Have you ever worked with someone you found incompetent or difficult? And have you ever felt a little strange or empty or maybe even jealous when that person does something right or receives accolades?
If so, why do you think you felt this way?
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe some part of you needs this person to be a screw up?
That in some strange way, you need them to fail, to justify some part of yourself?
In the book Leadership and Self Deception , this is called “the box.”
When we’re “in the box”, we don’t see the world clearly. Instead we filter what we see though a lens of self-preservation and self-justification.
Now, at this point you might be thinking something like “Stephen, you don’t get it, some of the people I have to work with really are dum-dums, complete jerks or are just impossible, and this has nothing to do with me or my perceptions - this is just reality.”
So, you may be totally correct. There are plenty of people out there that are just not great at their jobs. And it’s fine to think as much - it would be dishonest not to.
Where the trouble comes in is as soon as you need them to be bad to justify your own shortcomings, this is where the perception shifts. It’s fine to think someone is bad at their job - you may be right, and maybe it’s high time for this person to find a better fit - but, I’ve found in these cases, especially if you find yourself spending extra cycles thinking or stressing about them - it’s usually worth taking some time to do some introspection.
The thing to look out for here is when we use our dislike for them to validate ourselves or hide our own shortcomings, which is especially tempting when we’re on the same team working towards the same goal.
Why isn’t my team succeeding? Why didn’t we finish that sprint on time? Why didn’t we close that sale? Why aren’t we hitting our numbers? Why does everything feel like a disorganized mess? Why is taking us so long to complete X?
Oh, must be that person I don’t like.
This is the trap. This is the box. And it gets especially dangerous when we know that on some level we deserve some of the blame for the team’s problems. As soon as the rationalization becomes something like “Yeah, maybe I didn’t do so great, but this other person is the real reason we’re not succeeding”, that’s when the lie we tell ourselves becomes self-sustaining.
Our fates are now linked.
For me to remain good and blameless in my own eyes, the other has to be bad, they must be the real problem.
We become entangled with those we say we want nothing to do with.
This is the resistance, this is the box.
For me, in these situations I’ve found my red flag is that I feel resistance in the mundane. I find some part of myself wanting this person to be wrong on stuff that really just doesn’t matter.
And if I’m honest with myself, I’ll find some rather unpleasant answers to some pretty basic questions.
Am I trying to lift the team up or bring this person down in my thoughts and actions?
Do I really want this other person to succeed?
Am I behaving and acting and feeling in a way that will empower them to succeed? Or, is some part of me holding back?
Is some part of me resisting? If so, why am I resisting this person?
And of course, if I am feeling and acting in this way, this behavior will not go unnoticed. This is the final piece of the puzzle that makes this pattern so destructive, and a common way the pattern can spread and compound across a team or organization.
Our perceptions of others matter. People, even the ones we may not like, are not stupid. Leadership and Self Deception puts this really nicely:
“Given a little time, we can tell when we're being coped with, manipulated, or outsmarted. We can detect hypocrisy. We can feel the blame concealed beneath the veneers of niceness. And we typically resent it. In the workplace, for example, it won't matter if the other person tries managing by walking around, sitting on the edge of the chair to practice active listening, inquiring about family members in order to show interest, or using other skills they may have learned in order to be more effective. What you will know and respond to you is how that person is regarding us when doing those things.”
This is the basis of an unhealthy co-dependency the book appropriately calls “Collusion”, where the two people on each side of the relationship each use each other’s faults to justify or hide their own shortcomings, creating a compounding a cycle of blame that can only dig deeper and deeper until someone breaks the pattern.
So. How do we do that? How do we break the pattern? In chapter 20, the book points out a few approaches that seem reasonable, but don’t work:
1. Trying to change others
2. Doing my best to cope with others
3. Leaving
I found this bit incredible convicting, I’ve literally gone through exactly these steps, in exactly this order in some cases!
So why don’t these steps work?
Remember that when I’m “in the box”, a part of me actually needs the other person to be the very thing I say I don’t want. So trying to change the person or cope with them generally doesn’t work because I can’t have it both ways - my being is divided.
Leaving can work for a while, but if blaming others is really a way to deal with my own shortcomings, I’m certain to fall short again, and will likely fall into the same pattern, just with a new person to blame.
So what does work? How do we get out of the box?
Well, there’s really two layers to it. The first layer is simple: awareness. Once you’re aware of the pattern and the role you’re playing in it, you now have the power to observe it and consciously decide what to do about it - as beautifully put by psychiatrist Carl Jung:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Now, of course developing this self-awareness is not easy - I’m certainly no expert here and there’s a lot to say about it! One book I have found really powerful in this area is “Reboot” by Jerry Cologna. Sometimes it’s easy to see the traps we’re falling into, but other times they can be really really difficult.
The last piece of the puzzle is to just…stop.
Stop resisting this person. I know it sounds scary, I know that it may feel like things will come crumbling down if they have their way.
But trust me, it’s not as bad as you think.
Just stop. Give the other the grace to be a human just like you.
Once do, you will see things differently.
You will be free from the box.
It’s not all sunshine and roses when you’re out, the other may still be a difficult idiot, but you will see them and how they fit into the rest of the organization more clearly.
And most importantly you won’t need them to fail to justify your existence.
Your fates will no longer be linked.
You are free.
~
Stephen Welch
Charlotte, NC
February 2021