In previous articles, I have indicated that legitimate leadership based on the Care and Growth of subordinates is ultimately concerned with cultivating the accountability of the subordinate.
Often, you come across people who do not accept accountability even if the conditions under which they are being held accountable subscribe to the above criteria. In cases like this, you are dealing with a person who displays the behaviour of a victim. A victim is a person who fundamentally accounts for misfortune in their lives on the basis of what someone else does to them. They feel out of control and at the mercy of forces greater than themselves. Their attention is fundamentally structured around what they are going to get from someone else, rather than what they are doing for them.
It’s important to know that if you want something from someone else, that person’s ability to withhold what you want makes you a target for manipulation. They are strong and you are weak. They have control and you are under their control. Therefore, it means that you do not feel any sense of accountability for what is happening to you. You become reactive to the agenda that the other stipulates. In this sense the other person retains the initiative and the power and you feel like the victim in the situation.
Ultimately, responding to things in this way is a habit of thought. This habit will manifest in behaviour which may best be described as griping. Victims tend to gripe with great enthusiasm because it is a means whereby they disclaim any responsibility for what is happening to them.
Dealing with someone who is griping is essentially a counselling skill that is concerned with getting the griper to turn their gripe into a goal.
If you think about it carefully, there is little difference between a gripe statement and a goal statement. In fact, they would both refer to the same objective set of circumstances, except that the statement sounds like a gripe and the other sounds like a goal. For example, I may say that my gripe is that my marriage is failing. If I wanted to turn this gripe into a goal, I would say I want to save my marriage.
The goal statement is therefore not a solution. A solution, for example, would be to go and see a marriage counsellor. However, the intention of this process is not to provide the person with a solution to their problem since this only serves to underscore their helplessness. The aim should be to cultivate their accountability. If I say I am losing my marriage, then this condition of the loss of the marriage is being done to me. However, to say that my goal is to save my marriage then it becomes my project and therefore my accountability.
Typically, a conversation which is aimed at turning a gripe into a goal would go through four phases.
In the listening part of the conversation the aim is to understand what the person’s gripe really is. To do this successfully means to restrain the habit of the average manager to instantly provide a solution to the problem that the person is describing. To guard against this, it’s important to remember that this process is not concerned with providing solutions, it is concerned with cultivating accountability. It is therefore important to restrain the impulse to be Mr. Fix It and to allow the person to have their say. Understand that people often do not speak about that which is actually bothering them because they do not quite understand what is wrong. It is therefore important to be patient with this part of the process to all the root issue to become apparent.
The outcome of the listening part of the conversation is to establish a clear and unambiguous statement of what the problem is.
It is important to make sure that the exact same content that is in the gripe statement should be in the goal statement. For example, if my gripe is that I don’t earn enough money then my goal is to earn more money. As soon as the statement sounds like a solution, for example, to get a night job, then the aim of cultivating the accountability of the person is undermined.
The aim of the brainstorming part of the conversation is to establish an action plan whereby the person may achieve their goal. Typically, there would be three elements to this. Firstly, one would encourage the person to explore ways in which they could achieve this goal. The idea is to encourage both sensible and off-the-wall suggestions. Once you agree that all possible means to achieve this goal have been explored the next step would be to edit them order to identify those that would feasibly contribute to achieving the goal. The final step is to sequence the useful ideas into an action plan.
Having produced an action plan which would result in the griper achieving their goal, it is important to ask the person whether it is worth their while to follow the action plan in order to achieve the goal. It does not matter whether the person accepts the action plan or not, the overall aim of establishing their accountability for the situation that they are in has been established.
For example, if my goal is to save my marriage and in order to do this, I need be kind to the dog, stop drinking, take my wife to the movies and spend time with the kids. If I am asked whether it is worth my while to do these things and I say no, then what I am really saying, is that I have considered the price that I have to pay to save the marriage and I choose not to pay it. I am therefore accountable for the state that I am in.
