The Power of Responsibility: Moving Beyond Self-Blame

This is episode 302 of the Empowered Team podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome.

Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I am your host, Kari Schneider.

And today we're going to talk about.

This thing that I think gets really.

Confusing for a lot of people, but today we're going to distinguish it so that it will save you so much time and energy. And it is the difference between taking responsibility and self blame. Oh, my goodness. I see this so often because I think this is why it is because we, as achievers or overachievers or leaders, we want to make sure we're solving the problem, we're achieving the thing, we're going forward, we're continuing to make progress. And when something goes wrong, we want to know why. So if something goes wrong and we don't know what happened, we're looking for what happened. And oftentimes that can lead to finger pointing. Little bit of the blame game. Did that person follow through on what they were supposed to do? Did that person execute what they said they would? Maybe it's in a company environment, maybe it's in your family environment. What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? So when we look at this as leaders, we're trying to find where the problem came from without pointing a finger at someone and blaming them. But what we really want to do is create an environment of ownership, an environment of responsibility, and yet when we point at someone else, oftentimes that person can feel defensive. So in, in this particular scenario, we want to take this initial step of going, okay, what happened here? If we ask the question, what happened here? In a way that's very curious and we have this openness with our curiosity, this interest, this compassion with our curiosity. What happened here? The person that we're asking doesn't feel as pointed at. They don't feel perhaps accused. If what happened here is the question, then they feel more likely to open up and less likely to shut down or defend themselves. If we ask something like, why did this go wrong? Why did this happen? Most of us will immediately want to go well and give some answers. And giving the answers tends to build a defense. Building the defense tends to cause us to be separated more from the person that we likely want to connect with, whether it's a colleague, a boss, a co worker, whatever it is, whoever it is, a family member. When we're giving our reasons why, it's usually building A defense. So a question like what happened here? And it can be many other types of questions, that is the kind of thing that invites all kinds of collaborative conversation. Now, as if you're watching this video, you can see that I'm on site. I'm on a construction site. I'm on a beautiful Wycliffe Lodge, amazing site. So in this environment, there's lots of people that I'm working with, contractors who are coming on site. Paul and I are planning all kinds of things and things go wrong. Things don't happen on time, things don't happen when we thought they would. Something doesn't work the way we planned it to, and inevitably when we find out why, that helps us solve the problem. But when we're looking at the who's and blaming the who's, it tends to not solve the problem versus looking at, hmm, what happened here, what went on. Now, there's another element to this that I think is the most important underlying part of this, and it's this, is that we do the same thing with ourselves. We are looking for responsibility, but oftentimes with ourselves, instead of taking responsibility or taking ownership, we're often pointing the finger at ourselves and then self blaming. Now if you think of the previous example that I gave, where if we're looking at someone else and we end up saying to someone, why did you do this? Or why did this happen? If we do that and they start feeling really bad, we often back off. It's a really interesting thing. If someone feels really bad or we notice that we're making them feel bad, or we think they're making them feel bad, or however they think about it, they start to feel awful about the situation. We often back up and lighten, back off and lighten up. So consider that scenario. When we've blamed a loved one, we've blamed a colleague, and we've done so in a way that was a bit harsh, we might be upset or disappointed in what happened. That person then often brings on to themselves the feeling bad, oh, I, I did do this wrong or I really messed this up. They often bring that on themselves. Now, not every situation, not every person, not every work environment, but when people do that, the person who's looking for the ownership or looking for the accountability often will back off. So notice that dynamic, that's a human dynamic. It's a dynamic that's happened in family environments more times than anyone can count. So now take that dynamic and put it on yourself for a moment, because this is what we're doing so often. And it's such a waste of time and it's such a waste of energy. We're doing this blame game of ourself, this self blame, instead of taking responsibility, taking ownership, and it's such a huge difference. And it starts with that same question. If we were gently posing it to someone else, what happened here? What. What went on to create this situation? If we did that so compassionately towards ourselves, we create an environment where we can actually take responsibility without beating the crap out of ourselves for something that we did wrong. When we are blaming ourselves, making ourselves feel bad, beating ourselves up, we're in an environment where it's almost impossible to learn from the mistake because we've beat ourselves up so badly, we just never want to see that mistake again. We're going to avoid it at all costs, whereas there's actually a lesson to be learned from the mistake. But instead, if we're making ourselves so wrong, beating ourselves up, blaming ourselves, then we're going to want to avoid that thing ever again. Whereas there's probably some golden gems, some nuggets in that mistake that can really help us move