Being Supportive and Demanding

This week I have another nugget from Grit [affiliate link] by Angela Duckworth. When thinking about parenting, or leadership, or even in the relationship one is developing with oneself, people often question whether it’s better to be supportive or demanding, almost as if you must be one or the other, or that the two are mutually exclusive. Today I wanted to talk about why I think it’s important to be both. Whether you’re a parent, a leader, or neither, developing a supportive and demanding style in your relationships with your kids, your team, and yourself will help prepare you, your team and your loved ones for success.

Being Supportive

The dictionary definition of supportive is “providing encouragement and emotional help”. With respect to your kids, it means making sure you give them lots of encouragement. You help them express and respect their feelings. With your team, it might mean you get to know them as people and encourage an environment where your team feels like you have their back. With yourself, it means you spend time understanding your emotions and why you do what you do, give yourself encouragement when you need it, and stay in touch with your feelings. You practice self-care and self-compassion.

To people that might be less prone to emotion, being supportive might feel too permissive, or “touchy-feely”. Perhaps, to you, being supportive to your staff, kids, or yourself feels like just allowing everyone to do whatever the hell they want. Maybe preventing someone from doing something, or imposing consequences, feels like you’re not providing the encouragement or emotional help that being supportive requires. Maybe you think that being “too” supportive will make you into a doormat.

Being Demanding

I think the term “demanding” might have some negative connotations. We might use the word “demanding” to describe a customer that is angry at a retail employee, or someone who is rude. Someone who is asking too much of someone else.

When talking about being demanding of a person, the definition is “making others work hard or meet high standards”. So, being demanding in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it’s easy to see how in some circumstances it could become a problem. Without any other “soft skills” to leaven the demanding-ness, someone who is demanding could be viewed as harsh, rude, arrogant, or hard to be around.

Someone who isn’t demanding by nature might feel bad asking others to do things. They might feel like they are imposing. Others might feel that you’ll never get anything unless you demand it. Someone who is demanding of themselves may feel like they are challenging themselves to do better. But it’s easy to go too far, especially if you’re not “lightening the load”, so to speak, with some emotional support and self-care.

Being Supportive AND Demanding

Being just supportive may not get you the results you want. On the other hand, being just demanding may make others view you in a non-constructive way. You may be perceived as “too soft” or “too hard to work with”. This is why being BOTH supportive and demanding is important. It’s important whether you’re a parent, team leader, or neither of those things. It may seem like the two things are opposites! As if when being supportive, that means you can’t hold anyone to a high expectation or standard. However, it’s entirely possible to have the attitude towards someone that helps them understand that you are supportive of them, you’re encouraging them, and you hold them accountable to certain things. You create an atmosphere where people believe that you believe in them, and that you believe they can do better.

When you’re supportive and demanding of your kids, you’re providing them with the emotional help they need. You’re also setting boundaries and teaching them to expect great things of themselves. You’re teaching them that it’s okay to fail and learn, and to keep trying. When you’re being supportive and demanding of your team at work, you’re helping them understand that you are behind them, and you have their back, but they need to pull their weight and perform. They believe that you believe they can do better. When you’re supportive and demanding of yourself, you forgive yourself when you make mistakes, you learn from those mistakes, and you challenge yourself to do better next time. You have faith in yourself that you can do better.

The Supportive and Demanding Grid

In the book Grit, Angela Duckworth gives us an illustration of a four-box grid, similar to the below. The idea being that if you’re living in the “supportive and not demanding” box, you’re being too permissive and not expecting enough. If you’re in the “demanding and not supportive” box, you’re not providing enough emotional support to lighten your demands. If you’re in the “not supportive or demanding” box, you’ve basically checked out and may not be as engaged as you might need to be.

Being in the supportive and demanding box means you have found (or are in the process of finding) a good balance between providing support and emotional help, and having high standards that you encourage others to meet. You’re clear about expectations, and you develop an environment where the people around you feel like you’re supporting them as they work to improve, but also that you have faith in them. They know that you know they can do better.

How it Relates to You

In all of this, I think it’s clear what the benefits are to adopting this style as a leader or a parent. What I don’t think we should overlook is how important it is to give this same grace to ourselves. We did a whole theme about self-compassion a couple months ago, and this fits in well with that. When you’re being supportive and demanding of yourself, you’re practicing self-compassion. You’re forgiving yourself of your mistakes, and you still hold yourself accountable for achievement. You still have high standards for yourself.

If you’re like me, you may tend to treat others better than you treat yourself. We tend to be more likely to extend grace and forgiveness to others, and many times neglect to extend it to ourselves. We may tend to give up when it gets hard, thinking that “we’re not meant to do that thing”, whereas we might hold someone else accountable for pushing through and achieving anyway. By being both supportive and demanding to ourselves, we can take good care of ourselves while still holding ourselves to high standards. It doesn’t have to be just one thing or the other, it doesn’t have to be punishing or too permissive. It is possible to be both, and it will set you up for success!