1: Fred Kofman was writing. So was his wife. Who was sitting next to him.
She asked him if he wanted something to drink.
“Yes,” I told her, he recalls in his book The Meaning Revolution. “Some soda water, thank you.”
“Right away, as soon as I send this e-mail,” she responded.
As Fred waited for her to get him a drink, he “felt a deeper sense of thirst and a tinge of frustration. . . I was stuck in my chair, feeling sorry for myself.”
Then, he had a realization. He was blaming his wife for the fact that he felt thirsty. “I thought, If I’m thirsty and want water right at this moment, why don’t I get up and get the water myself?”
Which is what he did. When he returned, his wife asked him, “Why didn’t you wait for me to finish?”
“I explained my victim mindset,” he recalls, “and my need to get myself out of it. I let her read this paragraph, and we both had a good chuckle.”
Imagine a project is running late. One thing we might hear is: “The project was too hard. There were too many difficulties, and nobody helped us.”
There is, of course, a different response: “The project was challenging and we didn’t know how to deal with those challenges effectively,” Fred writes. “We failed to ask people for help in a way that would elicit their commitment. And we were so focused on finishing on time that we didn’t let people know of the delay with enough time to minimize the disruptions we caused.”
“Response-ability” is the power to choose our response. We are free to choose how we respond.
“Most people define freedom as the ability to do whatever they want,” Fred observes. “They want to be ‘free from’ constraints. This kind of freedom depends on factors beyond their control. Freedom does not mean doing what you want without limitations or consequences. Such ‘freedom’ is an impossible fantasy.
There is, however, a different type of freedom: Not “free from.” But “Free to.”
“True freedom is our capacity to respond to a situation by exercising our conscious will,” Fred writes. “This is our birthright. True freedom is a basic feature of human existence. We always have the power to respond to situations as we choose. We cannot make reality different than it is or choose whether our actions will be successful. But we can choose the response most consistent with our goals and values.”
And, when we act with this type of freedom, we inspire others to do so as well. “Within our organization and beyond,” he notes. “A transcendent leader exemplifies the power of conscious choice in a way that empowers the whole organization to exercise it.”
2: We can choose how we show up in life as a “victim” or a “player.”
“A victim pays attention exclusively to factors he cannot influence, seeing himself as passively suffering the consequences of external circumstances,” Fred writes. “The victim wants to avoid blame and claim innocence. Since he believes he has nothing to do with the problem, he doesn’t acknowledge that he’s contributed to it or can contribute to solving it.
“When things go wrong, the victim seeks to place blame on anybody or anything but himself. Consequently, since he is not part of the problem, he cannot be part of the solution.
“For the victim, life is a spectator sport. His favorite place is on the sidelines, not the field. He loves to criticize those who are in the game. But his opinions crowd out his actions.
“This makes him feel safe because, although he can do nothing to help his team, he cannot be blamed when his team loses. He tends to blame the players, the coach, the referees, the opponents, the weather, bad luck, and everything else.
“Although his explanations may be technically correct, they are disempowering, What he blames, he empowers.”
Why do people adopt this victim mindset? Because we want to escape being blamed.
“We want to look good, to project an image of success,” Fred notes, “or at least to avoid the blemish that comes with failure. Victimhood is an attempt to cover up our failures so that we look more capable than we really are. Whether or not we like to admit it, many of us depend on other people’s approval. Thus, we expend a great deal of energy building an “unblamable” public identity. . .
“Victimhood is like a drug that simultaneously relaxes and excites us,” he writes. “It relaxes us because whatever has happened is not our fault. It excites us because we feel that we have the right to blame others.”
The problem with this approach?
“The victim story prevents us from learning,” Fred suggests. “As long as our problems are not our fault, we tend to wait for others to change or solve them. As a leader and as a player, we need to ask ourselves what we need to learn in order to better respond to the situation or to better avoid this situation in the future. . .
“The righteous indignation of the innocent victim is as addictive as heroin. But it stops us from looking in the mirror and asking ourselves: What do I need to do in order to stop cocreating this?”
3: There is a different way to show up in life. We can choose to see ourselves as a Player.
“Leaders are players,” Fred writes. “The player pays attention to the factors she can control. She doesn’t deny that there are many things over which she has no power, but she chooses not to focus on these things, precisely because she cannot control them. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by external circumstances, she sees herself as someone who can respond to them. Her self-esteem is founded upon doing her best, expressing her values, and learning how to be ever more capable.” How does a player respond when something happens outside of her control? “She chooses self-empowering explanations that put her in control,” Fred says.
“If we want to be a part of the solution,” she reasons, “we have to see ourselves as a part of the problem. Unless we recognize our contribution to a bad situation, we won’t be able to change that situation. . .
“The player does not feel omnipotent, but she faces challenges squarely and realistically and manages her emotions with equanimity,” he notes. “The player always describes herself as a significant part of her problems. She is willing to take the hit of accountability because it puts her in the driver’s seat.
“Because players feel empowered, they carry themselves and speak with a moral authority that inspires confidence in others. And the choices they make—even when the outcome isn’t perfect—pay off in one way or another down the road.
“By behaving in a response-able way, they bring an extra measure of goodness into their lives and the lives of those who follow their lead.”
So when bad things happen, and bad things will happen, rather than asking, “Who screwed up?” “Who wronged me?” “What should they have done instead?” “Who should pay?,” we can ask what we can do to solve the problem or prevent it from happening in the future.”
Fred writes: “The truth is that each of us contributes to a bad situation. We are all response-able for finding a way to make things right. It will be much easier to address the situation if all those involved become players and acknowledge their contributions.”
He calls this mindset “200 percent responsibility.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Think of a recent situation where things went wrong. How did I respond? Was I the victim or the player?
Action: Journal about the situation and our response. Is there anything I would have done differently?
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