forward in other ways that we can learn from, will help our future progress. But we'll never be able to see it. When we're busy self blaming, when we're busy pointing the fingers at ourselves and thinking, not even consciously thinking this, but maybe from a past pattern, but believing somewhere inside us that if we feel really bad about it, then somehow that's taking responsibility and it's not. Feeling bad about a mistake is not taking responsibility, seeing the mistake, owning the mistake is taking responsibility, feeling bad about it. To the extent that we're making ourselves wrong and feeling like we should feel bad about it, that doesn't help us move forward. The sooner we can recognize the mistake. Notice that, wow, I don't feel good about this at all. And then offer ourselves some grace, some lessons, some learning, some space to discover. That's when we can truly own it. It doesn't mean we're going to like what we did, it's not going to mean that we like the mistake, but it does mean that we're not spending the extra time making ourselves feel bad for the mistake. Now here's how it sounds in some of my clients, that was so stupid. Why did you do that? Now they don't speak these words out loud, but these are the thoughts that are going on. And sometimes in coaching environments, in consulting environments, we peel this back and these are the internal thoughts, these are the internal dialogues that are going on in the face of a mistake. And when that's going on, there's very little opportunity for learning. We're not going to learn if we are feeling awful about ourselves, if we're feeling unsafe, if we feel really awful in the situation. What we do learn is that we want to avoid that feeling. But that feeling is not the mistake. The mistake is a neutral thing. The mistake doesn't feel bad, the mistake doesn't make us feel bad. It's how we think about the mistake and how we think about ourselves. The fact that we might have done the mistake, that's the thing that's the problem. So responsibility taking, responsibility, taking ownership, being accountable, those things have nothing to do with blaming ourselves, making ourselves wrong, feeling worse about the thing because we made the mistake. And somehow that feeling worse is going to make it make us more responsible or make the thing that happened better. It never, never will. Feeling worse about something does not make it any better. So there is a point where when we can recognize it, that's when we can go, okay, how can I help myself move through this mistake? So I've already posed two really powerful questions. They seem so innocent, so simple. What happened here? If we can ask ourselves that, then the next question I ask, how can I move through this mistake? That question brought before, how can I fix it? How can I take responsibility? How can I move through this? Offers ourselves some space for okay, it doesn't feel good. Oh, okay. I, I don't like that I did this. So here's the question. Can you not like something that you did and still honor yourself, still love yourself, still take full responsibility? Pretty sure the answer is yes. Yes, we can take full responsibility and not like what we did. We can learn from something and not like our own behavior or not like the thing we messed up on. That is possible. We often don't believe it is in the moment, but it is possible. So I invite you to distinguish because I've had to do this so much. I used to beat myself up so badly. If I made any mistake I felt and then I'd I to compensate. What I would do is over compensate by over performing or overworking. I didn't want to make any mistake. I literally associated making those mistakes to being unloved. That's what I associated from my childhood. So I am sure that there are many of you out there, especially the overachievers, especially the hard workers, the go getters. There's many of you out there that believe that, hey, I need to feel bad about this because I messed up. Maybe not consciously but there's something in there that's promoting that kind of behavior. Where I invite you to hold space. It starts with something simple that allows for a little bit of curiosity, that has compassion. What happened here? H. Interesting. And then moving forward to how can I support myself through this, how can I work through this, how can I be with this right now? And then moving on to, okay, I'm responsible for this. I may not have liked what happened, I may not like what I did, and I know I can get through it, take responsibility and learn from it. So there you go. Distinguish for yourself. If something awful happened, a mistake, something you don't like. Distinguish between taking responsibility, which is not dripping with blame. Taking responsibility is ownership. It's accountability. And it is full, full, full of self support and self love. That's where the learning is going to come from. Beating yourself up, making yourself wrong. And self blame is not going to help actual responsibility. And the learning and accountability that come from it by you being able to be responsible, learn from it and go forward, that's what helps you in your future. It helps your relationship with other people and it helps the progress to your whatever that is, the next level, the direction you're going, it helps your progress. So I invite you to distinguish. Am I taking responsibility or am I just blaming myself and beating myself up? Distinguish between the two. Maybe you're somewhere in between and you're in that zone where you're starting to learn how to have some self support, some learning from the situation and some grace in the situation. All right everyone, I hope this serves you. It's a quick nugget. It was on my heart and I felt like I wanted to share this because someone might need to hear this right now. If you know someone who needs to hear it, by all means means pass it on. I wish for you a wonderfully responsible day that's full of adventure, fun and empowerment. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Have a fantastic week. I'm rooting for you.

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