Becoming More Agent-Like

Lets assume that you have seen yourself in this chapter. For you to become more agent-like, there are three things you can do.

First, while in the middle of a challenging task, manage your personal mental chatter. When going into a victim mode, listen to what is running through your head. Catch yourself uttering the equivalent of ˜˜poor me or ˜˜its not my fault. Replace that chatter with ˜˜I can do this. Resist the temptation to form conclusions about your ability to achieve a goal and instead stay focused on what can still be done.

Looking back on a failed task or problem situation, be sure to include yourself in the description of what went wrong. By definition, you were involved and the problem occurred. Dont pretend otherwise . See blame as a problem of communication with others and within yourself. You may have failed to get someone to think or act differently or you may not have anticipated problems that could have been predicted .

Second, explore the possibility that there is little to gain from blaming. Blaming feels like a useful endeavor since, after all, finding the source of a problem usually means that a solution is at hand. But pointing to what went wrong is often nothing but a distraction from admitting culpability and finding a solution.

If you have a problem, or are frustrated by a matter, you have apparently not fixed it. You may wish to describe who is ˜˜doing you wrong, but the real point is that you have not communicated with somebody such that they help you make things work. If you stop to point a finger, you have done just that: stopped . Instead, observe the facts, compare where you are with where you want to be, make a plan to close the gap, and act.

When you stop taking the time to assign blame, you take on a lot of responsibility. That responsibility is what you fear. You have the illusion that taking responsibility opens the door to personal failure. In fact, it is the taking of responsibility that is important, perhaps more so than achieving the goal itself.

A client once told me, ˜˜I am insecure because my mother did not attend to my needs. I have spent many years feeling anger and have never been able to kick it. It took some time for us to establish that while his mother may indeed have not attended to his needs and could be blamed for his insecurity, in the present he was responsible for his feelings. He had to get his head around the idea that he was stuck in the blame. He had to move into the possibility that ˜˜I am now responsible for what I do with my life.

For a certain number of people who wrestle with a victim-thinking habit, admitting personal responsibility for misfortune leads to taking failure personally . Unfortunately, once the thing they avoided through blame is actually admitted, whoever helped them reach that insight suddenly receives a sarcastic ˜˜Thanks a lot! Now I feel terrible with each of my failures.

Third, forgive yourself. As I said earlier, low self-esteem can lead you to own personal blame and consequently feel bad about yourself. Such a feeling stems from a value judgment you make. Rather than attending to the facts, you are saying what the facts mean. And when you extend a short series of facts into a generalized pattern, and then make a judgment about yourself, problems set in. Just as leaders need to resist the temptation to make value judgments , you need to avoid judging yourself.

Lets look more closely at this phenomenon .