and some see their mentors as people they have grown beyond, that they need to move away from, this can lead them to start feeling contempt and seeking a reason to move on. People can leave off their perspecticles, lose context and forget history as they develop through a system and rise higher in the ranks. When a student’s own ambition, arrogance and narcissism develops beyond reason they will look for fault and reasons to disagree (even creating conflict) to justify their actions to go their own way. More mature and confident people will communicate their emotions and passions in conjunction and look for viable solutions to move forward amicably, with respect for history, enabling long term respect and a healthy relationship. I have experienced both trajectories and encourage everyone to fight for mutual respect and relationship maintenance over relationship failure and the results of contempt.
Contempt can develop from simple things that are often just petty jealousy. Seeing how someone lives well or has what you want but have not yet earned. Getting asked to do things that you think you are ‘now’ better than or are lower than you. Contempt comes from a place of supposed superiority. Your core values give you the feeling of being unappreciated and fully unacknowledged in the relationship. Your position in the relationship can and does change as you develop and develop familiarity with your mentor. If a student develops contempt as they become higher in the ranks, they need to address their humility and respect and discuss it with their boss/employer before contempt stains the relationship forever. In my experience with coaching fighters, it is the student who changes more than the coach, as that is the roles played and the intention of any education system to develop the student from unaware to aware, from beginner to fighter, and beyond. Coaches can also change as they need to adapt to changes in the sport, rules, legislation, business demands and their own experience. The contempt can develop for either party of the change adjusts the view of one person of the other.
Contempt can arise in verbal or non-verbal language, sarcasm, body language, anger, and can look a lot like disgust. It is apparent when people gossip, talk behind someone’s back and lobby others to undermine the leaders/coach’s role. It is virtually irretrievable. For an employer/coach it is time to cut the person away, get rid of the cancer and move on. Hanging on for too long will make it worse and damages others in the process. The coach will often notice it too late and utilise other leadership and management principles to deal with it, not facing the fact it is contempt they are dealing with. The student, who is likely to feel undervalued, will not go easy, until they get recognised and appreciated more, which they will no longer be demonstrating the work ethic to deserve anymore, anyway. Cut it out early and never look back!
Team Bonding is great however needs to be role specific with specific boundaries. Stopping short of too much socialisation that risks social drinking or any personal familiarity beyond the boundaries of the environment. Encouraging socialisation in any environment with power in balances is risky and more likely to cause problems long term than any short-term gain is worth.
If you want to ensure you can live with someone and get closer, so the familiarity brings you closer together. Go camping, travelling away from your home base so you are dependent on each other with no outside escapes or support. What brings you together can divide you, so test it before you get married, buy a house together or go into business with someone.
Warning to young people and new leaders. Contempt can sneak up on you. It can happen after many years of mentoring, often when you think everything is going well but you start to notice behaviour changes in things that, to you are no different from the established relationship. Like giving advice, discussing plans, the future and how to keep learning and growing. For me, it was embarking on some routine advice around improving oneself and areas to work, which was once welcomed and was now received with resentfulness.
Have boundaries early in any relationship and don’t put everything about your social life on any medium your employer can monitor. They are not your friend and any expectation that your life will be easier if you are close friends with your boss is delusional. For an employer, you will not get respect without boundaries and consistency. Being too familiar and everyone’s mate will not get the job done more efficiently and is more likely to lead to workplace problems down the track. As an employer, you need to make hard decisions sometimes and they will be better received with respect than with friendship.
Why do people admire and fall in love with people they cannot reach? Pop stars, royalty, celebrities, sporting heroes, and famous rich people. They see one aspect of their life and can never get too familiar. The person is idealised superficially and the distance fuels and sustains the one-sided relationship. Thousands cheer at rock stars and wave at royalty but if the veneer was taken aside and you heard how loud the Queen farts or Taylor Swift smells when she exercises, you might reduce your idolatry of them. You wouldn’t grow contempt however unless you got close to them, saw them as real people, learnt their faults and their struggles you would never grow contempt. The fame and inspiration work because of the lack of familiarity and is maintained because they are not real people, and we know it. They represent something we dream of, something unattainable and something unrealistic.
For someone to lead and inspire, you cannot know them too well or dents may appear in the respect and erode it like mosquitos eating away at you. It can be a drip feed of pain, where thing just get too annoying to tolerate. People look for faults and will find them in any relationship, but it is critical to remember the positives and look for them. Contempt will be amplified when the mentor does what they always did but the student has grown too much personally through either competence or own arrogance.
