The Victim Response

The act of deflecting responsibility can be one of quiet desperation. Often a victim will move from simple facts to generalizations , bad feelings, and blame for the feelings. Lets say Bill, a colleague of mine, doesnt get a report to me on time. For Bill this can become a study in who held him up, how they tend to always hold things up, how they hold everything up, and how upsetting it is that they always hold everything up. Its just not fair, darn it.

People do tend to generalize when they feel insecure . And since insecurity is at the heart of victim behavior, generalization is common among victims. Lets look at a scenario involving a victim and his boss.

Jamie works as a speechwriter for Victoria, the CEO of a large financial services organization. Jamie has been in this role for six months. He is a good writer with excellent credentials. He is also a little insecure in his job. Getting it was a big step in his career and he doesnt want to blow it.

Jamie still has not quite absorbed Victorias style, so things are not as smooth between them as he would like. When its time to write a speech, Victoria assigns a topic and gives Jamie some insight into her position. But he doesnt quite get all the nuances . Jamie comes to Victoria with his first draft of a speech she is to deliver at a dinner the next night to a group of key executives from client organizations.

˜˜Victoria, here is a draft of the capitalization speech, Jamie says. ˜˜I was hoping you would give it a look before I start polishing. He hands her the hard copy.

Scanning the first paragraph, Victoria says, ˜˜No. This opening wont do. I told you that we have to start on a light note. This sounds too negative.

˜˜But I spoke with Robert about the mood of the group and got the feeling that a lot of people are frustrated about the market and how the company is doing, so I didnt want to go too light, if you know what I mean.

˜˜Sure, but youve overcompensated. ˜˜Okay, Ill change it.

After they have discussed the rest of the draft, Jamie leaves Victorias office. At lunchtime, when he runs into Victorias assistant, with whom he has become friendly, he says, ˜˜I could kill Robert. He specifically said that the audience for tomorrows speech wanted to hear nothing but the facts. He said they blame Victoria for the mess and anything that sounded defensive would only further anger them. I hate receiving mixed instructions. This happens a lot around here. We should have a system where Victoria and Robert get their strategies straight before assigning me speeches.

From Jamies view, the heaviness at the start of the speech was not his fault. It was Roberts fault. Jamie is frustrated. He wants to change the system so this doesnt happen again.

From Victorias point of view, the start of the speech is obviously too heavy. She doesnt care about the cause. She thinks Jamie sounded like a victim as soon as he said he was following Roberts input. But she acknowledges that he did change his tune quickly when he said he would change the speech.

The assistant tells one of her colleagues later, ˜˜Victoria is going to eat him alive . I can tell. He comes up with all these explanations for why things go off the rails. Then he starts complaining. He doesnt do it in front of her much, but shell figure it out. When she does, shell move him out. Hell never know why.

The assistant was onto something. People dont like victims. They can smell victim behavior and it turns them off. In service roles, victims are poison . Customers crave the feeling that somebody is on the case. They are repulsed by people who are supposed to be on the case but let themselves off the hook.