Hello and welcome. My name is Neil Godin and I’m your host here at This Week – a free service that brings you leadership and communication tips, tricks and tutorials every Monday – along with a call to action – to put that week’s insight, idea or skill into practice.
This week we introduce a concept that I call ‘The Victim Game’ – a life game that many (most?) of us play (unintentionally, of course) when we blame others for our problems.
Here’s an example… The scene is a diesel engine rebuilding plant where I was asked to conduct leadership training and coaching.
The challenge: One of the production supervisors – a new team leader on probation in that role – had a serious problem. A member of her team would not comply consistently with safety regulations around wearing protective goggles. “He complained that the goggles limited his peripheral vision and were more dangerous than not wearing any eye protection at all,” the supervisor told me.
Telling him ‘again and again’ was clearly not working
“I’ve told him again and again that not using goggles was not an option…that it’s for his own safety, and it’s both company policy and state law. He is the worst,” she added, “but I’m getting push-back from others as well – and I’m afraid that if I don’t get this handled it could cost me my promotion.”
I cautioned her that blaming her team member could get in the way of solving the actual problem – and told her about a concept that I call ‘The Victim Game.’ When we blame, I explained, we cast the other person in the role of ‘Villain’ – which automatically casts us in the role of ‘Victim.’ (You can’t have one without the other).
That’s a problem because the role of a victim is to suffer – not to solve. In fact, the most a victim can hope for is a ‘Hero’ – someone who will be sympathetic or may even go to bat for them. Meanwhile, the actual problem goes on and on – while the players fight it out over how to get – and how to avoid – compliance.
Nobody’s victim, nobody’s hero
Thankfully, the game is up the moment we decide not to play. When we choose to take responsibility – not for ‘causing’ the problem necessarily, but for ‘solving’ it – we immediately free ourselves to engage the other person in collaborative solution-making. Now we can attack the problem, not the person – and our team member, in turn, is now free to engage with us instead of being defensive.
Following our chat she asked the team member for his help in brainstorming possible solutions. Within minutes they came up with a plan, based on the brutally simple idea that there must be other protective eyewear out there that would do a better job. Then she approached the shop manager and volunteered to research product alternatives. As it happened their current vendor had an alternative in stock – a product that her team tested and approved – in advance this time – and agreed to switch out the product at minimal additional cost.
First bottom line: The problem was solved within days.
Buoyed by this success, she challenged herself to use the same approach with a number of other recurring issues that had been allowed to fester and interfere with her team’s performance. I provided her with coaching in how to use lateral thinking, brainstorming, negotiating and other solution-making skills, and away she went.
Second bottom line: She quickly earned a reputation as a highly effective problem-solver, initiator and facilitator –and these successes cemented her promotion. Taking responsibility had set her free.
Your call to action
This week let’s indulge in both consciousness-raising and solution-making. While I’ll take us deeper into the dynamics of the victim game in a future article here are a few suggestions and questions that you may find helpful now…
- First, pick a problem – any problem – but preferably one that repeats itself and involves another person, an issue you’ve been blaming that person for (either verbally or mentally)…something, petty or huge, that you’d really like to solve. Perhaps involving the leader of another team.
- Confront yourself: Have you been blaming instead of solving? Hint: If you’ve been suffering persistent feelings of annoyance, frustration, disappointment, and resentment, you’ve been blaming rather than solving. The same is true if you keep wishing that the other person would change on their own (and complaining when they don’t). (I know, I know. This is just common sense. But as I said throughout my career, and will repeat throughout this series: “If common sense was common practice, I’d be out of work.”)
- Be realistic about who owns the problem. If it affects your performance (and peace of mind), whose problem is it to solve?
- And, of course, now that you’ve thought about it, what’s your plan?
See you next week.
Neil
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