For some people, the thought of having haters is as fascinating as wondering about life on other planets. And just as pointless. (Curiously, people respond to or talk about their haters, but they rarely block them.) What’s to gain from obsessing about it? My point of view is this: We need to stop hating on our haters. Without them, we probably would not ever come close to achieving our full potential, much less greatness. That’s right, I said it. If you want to be great and do great things, be grateful for haters—you need them.

Have the courage to ask yourself: Could my haters be right? What do they see that my supporters don’t—or do, but don’t have the guts to say? Those who openly oppose you are often the ones who see you most clearly. Just because someone is envious of you, disagrees with you or does not like you does not necessarily mean that their views are totally inaccurate and that you have nothing to learn from them.

In fact, my experience has shown just the opposite. It’s mostly my haters, not my friends, family or “peeps,” who refused to pretend I looked good in that $100 suit, that my presentation skills didn’t suck or that my writing was genius. Friends are full of dishonest approval—they’ll tell you what makes you feel good. After all, they don’t want to discourage you, hurt your feelings or get you mad at them. Haters are far more honest in their criticism than your supporters are in their praise.

That’s why it’s important to be mature enough to listen—not necessarily agree, but truly listen—to your haters. Being able to sift through people’s envy and bad intentions toward you for the valuable truths in their criticism is often a key to greatness—and sometimes even survival. Because, as much as we hate to admit it, sometimes the haters are right. The truth is, haters are good at pointing out our weaknesses precisely because they are being critical—unlike our supporters, they are looking for our flaws. Allowing your haters to point out your vulnerabilities is a great way to address them before they can be exploited.

So, I’ll take honest criticism over dishonest approval every time. You can always disagree with honest criticism. And it can help you keep your game tight. But too much dishonest approval will have you busted, disgusted, alone, unemployed and/or incarcerated. I’ve seen far more people done in by those who blindly approve of everything they say and do, than I’ve seen get destroyed by their critics. Haters can’t really hurt you unless you let them. But being surrounded by people cosigning on everything you do can literally get you killed.

But here’s the real reason you should be grateful for your haters: They will never just admit you’re right, you’re wonderful, you’re better than they are; they’ll force you to prove it. The need to prove haters wrong has always been a far more powerful motivator than the desire to justify the faith of supporters. It’s not our most loyal fans, but our most hated rivals who drive us to bring our A games and force us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. For those of us who truly want to be the best at what we do, it’s our haters, not our supporters, who are more likely to motivate us to put in the 10,000 hours of practice Malcolm Gladwell says is necessary to achieve mastery in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. We let our fans (family, friends, even ourselves) down all the time. But we’ll be damned if we’ll let our haters see us at less than our best. Your fans may support and sustain you. But it’s your haters that force you to put up or shut up. And your haters are usually far more reliable than your fans are.

That’s why champions grow to respect their “haters.” They’ve learned that you can’t achieve greatness without them. Shepherd boy David needed Goliath and the Philistines to become King David. Muhammad Ali needed Joe Frazier and George Foreman to become the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of all time.) Michael Jordan and the Bulls needed Patrick Ewing and the Knicks (and especially their true haters, Knick fans). And you can’t convince me that Venus and Serena Williams would have all of those Grand Slam titles if the tennis world had welcomed them with open arms. By the way, these examples prove that appreciating what your haters have to say does not mean you should surrender to them. In fact, the best way to show you appreciate your haters is to hear them out, using their criticisms to identify and correct your weaknesses and get you focused and fired up to whip that a—ahem—win, anyway.

“Alfred, do you have a lot of haters?,” someone asked me on Twitter the other day. I’m sure I do, though I have no idea how many or even who most of them are. All I know is I’ve learned some of my best lessons at the hands of people I considered to be some of my toughest haters. Some of them may have really hated me. Still others were truly jealous and wanted to bring me down. Others may have actually thought they were doing me some good. No matter what their motivation, I’ve learned to value my opposition and to be open to their criticisms. I’d rather have real haters than fake fans.

So go ahead. Call out your haters. But don’t say it like it’s a bad thing. Get past their motives and how they say what they say. Focus on the content of their message and try to see what they see. And don’t be so obsessed with haters that you become one yourself. Because some of y’all on Twitter and Facebook really just need to let it go and get a life. Not trying to hate. I’m just saying.

Now, where my hatas at?

Be sure to read this related content…

• Is It Constructive Feedback or Hating?
• 4 Ways to Give and Take Criticism

I’ve had a passion for this specific kind of challenge long before I was aware of it, and I believe it is a gift from God (one of the talents the Master entrusted to me to manage, develop and invest until He returns). For example, I’ve always been a mediocre basketball player, even though I like to play. When I played pick-up basketball as a teen at my neighborhood playground in Long Branch, N.J., I developed a knack for choosing teammates who could compensate for my lack of skill—instinctively taking into consideration attitude as well as talent and ability. My teams could hold the court all day, despite a significant liability—namely me. I now remember that if I was on a losing team that was not of my choosing, I’d feel bad (I don’t like to lose). But if a team I personally selected lost, I’d be furious, more at myself than at my teammates. I did not recognize that pattern until I grew older, but I now recognize that I’ve always instinctively known that a team is far more than the sum of its members, and that if you could put the right people together and motivate them properly, they could do amazing things, despite apparent or perceived disadvantages.

Similarly, my lifelong love of pro football has never been about individual athletes. I’ve always been obsessed with the question of why, in a league of teams with the same access to talent, money and resources—with parity—certain teams consistently win (Giants, Patriots, Cowboys, Steelers), certain teams consistently lose (Lions, Raiders, Falcons, Cardinals, Saints), and certain teams are consistently inconsistent, winning a respectable number of games (Chargers, Browns, Bills, Chiefs), but rarely championships. It’s why I have few favorite players, but I am fascinated by the likes of Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Bill Parcells, Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Tony Dungy, etc.—people who know how to build winning organizations of winning people.

I see everything in these terms. Anyone who knows me knows that I love superhero comic books. My favorites are the ones about teams of superheroes working together (Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Blood Syndicate, etc.), not individual heroes like Superman or Spiderman. In fact, it dawned on me the other day that leading the staff of Black Enterprise magazine (an honor I enjoyed for 13 years) was like leading The Avengers: a team of polished, experienced, exceptionally talented professionals operating as part of a long-established and esteemed tradition of excellence. My new team at BlackEnterprise.com is more like the X-Men: a group of gifted individualists of prodigious potential who are often in conflict with one another, and must be taught how to use their abilities productively and operate as a team. My challenge is to help them see past their differences by getting them focused on a common ideal and vision. (I’ve already identified, in my mind, a Wolverine, a Jean Grey, and a Rogue on my team.) I’ve taken to thinking of Derek Dingle, who succeeded me as editor-in-chief of our magazine in July of 2008, as Captain America, and seeing myself as Professor X.

The point of all this is: I passionately believe that organizations can win without exceptional talent, but talent—even extraordinary talent—cannot win outside of a winning organization. It’s my job to build that organization, to take that talented group of individuals and create and maintain a winning—and yes, heroic—team, one that will consistently do special, amazing, important things. Black Enterprise—the very definition of a winning organization—has always afforded me the opportunity to do this over my two-decades-plus tenure at the company. And that’s exactly what I love.

Alfred Edmond Jr. is the editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com