Many executives are relatively strong at taking responsibility,
especially in areas where others don’t. They stand up to be counted, assuming
risks that others won’t. However, they are often baffled when their
followers show an excessive and inexplicable fear of victimization. What
should leaders do to eradicate this bad habit that makes good people slip
into dependency and turns potential future leaders into weaklings?
Case: A corporate leader who I work with scratches his head in dismay.
His followers, who he hopes to grow into a new cadre of leaders have devolved
into victims-in-waiting. That is, they have learned an infantile,
super-sensitivity to perceived slights and imagined disrespect. He has
discovered that even his best attempts to make a difference are taken as
personal attacks. They have become professional victims.
According to the Urban Dictionary “professional victims” claim
victimization when things don’t go their way. They continually believe
someone is taking advantage of them. In his case, workers have taken to
attend meetings in a silent boycott, refusing to contribute anything more
than a minimum.
Truth be told, there is a certain kind of power to be gained from
convincing your (perceived) oppressors that you are their victim. At best, it
invites them to take responsibility in a new way as a result of seeing the
truth for the first time. When this happens, transformation can result as it
did in countries like the USA, India and South Africa.
However, at worst, being a victim can be just a form of
hostage-taking. Then, it becomes a nasty blame-game where the self-described
weak gain a scrap of leverage, usually by bullying those in power into
feeling guilty.
Unfortunately, in some companies there are a frighteningly large
number of staff members who act as professional victims. In your company, you
may know exactly who I am talking about. If you do, then go a step further
and ask yourself: “Is the diseased thinking spreading or shrinking?”
Use your answer to gauge how effectively your people are being led.
Ineffective leaders merely join the pity party, engaging in their own version
of professional victimhood. They may, for example, compare their current job
against prior roles they held in better companies, with better colleagues who
served better customers. This just makes the situation worse.
Effective leaders respond quite differently by taking the following
three steps.
1. Demonstrate By Example
Real leaders take responsibility at extraordinary levels, far beyond
the boundaries of space and time. For example, they may even take ownership
for what people do to each other. Or, they may assume responsibility for what
has happened in the past, under prior leadership, as if they were in charge
when it happened.
While others may think this is crazy behavior, it is actually
self-empowerment at its finest.
Leaders who are powerfully self-aware are not blind to what they are
doing and they don’t do it in secret. They actively create a context in which
they locate themselves as the cause of important results, positive or
negative. As they do so, one public step at a time, it’s noticeable that
something is different. This magic ingredient may be hard for others to
articulate, but leaders seize vacuums of responsibility to inspire others to
act.
2. Educate Followers
A few top leaders don’t just act differently, they teach this
exceptional behaviour to others at every opportunity. Sometimes, they have
developed their own language for what they do, using homegrown phrases such
as “taking one for the team.” Developing responsibility in others is a
critical part of their job and the key to a cultural transformation.
3. Share the struggle
A tiny handful go even further than teaching others. They take the
risk of sharing their personal struggle with new areas of responsibility. By
doing so, they show that it’s OK to be imperfect, giving staff real-time
insight behind the scenes of a leader’s transformation.
Unfortunately, most top executives are clueless about these three
steps. With low awareness, they are stunned when people avoid interacting
with them for fear of being victimized. They witness employees acting as
responsible adults in other areas of their lives (family, church and
community) and can’t understand why the workplace is so different.
Professional victims are perfectly capable of this dualism.
They can also be quite effective at converting others to their cause:
misery loves company. This means that leaders cannot just sit back and wait
for people’s mindsets to change – they won’t.
The solution is to be aware and active. If you are a leader, work on
the three skills listed above and make them part of your everyday way of
being. Leaders are only called forth when the stakes are high and success
will be impossible if you avoid this particular duty. It is hard, but
necessary.
Published : Jamaican Gleaner 12/2015
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Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based
Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. Missed a column?
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