Real mentors in sport, life and business are real people and the most effective mentoring is in real life interactions and shared experience. Having perspective and maturity is key. Contempt can be avoided but be aware of it before it is too late. Having inspirational figures that are unreachable is limited however the distance often makes it more inspirational and less likely to develop contempt. I feel that people who you can relate to and interact with will always be more effective mentors than unreachable people.
Ask yourself if someone new everything about you, would they think differently of you? Would it change their respect for you or increase it. It depends on the circumstance. For honesty, we must have truth and truth can hurt sometimes. For me, the bravery is in always telling the truth and being honest to yourself. That extends to those you lead and mentor, but it can get too hard to handle as the relationship shifts. Manage it with communication but never surpass honesty. Silence is a lie.
The development of contempt is not always someone’s fault. People look for leaders and coaches and enrol in courses to learn and grow. That growth can develop into familiarity and has to be managed. People are looking for inspiration and leadership and when they find it, they grow and learn but not every seed blossoms. Some people are weeds, some are daisies, and some are roses with thorns. People looking for something and searching for more fulfilment in life will want to get closer to the source but don’t always get the answers they want. When they get to close to the flame they can be forged but they can also be burnt.
People can take honest, at times harsh self-assessment and criticism to improve, especially early in a relationship with strict boundaries of teacher – student. When a person gets too familiar to the person required to give the performance assessment, they are more easily hurt and less objective. The employer can also be less objective and biased, which erodes honesty and the integrity of the process. If a student gets too close to the person doing the appraisals, then they get petty, disrespectful, and questioning and contempt starts. It is often the student that has changed more than the leader however the leader has also compromised their objectiveness.
Coaches change far less than students do. It is the student who often wants to get more familiar, to be more acknowledged, closer to the source, involved in decisions and future planning. When a leader develops someone to be promoted and more involved they always look at them as a student, but the student can feel worthy of more and forgets how they got there and learnt so much in the first place. Usually, mentors have a longer memory and can remember the first stumbling steps of an apprentice, when the apprentice focuses on what’s next, not what has happened. The respect dynamic can change quickly, and it needs to be monitored by the mentor however they are often like a parent, whose role is to be the parent and cannot change as fast as the student changes.
Keep your distance socially, personally and be very careful crossing the line of the acknowledged relationship – coach/student – boss/worker – parent /child – inspirer/inspired. Avoid getting pissed together! When the student grows into a coach or obtains their qualifications they will want or feel a position change is warranted in the relationship, this is not easy for the long-term coach as they have been a mentor for many years, as this is their role. The student has grown, learnt, been inspired by and imitation can be flattery, however when they see close to the source, it will not always be kept bright, there are flaws, challenges and it is the student that is often let down.
When people change roles, status and get more responsibilities, the growth acceptance can be difficult. If you get promoted from a staff member to a manager and then have to fire people you worked with, your loyalties are questioned, and your own friendships are challenged. A staff member in this position can grow contempt for their boss even though they are now closer to management than staff. Difficult issues need to be broached and worked through early. The student wants to grow on their own or be more included and a part of the coaches/mentor’s role, but this cannot happen without threatening the coach role or the student needing to step out from under the coach. This can be handled with communication, respect, a plan and a joint understanding of the path moving forward. Contempt will ruin every relationship if allowed to fester.
Contempt grows in small parts but when it dawns, it triggers someone to look for negative. Issues you may not notice as the contempt is masked until it explodes. When contempt festers it may be as simple as disgusted looks, being disagreeable in routine areas, agitation and tardiness and sometimes an obvious effort to get noticed. People suffering contempt will feel unfairly treated, not listened to, disregarded, left out and will often undermine other staff and teamwork groups within the structure.
People with contempt rarely suffer alone, they bring others into their void as well. Contempt is enforced by agreement with others and sharing. Highlighting negative aspect is always 100 times stronger than positive and easy to get allies to your contempt. The person that does this is a virus for any organisation. They groom discontent and grow contempt which undermines the team first, business performance the leader and the entire structure. A narcissistic person with contempt and self-righteousness will set themselves up as leader with an alternative narrative with them as the hero. Group contempt can make the leaders position untenable and in a small business, it is the staff that suffer and have to go as the owner cannot quit.
