In my experience, there is a fine line between stubbornness and persistence. I have learned from personal experience that, at times, being stubborn was the only way that I could turn what I thought was a good idea into reality. It was stubbornness that made me persevere. It was stubbornness that helped me to stand my ground when everyone else was trying to tell me I was wrong. So, I believe that stubbornness can be a great leadership quality—with the substantial condition, that is, that you are right in what you are stubborn about. In some circumstances, stubbornness can turn into a major determinant of success.
Stubborn people know what they want, and often tend to be more decisive and determined than others. They have a greater focus. Furthermore, they get things done. Qualities like vision, action orientation, grit, resilience, and persistence are derivatives of stubbornness. We might even argue that perseverance is stubbornness with a purpose.
To me, a great example of stubbornness is the French President Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970). De Gaulle was stubborn about his goals, but flexible about his methods. He refused to admit defeat after France was overrun by Germany in World War II. Determined as he was about this mission—in spite of being up against overwhelming odds—he knew how to persuade the French that they would ultimately prevail. Having an unwavering belief in the greatness of his country helped him to turn his vision into reality. Again, after the war, through his determination, he managed to secure a permanent seat for France at the United Nations, authorized an independent nuclear deterrent for the country, and made sure that France played a major role in post-war Europe, turning it into a highly respected, global player.
In the case of Charles de Gaulle, stubbornness became a blessing. Unfortunately, there are not many stubborn great men of his ilk. This is because there is a fine line between constructive stubbornness and obstinacy. There is also a very narrow gap between stubbornness and stupidity. Some people have a tendency to get stuck on early evidence and refuse to budge. They are impervious to subsequent, relevant information. But this way of looking at things can have a very detrimental impact on interpersonal, group, and inter-group relationships. People will stand their ground for the wrong reasons.
When there is overwhelming evidence that you are wrong, but you still insist on doing things your way, it is questionable whether you are doing the right thing. In such situations, it’s high time to ask yourself what motivates you to dig your heels in. What is happening in your inner world that makes you persist in acting apparently irrationally and detrimentally?
When we have to deal with stubborn people, we shouldn’t be fooled by outside appearances. These people may seem invincible but there is a great difference between a strong person and a stubborn person. I have seen over and over again that although stubborn people may give the impression of strength and power, it is only a façade. Often, stubbornness appears to be the strength of the weak. If you dig a little bit deeper, you may discover that behind the façade, these people turn out to be insecure. Despite their external bluster, their inner world is haunted by unexpected demons. Contrary to appearances, they are making a heroic effort to hold on to very fragile mental equilibrium. Often, the least secure people will behave in the most dogmatic ways. Truly strong people know how to compromise, when necessary.
Every new situation is a threat to stubborn people. They are often fearful of change, which explains the rigidity that characterizes much of their behavior. At an unconscious level, given their delicate mental equilibrium, attempts to change their mind are equated with personal attacks on the self. This is why they are always on their guard, lashing out at anyone who tries to question their ideas. Admitting they could be wrong is non-negotiable. Instead of accepting new information, or that someone else could be right, they prefer to argue in defense of their original point of view. And once these stubborn people have made up their mind, they are unlikely to budge, even when faced with overwhelming evidence that they are wrong. They put psychological mechanisms in place to preserve their particular Weltanschauung and keep things the way they want them to be. The poet John Milton gave Satan this stubbornness in Paradise Lost . His Satan delights in having “A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time,” and determines that it is “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n!”
Confirmation Biases
In persisting in their faulty beliefs, stubborn people become prisoners of their own assumptions. Their insecurities make them ideal candidates for confirmation biases1—the tendency to process information only in ways consistent with their existing belief system. In such situations, pre-existing beliefs will interfere in the way they think, make decisions, and take actions. Due to their inflexible, fixed patterns of thought, their ability to form a more objective and nuanced picture of what’s going on around them is limited. Apparently, the eye sees only what the mind is prepared to see.
But as I suggested before, beneath this pattern of stubbornness you often find deeply vulnerable people. Their oppositional behavior should be looked at as a form of compensation for feelings of inadequacy. Because they are so insecure, it is hard for them to back down and admit they were wrong or made a mistake. Backing down is interpreted as losing, being humiliated, and being diminished as a person. Conversely, insisting that they are right helps protect their fragile sense of self and protects them from feeling inferior.
