117: Why Learned Helplessness Holds Teams Back and Is the Opposite of Accountability

So if you feel like you're constantly racking your brain on how to get your team to be more accountable or how to coach people to accountability, you might benefit from learning about the opposite of accountability, which is learned helplessness. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast. I'm Alex Dorr, CEO at Reality-Based Leadership, and this is the podcast where we help you ditch the drama, Build Accountability in Your Teams and Call Those You Lead to Greatness. And I want to get right into it today because building accountability in your teams is probably the thing that most leaders are always asking for when I come in for keynotes and workshops. They've had 100 talks on it. They think they have things in place to hold people accountable, and then they're not quite there. Or it works for a while, and then all of a sudden it gets loosey-goosey. And so how do you start to build that in your culture and in your coaching and your teams? Well, this episode looks at part of that is understanding the opposite of accountability. And I've learned in my life, sometimes understanding the exact opposite of what you're looking for can help you see it when it's really not there, or when it's starting to not be there. So then you can stop it as it's drifting that way and get it back on track. And that's what learned helplessness is all about. And this is, you know, it's like a psychological phenomenon, and it's super studied in psychology, is when you basically come into a mindset and you start to believe that your actions no longer have impact on your outcomes, or you think, why try anyway? Because it doesn't matter anyway. And learned helplessness is a vicious cycle because what happens is we get poor results, so we make half-hearted attempts, and then we get bad results again, and then we go, see, I'm right that I shouldn't have tried much anyway because it doesn't matter. And this is where that vicious cycle starts. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you can imagine, because I go half in, half out to try and improve or fix that thing that's not working. And then because of that half-hearted effort, when I get those poor results, it just reinforces that there's nothing you can do about it anyway in my mind, and I'm stuck. And as this keeps solidifying and calcifying It can spread to others, and it really becomes a tough thing to navigate. And when we think about a high state of accountability, first of all, accountability is a mindset, not a skill set. And it's this core belief that we can have impact in a situation regardless of the circumstances. So if you go with that definition, when you think of learned helplessness, it's the belief I can't have impact and it doesn't matter anyway. They really are the opposites. And one of the things I've realized doing reality-based leadership work and speaking and training and coaching is that all of reality-based leadership, all of the research I do, all the work we're doing is essentially trying to pop teams out of learned helplessness when it happens in big and small ways. Like when you're in your lowest self, when you're toggled down, when you think there's nothing you can impact, and you're at the mercy of your circumstances, and it's due to other people, it's due to resources, systems, circumstances, and I can't have any impact. You're getting there. You're getting towards learned helplessness. And that mindset is where disengagement happens, frustration, depression, like literally hopelessness happens. And that, I think we can all argue for this podcast, that is not where we want you to be. It's not where you want me to be. It's not where we want our teams to be. So how do you Look at learned helplessness and quickly move beyond it if it's so important. So let's go a little bit deeper before techniques to show why this even exists or where it comes from and why in psychology it's seen so much. And some of the examples I've heard, you see them in the animal kingdom. So if you can indulge me for a second, I got this mug here for my listeners, just a coffee mug. And let's say it's empty. For my viewers on YouTube, you can see it here. And let's say you're going to put fleas in this mug. So, you put fleas in there. Fleas can jump 10 feet in the air. They're just going to jump out. There's really no obstacle. This is an easy escape for them. Like, that's an easy one. Now, let's say you put a lid on this mug and they can breathe. There's a little hole so they can breathe. Well, those fleas are going to still jump because they can jump 10 feet in the air, but then they're going to start to realize like, oh, this is kind of annoying, and they hit their backs or their heads. And after a couple of weeks, what happens in this experiment is they only jump right below that line. And now you can take the lid off after those few weeks. And guess what? They stay at that line and still in the mug. Now, are they capable of jumping out? Absolutely. But are they even trying? No. They've fallen into learned helplessness. They now believe their actions jumping no longer has impact on their results. So why try anyway? Now, what's fascinating about this particular experiment is these fleas. They fall in love like a lot of us. They have little flea babies. And guess