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“You are a complete idiot.” “How could you make such a stupid mistake.” “You’re always messing up!” You probably wouldn’t say any of these things—at least out loud—to someone else, but how many times have you said them to yourself? This type of language is violent and damaging, yet when we do something that causes us to feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed, this is often the language we turn to. We don’t even think about it, it’s automatic.

Why do we do it? Because we’ve been conditioned to believe that guilt and shame provide the impetus for learning and positive behavior. Parents often use this tactic as a learning tool. I know I did. But shame and guilt often produce the opposite result. Instead of prompting action, they prompt resistance. How many people have you heard say, “I really should start working out” or “I really should lose weight” or “I really should control my temper better,” and then nothing ever happens.

I agree with Marshall Rosenberg, who in his book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Puddledancer Press, 2003) says that when we use the word “should” with ourselves, we resist learning because “should” implies we don’t have a choice. He goes on to say that human beings have a strong need to control their own destiny, to freely choose, so we resist attempts, even internal ones, to force us to change against our wills.

What can we do differently? Rosenberg says that a more productive response is to ask ourselves what unmet need is behind our punishing language. For example, I often get angry with myself when I wait until the last minute to get something done. I’m feeling a lot of pressure and I keep asking myself, “when will you ever learn to plan ahead!” In this instance, my unmet need is for calm and composure.

After identifying the unmet need, the next step is to examine the needs we were trying to address with the actions that produced our guilt or self-punishment. If we also identify our unmet needs there, we can see that there was a positive intent for those actions. Then it’s easier for us to truly forgive ourselves for that mistake and to examine how we can better meet our needs the next time.

When I’m doing something at the last minute, I’m usually doing it because I’ve made too many commitments and I’m running behind. I made those commitments because I wanted to help someone or get something done that was important to me or I wanted to be seen as a competent professional or I wanted to continue building my practice. All those things are important to me. When I remember why I made those commitments, I understand how I got into such a bind and I lose my anger.

Interestingly, forgiving myself this way frees up energy for rebalancing priorities or using the time management techniques I know so well. Perhaps I think of someone to delegate to or I decide something can wait or I renegotiate with a client. Punishing myself just makes me feel guilty. Nothing changes.

I firmly believe that if we are ever to build organizations that are truly respectful and affirming, we must begin with ourselves. By learning to change the way we talk to ourselves, by turning violent language into the language of learning, we can see ourselves and consequently everything else in new and more productive ways.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

Labels: Crucial Conversations

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

You’ve probably been inundated with advice about how to weather economic turmoil. My friend and mentor, John Scherer (www.scherercenter.com), gave some of the best I’ve heard. He said that in tough times, we need to carpe diem, seize the day. That is, use the uncertainty to re-examine and re-invent. To think differently about old problems. John calls it breakthrough thinking. In his March 19 newsletter, The Scherer Report, he gave a great example of what this means. I’m going to let him tell you about it.

Recently a client company’s ‘Help Desk’ was falling far behind, taking 15 to 20 minutes to even answer the phone. The Breakthrough Action Team working on the problem was trying to figure out how to justify the cost of doubling the number of people answering the phones. They had tables of research and estimates of how many calls a person could handle in an hour, multiplied by the number of calls coming in each day, etc. I was consulting with the team and I suggested they were working very hard at ‘First Order Change’—that is change within the existing paradigm that doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

‘The way you SEE the problem is the problem,’ I said, quoting the ancient Yogic tradition.

What would happen, I challenged them, if they shifted to a breakthrough mindset? I asked them, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ They again started calculating the number of calls that could be handled by six people, then 12 people. I stopped them and asked again, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ Some team members started getting irritated with me. ‘We’re working on it, John!”

Finally one person said, ‘Well, the ideal number would be zero! But that could never happen.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘For one thing the sales team would have to do a much better job of selling, letting people know certain things they are reluctant to tell clients.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘someone write this stuff down.’

Another person chimed in, ‘Then the installation team that goes in to build the system would need to do a much better job of listening to the client and their needs. Oh, and the training team would need to take the time to make sure the participants actually understand the system. They just come in, do their program and leave.’

‘Ok,’ I said, ‘there’s your focus, not on the number of people you have in the Call Center Help Desk.

They went to work, invited people from sales, installation and training to be part of a special cross-functional breakthrough thinking team and came up with a set of innovative action recommendations for consideration by the key decision makers.

The result? Three months later I was there for a follow up meeting and I wandered downstairs to the Help Desk to see how many people they had hired. There sat a lone telephone operator at her desk, reading a book! I said, ‘How’s it going?’ She replied, ‘It’s a little boring sometimes . . . but I can’t say I miss those days when six of us were here, frantic and overstressed. I get about ten calls a day now, and they’re usually pretty easy problems to solve. I don’t know what you did, but it worked!’

Now, that’s finding the opportunity in a crisis. Whether you’re a CEO, a small business owner or someone who’s lost a job, this kind of thinking makes lemonade out of whatever lemon you were handed.

John has just published a great new book, Five Questions That Change Everything: Life Lessons at Work. Click here to learn about it (http://www.amazon.com/Five-Questions-That-Change-Everything/dp/0979531527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242068594&sr=8-1 ). I’ll be reviewing it in a later post.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

Labels: Organizational Change

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.