Inner Accountability: How To Get Out Of The ‘Blame Game’ Trap - Forbes

Many of us spend incredible amounts of time talking with colleagues about other people in our company. Call it gossip, call it venting, call it bonding over a common enemy.

We complain about clients who change their minds and annoying customers who don’t pay bills on time. We commiserate over bosses who criticize us in public and teammates who take all the credit.

The issues differ but the target of our condemnation is always the same: not us.

This well-practiced “blame game” falls short from the get-go because we all make these kinds of mistakes. We change our minds. We miss deadlines. We snub a colleague. We grab the spotlight.

But the blame game rarely works to resolve things efficiently, honestly, or permanently because it misses the mark on the root cause. Conflict often originates not from outside but from within.

Certainly this principle doesn’t hold true all the time — of course not.

Yet in 25 years of advising executives about their conflicts, it is remarkably consistent that real transformation comes when these executives turn away from what others “do to them” and look instead at what they unconsciously do that drives the conflicts they face.

The Source of Conflict Inside Our Minds

One common psychological trick our minds play that allows us to minimize our role in conflict is projection.

Sigmund Freud, a pioneering theorist of the human mind, observed that his patients knew bits about how they felt, what they thought and what they wanted. Yet he found they had oceans of emotion, desires, impulses and dreams about which they knew little or nothing. Projection resides among that unknown, unexamined or unconscious inner content.

Projection is one of our mind’s secret strategies for protecting us from facing things we dislike about ourselves. Instead of suffering over character traits that trouble me about myself, my unconscious mind tells me two things: (1) I don’t possess those qualities and (2) you do.

If I hate my perfectionism, my unconscious mind tells me how judgmental and unforgiving you are. If I’m ashamed I’m a workaholic, my unconscious mind persuades me that you’re killing team morale because you push everyone too hard.

My mind protects me by casting you as a person of weak character. I’m angry or upset with you over your personal flaws instead of acknowledging those flaws in myself. Therefore you, not me, are the source of our problems.

Now that I attribute one of my ugly qualities to you, I feel justified in treating you the way I would act toward anyone with that disagreeable trait. I’m rude to you because I disrespect your obsession with unreasonably high standards. I undermine you because I resent your controlling nature and your demands for extra hours. My projections bring out the worst in me, and that brings out the worst in you. Conflict ensues.

End The Blame Game By Looking Within

We blame other people when something falls short because we don’t recognize that our unconscious is using projection to protect us. We feel innocent of any wrongdoing because we are unaware we are blaming others for qualities we dislike in ourselves.

Next time you find yourself griping about someone else’s behavior or shortcoming, get curious about why. Take a minute to look inward to determine whether that character flaw you see in them might actually be a trait you don’t like, and are not yet able to accept, in yourself.

As leaders, we’re accustomed to holding ourselves accountable for the work we do but we mean the work that’s visible to our employees, our colleagues and our boards. Striving for inner accountability by working through our projections can reduce the frequency, intensity, and repetitiveness of our external conflicts. This inner work can help us avoid certain conflicts entirely. In other cases, we can take rightful accountability instead of wrongly placing blame.

Understanding projection makes us better leaders and problem solvers. When we resist the impulse to ascribe our own shortcomings to indecisive clients, late-paying customers and prickly bosses, conflicts get less messy. They get unstuck. Then they can resolve as the common, solvable business challenges they often are.

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2023-01-10 13:15:00Z
CBMicWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZvcmJlcy5jb20vc2l0ZXMvZXJpY2FhcmllbGZveC8yMDIzLzAxLzEwL2lubmVyLWFjY291bnRhYmlsaXR5LWhvdy10by1nZXQtb3V0LW9mLXRoZS1ibGFtZS1nYW1lLXRyYXAv0gF1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yYmVzLmNvbS9zaXRlcy9lcmljYWFyaWVsZm94LzIwMjMvMDEvMTAvaW5uZXItYWNjb3VudGFiaWxpdHktaG93LXRvLWdldC1vdXQtb2YtdGhlLWJsYW1lLWdhbWUtdHJhcC9hbXAv

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