what those same flea babies do? They only jump right below that line. They have fallen into learned helplessness. They have followed the behaviors of others, and they have the limitation in their heads that actually isn't there for them either because they're physically capable of jumping out. And so this is— I think about when new hires come in and they're looking at a process and they're like, that is pretty clunky. I mean, you mean to find that in the system, I have to Snort 3 times, do the armpit fart, and then Beetlejuice. I have to say that 3 times, and all of a sudden it pops out of the system. That's how, you know, Ed set it up in the system. Is there a better way to do that? And then someone goes, oh, that particular problem there, nobody brings that up. Like, don't, don't bring that up again. We're not going to deal with that. That just is too unfigureoutable. It's that idea where now they've fallen into learned helplessness. That's a part of the system that we don't touch and we don't even investigate. And so, this starts the onboarding cycle of learned helplessness. And every organization, even if they're amazing, if they're not intentional with these beliefs, there will be common phrases and forms of learned helplessness that become beliefs that hold us back. And eventually, the lack of accountability. And another example that I find so fascinating is if you can imagine, there was this container where they had 5 monkeys that were able to go up this ladder and get these bananas. And monkeys love bananas. It was right there. And what they did in this experiment— and apologies for those of you that really like monkeys, but it's just an experiment— they would just spray enough water that was a little bit annoying as the monkey went up to get the banana. And so, one by one, each monkey went up to get a banana, but they got sprayed and they don't like that. So, eventually, all 5 monkeys are looking up and they're thinking, well, I'm not going to go up. I'm going to get sprayed. And so, the bananas are just sitting there. So, what the experiment started to do was bring in a new monkey. They'd replace one. And so, of course, the new monkey's like, oh my gosh, why aren't you guys getting those bananas? They look so good. So, it starts to climb up, but they didn't spray. The 4 other monkeys would grab the new monkey before they went up and pull them down. And kind of have a little fight. They wrestle them a bit. So then they kept replacing one by one until eventually in the experiment, the scientists had all 5 monkeys replaced and all 5 were looking up at the bananas thinking it's impossible to get there because you might get sprayed. But the key thing is, from the point they replaced the first monkey, they were not spraying anymore. They were not going to spray. The spray wasn't even possible. So they've all fallen into learned helplessness and it's a whole new team in there. And I find this can happen so much when people pass on cultures and stories and limitations about systems and external partners and things like that. It just gets reinforced. And so, this pattern is fascinating when you think about mindset and psychology and how it then leads to lack of accountability and what we try and what we don't try, how we think how we could versus why we can't. And so, this type of belief, I encourage you in this podcast to think about what are those phrases that might be signaling that you or your teams are in that or your organization is. Some of my favorites I hear often is, yeah, but that's the way we've always done it. Or I've heard, you know, I brought that up in 2013 in a meeting. It didn't go very well. It seemed like nobody listened or cared. So, I just never brought it up again. And I always go with that one. I'm like, did you say 2013? I'm like, 2026? That's 13 years ago. How did you bring that up? Well, it was about 4:45 on a Friday, and my leader had to go take his kid to soccer practice. And so I tried to grab him really quick in the last 15 minutes as he was running out. And, and they were like kind of rushed, and they didn't really listen to me. Like, maybe it was a timing thing. Maybe it was a little bit of a stress thing. Did you try and bring anything up again after or revisit it? No, I just thought they don't care about it really. So I just never brought it up again. And someone brings something up in a meeting, it doesn't land very well, so they just never bring up the issue again. This type of thing is learned helplessness. It is, you know, you hear it sometimes, HR won't let us, IT won't let us. If you do that, you could get fired. And then the same sentence, they say, nobody gets fired around here. All of these phrases fascinate me because they can be a sign of learned helplessness. So, I guess real quick in this podcast, I think we can agree that that mindset, if we're there, let's just acknowledge it and find what elements we're stuck in learned helplessness on. And one that's hitting me right now, I didn't even have this in my notes, but I want to bring it up, that blew my mind when I found out about this concept is I have, since I was 5, a hip condition that didn't really limit me as an athlete. My doctor said at the time maybe I shouldn't play tackle football, American football, because a shot to the hip could be damaging because my hip's not quite as strong. But other