Is it better to be liked or respected?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that you need both, together. He cites the Zohar: love and awe are “two friends that must never part.” A man who is only liked, he warns, “will end up being not feared and not liked.”
The respect he means is not fear of a tyrant. A good man “is not feared like a tyrant, he's feared like a mountain, unmovable, trusted.” He is “built on boundaries, spine, strength.”
Chasing only to be liked comes from fear of rejection, and it doesn't even work. So his advice is to stop chasing approval altogether: “start building a soul people can lean on.”
Related concepts: The influence you already have · Purpose
In A Soul at Peace: Awe That Leads to Love
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Love and awe must go together.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
Wanting only to be liked leads to bending and folding, and ends in being neither liked nor respected.
Deepest human truth
People lean on a man who is steady like a mountain.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Purpose, Character, and Masculine Leadership · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz