finger pointing is a boomerang sport

Sometimes when I work with an organizational client, the situation has deteriorated. More often than not, there is already an assumption about who is to blame. I am asked to come in and ‘fix’ this person.

In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown says that we can have three responses to pain. We blame, we judge or we try to fix. All of these are attempts to protect ourselves from actually feeling the pain.

“We’re behind schedule because he doesn’t know what he is doing.”
“We are losing customers because she has poor people skills.”
“Our board is making noises about our being over budget; I am going to have to take over the hiring and firing for now.”
“I could solve this problem if only he would stop micromanaging me.”

“But they really are the problem,” you say. (And by the way, notice how the more you convince yourself of this, the problem grows from what this person is doing/not doing to who they are as a human being.)

They probably do have a role in the current situation. Chances are, so do you. And that is the pain that you are avoiding when you point fingers at employees, peers or a boss. You are avoiding the possibility that you have failed in some way. You are defending yourself against feeling the vulnerability that comes with responsibility and accountability. And quite frankly you are avoiding the pain of a complex systemic issue.

It is so much easier to identify a culprit and fix them or nix them.

None of us want to learn that we may have helped contribute to a culture in which people are competing against each other making it harder for the organization to succeed. We don’t want to face the fact that we may have shut down honest communication and limited creative problem solving. We don’t want to admit that we are trying to accomplish an impossible goal or working under unrealistic expectations.

You don’t need to be perfect to be a powerful leader. So be brave and feel the pain:

• Stop talking. Start listening. Talk individually to everyone involved. Ask lots of questions. What is working? What are our strengths? What are the challenges? What am I doing to help? What am I doing that is getting in the way? What do you see as the priority right now?
• Bring everyone together. Paint a collective picture of the challenge. Come to agreement about what you will all consider a successful outcome.
• Ask everyone to make public commitments (you too) about what you will stop doing, start doing or continue to do to ensure that you reach a successful outcome.
• Thank each other for their collaborative effort. Talk together about how you will hold yourselves accountable to the plan.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?