For the student, they need to communicate and grow up as they develop. If they get closer to the leader/coach/mentor. Familiarity can bread more respect, understanding, empathy and be a beneficial joint future. Anyone feeling the baking of contempt for someone should first question themselves and ask why? What is changing in them and not blame the person in position of leadership. They must recognise that they are changing as well and this is, in part, because of the leader’s example, teachings and development, not in spite of it. Blaming external factors is weak, look inside yourself first to take responsibility.
Most student/teacher roles are finite, should be finite, and it is more effective that they are. You can grow to disagree with someone, to want your own path and grow out from someone’s shadow. Schools are an obvious example. You can have a great teacher for year 10 but in year 11, they are gone and a new teachers await. Universities graduate people to move on to jobs outside the university and the military graduates’ officers to go and lead units where they do not know anyone or have history.
As a junior Army officer, you get posted every few years, you are taught not to socialise with your soldiers informally and the ranking system plays an obvious and distinct role in the structure. I found the system worked better than when I had my own staff, as all levels in the hierarchy are trained formally and are aware of the leadership hierarchy and structure. This makes it easier to follow and understand for everyone. In your own small business, you do your own training, and you are with the same people day in day out, for many years, sometimes decades, and the management of familiarity is challenging. It has been a cause of the greatest business challenges during 26 years of operation. The most devastating business setbacks have been from damaging personality conflicts arising from familiarity, however on the flip side, it has united people stronger and closer and been the reason for many years of success and great teamwork.
Apprenticeships, military academies, universities, every course in the world has a finite structure and the relationship between student/teacher ends in a defined way at a predetermined, expected time frame. This is not the same in a small, long running businesses especially any based around sport and long-term development. Familiarity is inevitable in this situation, and it will happen to you. You will not avoid the contempt, but you can manage it and ensure the familiarity is for the benefit of all.
In sport, this is not always true as a coach can guide you from your first game until your professional debut. In my personal Muay Thai experience, it is from the first how to stand, have a guard and throw your first punch, through many years of physical and personal development. From learning to spar to competition, to overseas trips to professional fights. Being in the corner in life and the ring is a coach/student bond that is bound to develop familiarity. The motivational lessons when leading by example become increasingly difficult as you age, and the student comes into their prime. Leading by example in sparring, strength work, speed and power erodes in contradiction to the student, who is developing those skills. Any student that develops contempt from their growth and measures it against their coaches’ decline is egotistical and arrogant and unworthy of the lessons extended. They have failed the first lesson of respect. Long term coaching cannot be separated from character development through hard times shared. The students first major injury, first break big break up, first big loss is all carried by the team and felt by everyone. These character lessons can foster a long-term positive growth as a team or can be the initial stages of contempt for the student that harbours arrogance, self-importance and feels they are entitled to more.
Coaches and leaders can also develop contempt for students, especially in the age of commercial gyms with what are mostly participation programs for kids and people looking for fitness training. Students can often fall short of coach’s expectation, but you still have to coach them because they are paying for it. Effective coaching and mentoring are then finished, and any pretence of benefit is done. The hardest students to coach are ones I call ‘askholes’, someone who askes a lot of questions but never listens to the answers or takes your advice. A professional coach means you are paid to coach, so you have to still strive for the best with every student. This is the burden and challenge of coaching. Gems need to be forged and take many years. It is great to have curious and involved students and the key to the relationship working is that the student listen and take action to implement advice or at least consider it.
When a student constantly takes, never contributes and always a bit underdone, a bit winey, has more excises than most but sees themselves as advanced or a fighter, the contempt can develop because this type of student is letting the whole team down. As a coach you try and look for change through motivation, effort and purpose but sadly success with this type of student is rare and they are the most likely students to leave always thinking they can do better somewhere else when it is there attitude that is their weakness. When the student leaves the contempt can commence as the coach is usually the one who has genuinely tried to inspire and develop them over time. The contempt is a response to been shown contempt, disrespect, disloyal and the big one betrayal.