Power Games
Stubbornness also touches on the dynamics of power. When stubborn people perceive a threat to what they stand for—whether it is their dignity, honor, or pride—they may resort to power games in which there are only winners and losers. These emotionally charged matters become intertwined with stubbornness, making them even more likely to hang on to mistaken decisions. The novelist Somerset Maugham captured this exactly in his description of one of his characters: “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” Often, the theme that guides stubborn people is, “If I weaken, people will walk all over me.” But trying not to appear weak only worsens the situation. Stubbornness becomes a self-defeating exercise.
Transforming Stubbornness into Dogma and Ideology
Given their desire for closure , stubborn people cling to simplified ideas to make sense of what happens around them, even if the ideas they hang on to are inaccurate or incomplete. They don’t understand cognitive complexity; they are poor at perceiving subtle nuances and differences. Other people are quickly categorized as “good” or “bad,” depending on whether or not they agree with their ideas. They prefer simplistic, absolutist, all-or-nothing thinking, with no gray areas of uncertainty or disagreement. They are often prejudiced and resort to stereotyping.
Given stubborn people’s close-mindedness, this behavior pattern comes to full fruition when it involves religions, ideologies, political philosophies, economics, and wellness issues. Embedded opinions in these areas are the hardest to change, as they are more subject to personal judgment and idiosyncratic interpretation. Often, these people will clung to miraculous outcomes, defying rational thought, even though there may have been a psychological rationale behind their way of thinking.
People’s stubbornness can lead to the endurance of enormous opposition and numerous setbacks in the quest to remain faithful to a set of principles bound up with feelings of self-worth. They willfully ignore any fact that does not support their particular ideological principle, as their belief system has become the primary source of their self-validation. Bending these core principles is seen as a betrayal of what they are all about.
Being Oppositional as a Survival Strategy
Some of you may be a mystified why people turn out to be so stubborn. But like most behavioral problems, it helps to look at the origins of stubbornness, which is usually a reaction to underlying emotional issues. Prevailing parenting practices can have a deep and sustained influence on a child’s personality, and a great deal of what makes people stubborn is learned behavior.
I have seen many times that the way parents act vis-à-vis the developing child can either minimize stubborn behavior patterns or contribute to more adaptive ways of behaving. “Good enough” family and parenting interventions create the foundation of a healthy personality with positive self-esteem, a high level of self-acceptance, and self-confidence.2 In contrast, imperfect parental skills can contribute to dysfunctional behavior patterns and create the foundations of stubbornness.
Generally speaking, the leitmotif of stubborn people is to resist any situation in which they feel forced to do something against their will. They are responding to a deeply rooted need to be individuals in their own right and have control over their lives. However, as the example of Charles de Gaulle reminds us, oppositional behavior shouldn’t always be considered negative. For some people, stubbornness evolves into perseverance, not to mention other successful leadership qualities.
We can look at oppositional behavior as a defining pattern at a certain stage in child development and part of the natural process of individuation, the period when children try to differentiate themselves from their parents, recognizing that they are not merely an extension of their parents but separate entities. This mind-opening experience makes them want to exert more control over their world and to feel more independent.
We should also realize, however, that most people keep this oppositional behavior within reasonable bounds. Their childish stubbornness transforms into constructive behavior patterns such as perseverance, the determination not to give up easily. But in situations of family instability and high levels of stress—which contribute to insecure parent–child attachment patterns—oppositional behavior can become a child’s customary way of attracting attention. It becomes part of its identity.
In short, we should keep in mind that for stubborn people, oppositional behavior is their way of rebelling against anyone in a position of authority and preventing them from telling them what to do. It becomes their way to exert more authority, to be in command, to play a winning hand. It becomes a major thread running through their lives: “If I don’t win, others will find out how weak and vulnerable I am.”
If this character trait is assigned to children by their parents, this specific behavior pattern becomes even more intensified. They internalize statements like, “You’re as stubborn as mule, just like your uncle”; or “You remind me of your grandmother, she was stubborn, too.” From a learning perspective, regular attribution contributes to internalization. It becomes part of their identity—a negative one at that. No wonder that the dominant mantra for many of these people is “I won’t, therefore I am.”