than that, I had full ability to play sports. And I eventually was a scholarship basketball player and played overseas. But in that whole journey, starting at about the age of 11 or 12, for some reason, whenever I did lunges, as an exercise, with weight, without weight, if I was hydrated or not hydrated, if I had the electrolyte balance or bananas or pickle juice, whatever you needed, after 7 or 8 lunges on definitely my right side, I would just cramp up in my groin, like stinging cramp, crazy cramp. And so eventually in high school, I had a really amazing strength coach that was with the football team, and I didn't play football, but I would work out with them sometimes to do this. And I'd go up to him and I'm like, okay, Coach Patterson, if we're going to do lunges, like, you know me, I cramp up, I'm out. Can I get an alternative exercise or can I just pass this one out and I'll do the other leg exercise? And at first, he pushed on it, but then eventually, like, I had cramped up once or twice, he just said, yeah, let's not do that. And so, I got out of it, got out of it, got out of it. And then eventually, basically 4 or 5 years passed and I wasn't doing any lunges. Although in so many of the sports I play, it's like an exercise, it's a movement you do all the time, and I wouldn't cramp up there. So anyway, I get to my first school I played at was Iowa State as a Division 1 basketball player, and they had this incredible strength coach. And I go to one of our first crazy workouts and boom, it's lunchtime. And it's not just like a few lunges, we're like lunging around the entire track with a 45-pound weight. So this is like lunges on steroids. And I go up to Coach Mo and I go, Mo, just so you know, I know I'm just a freshman here, but if we do that exercise, like, you will have to carry me out of here. Like, I will not probably make it through this. So can I do an alternative exercise? And Mo didn't have all of that background and didn't really feel that. He goes, okay. Total empathy. He goes, if that happens, we'll figure it out. But why don't we do the first set? And then we'll see what happens. You're not cramped up right now. Let's get going. I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. This will get bad. I will lock up. He goes, well, let's see. I mean, you haven't— we don't know yet. And so, I'm panicked getting ready to do this. And sure enough, start doing the exercise and we're doing 12, 16 at a time, take a little pause, go around this whole track, keep going. It's getting a little tight. All of a sudden, I don't cramp up. He's looking at me smiling. I now feel like an absolute Just, I feel embarrassed. Like, was I— you know, he thinks I'm lying to him. This is one of my first practices. This is the tone I set to try and like stand out, is this, this, this kid that tried to get out of a workout. And then I do the second one, don't cramp up. Third one, don't cramp up. Fourth one, don't cramp up. All of a sudden he's just smirking at me and I get done to it. Yeah, I was like nearly dead, but I didn't cramp up. And I found that this one belief from a few times cramping up when I was 12 years old Had ran my life with this exercise until I was, at that time, 18 or 19. That's pretty wild when you think about it. And so, I think about this often. What are those beliefs I'm hooked on that are sub— like unconscious, that I don't even question? And are those limiting other things in my confidence? And so, I encourage you, you know, I know that's a personal example, but think about work examples with your teams. Listen for those phrases that, hey, are we all believing that same thing? Have we questioned that in a while? And so, some of my favorite quick techniques to finish the podcast here, I got 3 of them for you, is when someone's like, I can't do X, this goal, because of this and this. You know, because it's hard for us to make progress on this project because, let's say, Mike, which is my dad's name, Mike's a little difficult to work with, and sometimes he's not responsive. Learned helplessness. We're not going to make progress, and we can't make progress at the pace we want to because of Mike's 2 behaviors here. I might say, thank you for sharing. Like, I get that when someone's not available, they're busy. That's a lot of people we work with at times, especially during busy season. So given our goal is to make progress on this, and given that at times Mike's not responsive with email and the ways we've reached out, and given sometimes we don't get the information we need, what else could we try? Who else do you know that gets a hold of Mike? So, I love given that, name the excuses or the possible learned helplessness, and then turn that into what else could you try? What other ideas do you have? And you're just poking at a couple more ideas so we don't give up after 2 attempts to try and get that goal. So, that's one of the first ones. A second one I've noticed is that if people are asking questions, I've started to call them ineffective questions, but I was once told there's no such thing as stupid questions. And I get that for helping kids speak up when they're in elementary school, that's great. But when it comes to the workplace, there are such things as stupid questions, especially if they lead to learned helplessness pretty quickly. And one of them I've heard often is like, why