I have failed a few critical times and succeeded at avoiding contempt with most long-term students. Being fully aware of the concept, I didn’t think it would happen to me, but it did with some of my closest long-term students. For two reasons; 1. Them, 2. Me. With many others the familiarity did not develop into contempt, and it has to do with both parties, keeping boundaries, having their own life and having a mature perspective about where the sport and coaching fits into that life. I have found people with greater self-awareness, maturity and who have operated in an environment where there is education and awareness around leadership are best placed to understand the concept. It cannot be taken for granted or it will bite you on the arse hard. It happened to me in multiple generations as new senior students were developed over 28 years of coaching. It never happened for the first 18 years and them bam, it kept happening every generation despite my awareness of it and efforts to manage it. This is because it is only one factor and unless both sides manage it, it will repeat itself. Betrayal is how it feels, and it is never less painful. The betrayal however can be traced back to a development of contempt which can be traced further back to a growing familiarity between parties. Which at the time is welcomed, enjoyed and the often the best time in your life, if not the relationship. If something happens to you repeatedly, you are at fault, suck this up and learn from it. Change your behaviours and structure or it will happen again. If you are finding everyone you deal with is a dickhead – you are the dickhead.
I found in the military, that when both sides of the relationship are trained, aware and practiced at the need to not be too familiar, the relationship works far better. When however, you are in a coaching relationship for 10+ years, the familiarity can develop contempt as one party may grow to feel they have more worth than the other party recognises. If you want to be a long-term coach, remember the concept as your students develop. At every Xmas party, every fight show, every social event, every trip away, remember ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’. Just to guide your behaviour. What you talk about, where you stay how much you drink and how much you let people see inside you and vice versa.
When you corner someone in Muay Thai, it is intimate, especially if you have trained them from their childhood and they have grown into an adult as part of your life. This is where it has to be familiar, and the coach has to know how to get the best out of the student under pressure. The bond is never closer than winning or losing a great fight and it never should be.
Emotional intelligence of both parties is paramount. Awareness of social situations, relationship management, self-regulation and self-awareness are critical to managing any development of familiarity negatively. The role of the follower/student is also very important as they are them to give feedback, adjust the leader’s behaviour. Followers/student must constantly reinforce their consent for the leader’s position and action and speak out whenever the leader strays from the consent given for the leadership style adopted. Even in a battlefield life or death situation, the leaders are only effective if the followers have given consent through training to trust the leaders’ decisions and action immediately, for the achievement of the mission, knowing that they have their best interest at heart even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Negative Leadership and development of contempt. Contempt can develop from other aspects and the contempt can be a positive thing, a warning sign. If either party strives for familiarity, grooms or harvest it, then is likely to accelerate contempt but is can also develop indoctrination and obedience in those that accept inappropriate development of familiarisation early in any type of relationship. Love bombing your girlfriend is a sign of future coercive control as grooming, frequent personal positive feedback and favouritism can develop an imbalance in leadership and the coach/student relationship is affected. This is a failure of personal ethics as the coach sets themselves up more as a guru than a coach and leads through manipulation because they are narcissistic and self-centred, caring more for their reputation than any of the individuals they lead. Often, they are blessed with followers who are looking for a relationship that fills a gap in their personalities or life purpose, if this wasn’t true, there would be no cults, no religions and no indoctrinated martial arts gurus.
The contempt one develops for a leader/coach that is self-centred and narcistic can be good. It is a warning sign you should follow and get the hell out of there before you drink the cool aid, get the tattoos and blindly follow. An early warning sign here is too much; clubby clicky indoctrination where the coach always checks on what you are doing when not training, checks on you outside of training and guilts you into attending training and love bombs you when you arrive. A coach that changes their history and develops a false identity for marketing is a sure sign of a narcissist. Look for truth, evidence and credibility which will show as some bad ratings, longevity, long term students and culture of growth and positivity with a diverse group.
A good leader is a good follower. Leaders are good when they have a wider life perspective and have roles as followers and as leaders in varied circumstances. Leaders who always have more than one influence, activity and aspects to your life to experience other leadership and relationship styles for perspective. Familiarity is more likely to grow into contempt when either party has limited frames of reference and other experiences in their life with a boss, a wife, a teacher and are both followers and leaders in varied aspects. Perspective is critical to avoidance of contempt.
Familiarity can be a great thing. It should be used to prosper and grow exponentially but it has a dark side that needs to be managed. Contempt development can happen in friendships, families, personal relationships and at work. It is a leadership concept that needs to be managed and taught as a principle to staff and students. For personal relationships and family, you have to have the intimacy and close familiarity to function and grow old together. Stay aware of the contempt and tackle it early because there is no coming back from contempt in a relationship. In families, it is the place you learn to love with it as it will happen because the familiarity is unavoidable.
This article is written from a lived experience perspective built on top of formal military training in leadership. I wrote it to offer some insights into the concept to increase awareness of it for you before you face the struggles I have had after 27 years of being a coach.