Dealing with Stubborn People
You may have learned from this discussion that stubborn people have adopted a maladaptive strategy to maintain their sense of self-worth. Troubled by a host of insecurities, they have misconceptions about how to value themselves, others, and life in general. This makes them very difficult people to deal with. It is hard to interact with people who always need to be right, for whom to be proven wrong is interpreted as an attack on the essence of who they are.
But because stubbornness contributes to conflict, some of these people might want to change. In most instances, however, trying to change by themselves is going to be hard. And it should be said that in spite of their manifest willingness to change, it is difficult to help people who do not really listen and constantly push back. They are really in two minds about changing. Thus, to be effective, any potential helper—whether a significant other, family member, friend, colleague, or professional advisor—had better possess a solid dose of empathy.
Because stubborn people think poorly of themselves, helpers need to understand the story behind their stubbornness. Understanding where they come from will be the first step in helping them change. Digging deeper may help them discover some of the experiences that led to their stubbornness, to recognize that stubbornness is a survival mechanism to cover up vulnerability and maintain their psychological equilibrium.
As stubbornness has been their major strategy when dealing with others, stubborn people will not give it up easily. It is a game they have been playing all their life and they have become quite good at it. Thus, even when stubborn people realize how self-defeating their behavior is—how they have gotten stuck in these private rituals—they will be reluctant to accept that the game is over.
I’ve had considerable experience of dealing with stubborn people and I can say with certainty that if you want to help them, you need to be very careful how you go about it, not least because of their aversion to control. Stubborn people should never feel that others are trying to control them or force ideas on them (even in their best interests). I usually resort to a form of emotional judo. You need to go with the flow and control the impulse to oppose them; you should never move directly against their defenses.3 Whatever resistances stubborn people put up—and however irritating they may be—you should try to remain empathic. Arguing with stubborn people will not pay off. They are virtuosos at constructing arguments. Telling them directly that they are wrong is a very bad idea. But if you keep your cool—and listen carefully to what is being said—it is possible that stubborn people will become less argumentative.
Given stubborn people’s vulnerable mental equilibrium, you have to be extremely careful not only about what to say but also when to say it. And when the time is right to present a different opinion, it should be done very respectfully. If this exercise in emotional judo is done correctly, stubborn people may give your point of view some thought, even though they initially reject it. Most importantly, you need to understand that the only way stubborn people will change is if they believe that the change is their own idea.
In many instances, given the many unconscious dynamics at play, professional help is recommended. But to be helped, to start with, stubborn people need to want to be helped. People can change but only if they are prepared to explore why they do what they do and discover different ways to deal with life. But stubborn as they are, getting them decide to do something about their way of thinking will never be a walk in the park.
However, stubborn people will profit from becoming more aware of the underlying issues behind their compulsion to hang on to specific ideas and persist in self-destructive behavior patterns. If they achieve a modicum of understanding about why they do what they do, there is a possibility that they will decide to let go of some of their rigid attitudes. Through psychotherapy or executive coaching, they may come to recognize that being argumentative or aggressive has become their chosen defensive strategy to compensate for feelings of inadequacy. And they may also come to realize how it has complicated their lives.
If I am able to establish a working alliance and find ways to support their sense of self-worth, I can help diminish a stubborn person’s need for argumentation. I may help them learn to appreciate the value of looking at issues from different perspectives; they may even start to appreciate ambiguity. Also, they may discover that a defensive strategy that was quite effective at one point in their life has become outmoded and ineffectual. They may learn to unlearn old defense mechanisms, and to replace them with new, more constructive ones.
However, developing a more stable sense of self-worth is never a quick fix. It takes a lot of time and patience to open a closed mind. It takes a great deal of effort to persuade people that there are other ways to deal with the vicissitudes of life. The hope is, however, that stubborn people will realize that although the world is full of individuals who think they are right, the secret of a person’s strength and pathway to greatness is the ability to admit when they have made the wrong decision. Also, they would be wise to recognize that ideology always drives out creativity. Furthermore, they should ask themselves what the sources of their seemingly irrational behavior patterns are. Stubborn people need to move beyond their fixed beliefs, ignorance, and pride. They need to be prepared to take a journey into themselves to explore the origins of their behavior. They need to recognize that stubbornness without reflection is nothing more than plain stupidity.