doesn't anyone tell me anything? Or when will they get it? Or who thought of this? And these questions are— there's no accountability in them. They're externally focused. There's no answer to them. And so, I love a technique if you ever hear questions kind of like that. Is replace why or who with what or how can I, and then finish out the question. So, an example of, let's take, why doesn't anyone tell me anything? See how helpless that is? And I can't get any information. I'm the innocent victims. And until things change, I won't know what's going on. All learned helplessness. What can I do to get the information I need? How can I become more informed in my role in this organization? And then I like, with that question now reframed into what can I do to get the information I need, find 3 things that I could do from where I'm at to get more informed about a change, about what's going on in the organization, about new strategies. And maybe it's I reach out to someone that feels informed. Maybe I go to the next town hall. Maybe I actually read my email that has updates. Maybe our company that has an internal podcast that updates on changes going on. I follow that. These are all great ideas. If I do that, those 3 things, I will be more informed and get the information I need. Beautiful. Out of learned helplessness into accountability into action. So I'm back in empowerment. Beautiful stuff. When will they get it? What can I do to help them better understand? How could I re-explain my position? How could I better represent this information visually? for them to see the benefit? Whatever that looks like, I like to find 3 actions from that reflection, wait for it a bit, and then go take action on those things. Sure enough, they'll probably get closer to what I'm trying to communicate if I do that. Last one is, who thought of this? What can I do to better understand the new direction? How can I better understand the strategies We're pursuing. If I take any action there, back out of learned helplessness into empowerment. Now the third one: many of you know that have been following me a long time. I love what I call thinking inside the box, not outside the box, wishing for a different reality, wishing I had different resources, different leaders, different management, different decision making. It's given our goal and some of the challenges. How can I? Move towards the goal. And so, instead of thinking outside the box, which leads to an argument with reality and pie-in-the-sky thinking, getting out of learned helplessness is often, what is the goal? What would I like to change, see differently, get a little better at? And then, what are my current excuses? And just be honest about them. What are my beliefs that I've said to others, that I say to my closest friends, that I'm thinking in my head that are keeping me from moving towards that goal? And then take a moment. I'll show those that are looking visually. I just draw a box and then there's the goal that I'd like to make a little progress on. Just whatever I think is stuck, it's impossible. Make a quantitative, like a measurable goal to just get a little bit further along. Even if it's 1% better or you make one sale or you connect with one person or you make one relationship or you make One step of progress towards something. Put that as the goal, and then put your limiting beliefs about why you can't. And so I just—I'll show it here in the chat—but these are my limiting beliefs, or on the video here, that I put. Like I can't do that because the person's like this, and I don't have time, and this, and this. Whatever is my excuse for why it's not moving or stuck or impossible, and then in there just stare at this and say, given that's my goal to make a little progress here. Given this is my current reality, my unpreferred reality, and for now I can't move these constraints, or let's say I am believing these excuses about this person or these, these, maybe the person is really a little difficult at times. How can I go from, given that's how they are and that's the circumstances and the team that's involved, what ideas do I have to maybe make a little bit of progress towards the goal? And if anything comes to you and you're able to say, oh, if I tried that, I might make some progress, Well, then you've broken out of learned helplessness because you've taken a small step towards the goal. And then, by logic, several small steps towards the same goal, and you're on your way there. Now, it might take a year, 2 years, 5 years, but you're not stuck. And that's the point. So, hopefully, these 3 ideas and this concept has you fascinated this week. Share this with your teams. Talk to them about where we might be stuck in a limiting belief or in learned helplessness. And Work through any of these 3 reflections to figure out where you could unhook from that and get back into accountability because that's where the happiness and results always are. So, you got this. Thank you for listening. Please rate this online. Give it a 5-star if you really think this podcast is helpful. It helps others find it. And I hope you have an amazing week. Let's keep ditching the drama, keep loving people up and calling people up. And most importantly, let's not enable people to stay stuck and learn helplessness. It's never where anybody wants to be. I'll see you on the next episode.