The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 341 - Victim vs. Player

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I've been running around, running a bunch of workshops for leaders in the last few weeks, and one of the things that I've observed and noticed is a mental model, a framework, an idea that I was reminded of from one of my favorite books of last year called Scaling People, by Claire Hughes Johnson, and I want to share it with you, because I think you'll have some thoughts.

Jen: Great. I remember you reading this book and showing me your copy, and it had like a million sticky notes coming out of it.

Pete: That's the one.

Jen: Can't wait to hear.

Pete: So I've revisited Sticky Note #999,642, and in that sticky note, Claire Hughes Johnson introduces this amazing idea, mental model, framework that I'm really thinking about a lot, and that is victim versus player. And I feel like you're going to have some thoughts.

Jen: Whoa, I was not expecting victim versus player. I've never heard this before. Okay, I can't wait to hear more. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Firstly, the context: Claire Hughes Johnson is sharing this framework in a book about how to be a manager and how to be a leader.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: So it's used in the context that I spend a lot of time in, which is leading and managing teams. So I'm going to rely on you and us through this conversation, maybe to translate to how that might apply in, say, the arts and in other contexts. But initially, I want us to think about it through the lens of management and leadership. And so, how she teased this up is through this kind of comical example of those that have a toddler or a young kid at school who hasn't quite grasped the idea of taking ownership for everything. They might come home from school one day, and you say, "Oh, what happened to your school bag?" And they go, "Oh, the bag is at school." And you go, "Interesting. So like, the bag left itself at school? Or did you forget to bring the bag home?" So, how they could have responded is, "I left the bag at school." And she shares this as like a comical way of introducing this idea that in organizations and in teams, what we often find is people who take on the victim role, which is, "It's the bag that left itself at school, and not my responsibility," versus the people who take on the player role, which is, "I, the player, I, the toddler, I, the human being, left the bag at school. That's on me. I forgot." You could think about this in the context of work, being like a manager checking in with an employee, "Hey, did we get that report done? We've got a presentation tomorrow." And the employee says, "Oh, the reports are not written yet," versus, "I haven't finished writing the report yet."

Jen: Right.

Pete: This is shockingly common, where we find ourselves in teams and organizations where it's tempting to not take responsibility for where things are at. That's the framework I want to share with you. And I want to share it with a disclosure that I don't think we're immune to floating between these two roles. I think there is a time where we are finding ourselves, for whatever reason, taking on the victim...and victim maybe is too strong a word, but taking on the lack of accountability role. And other times, where we're more likely to take accountability. So I want to share that with you, and I want to throw it around.

Jen: Well, the first thing that comes to mind about this is, you know, the why of it all. Why does someone deflect the responsibility, saying, "The report isn't written," versus, "I didn't write the report," and deflecting the responsibility? It seems, to me, it comes from this place of fear of being reprimanded or ostracized or blamed or ridiculed. There's some sort of consequence to that.

Pete: Yeah. "If I own up to this mistake, I'll be perceived to be not good at my job," for example. That could be the story you tell yourself.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So I'm not going to, so I'm just going to say, "The report's not written yet."

Jen: Which feels maybe better, or like saving face as that person. And when people don't take accountability, trust is broken. So it feels like, in this model, the "victim" is creating the vicious cycle of distrust or broken trust, when their intention was to avoid that in the first place.

Pete: Right. That's really that's kind of ironic.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like, "The report didn't get written. I'm waiting on Jen to give feedback." And so, I say that because I'm fearful of how people will perceive it if I'm the one that didn't give the feedback. But actually, the manager might be like, "Okay, so now I can see that A., you didn't take responsibility for this, and B., you just threw Jen under the bus. So how likely am I to trust you moving forward? A little less likely than I was two minutes ago."

Jen: Right. And then, the other thing that comes to mind when I hear "player", I just like immediately think of "team".

Pete: Yeah. Right.

Jen: And again, the thing that comes to mind is trust. That, when you're playing on a team, you have to trust that everyone is going to uphold their responsibilities and play their role, play their position, toss you the ball when it's the move that is best for the team, and take their shot when that's what's best for the team. So I don't know why I just went onto the basketball court in my mind, but that's what just happened.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, just extending that analogy also, in a team context, you take the shot, you miss the shot, not going, "The ring didn't let the ball in."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Versus like, "I missed the shot. I own that. I thought it was there, and maybe it was, but I missed it. That's on me."

Jen: Right, right.

Pete: So, I mean, if I think about like the context of her book, it's all about, "How do you build trusting teams? How do you build high-performing teams?" And what she's putting forward is this idea of, one of the ways that we can do that is to try and create a team of players where we own our mistakes. We leverage one another. We try our best to make things better. We recognize that stuff's going to happen, and things that maybe we couldn't quite control will happen, but we can own our part that we could control. And all of that is actually in the spirit of building more trust. That, Brené Brown would talk about the fact that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness. That, I would talk about the fact that I think humility is a superpower. That, it's okay that you don't know everything, and that sometimes things go wrong. What's more important is that you own up to that and are comfortable sharing that. I mean, there's the famous Google study on psychological safety, where they analyzed a bunch of high-performing teams and discovered that those teams that were highest performing had the highest level of psychological safety, that is an ability to feel safe making mistakes and admitting to mistakes. What's interesting about that work, I think Amy Edmondson was the person who did a bunch of research on this and popularized this notion, is it's not that teams with low psychological safety make less mistakes. It's actually that they make mistakes, but they don't talk about them.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Whereas the highest psychologically safe teams are openly admitting their mistakes, so it sounds like they have more, but it might be that they have the same amount. They're just sharing the fact that they made a mistake.

Jen: Right. I love Amy Edmondson's work, by the way. Love it.

Pete: Amazing. She's so good.

Jen: So good.

Pete: So my question then is, because I know we have, you know, a different world that we inhabit in our day-to-day from a work perspective, how does this...can this...maybe it doesn't. How could this play out in the context of being an entrepreneur, being a freelancer, being an artist, having a career in the arts, as your clients so often do, and many of our listeners do? Is there a world where this applies to those of us that aren't working in teams and organizations?

Jen: Well, Pete, once upon a time, many years ago...this was one of the very first blog posts I ever wrote. I'll drop it in the Box O' Goodies. It was called Point the Finger at Yourself.

Pete: Aha, here we go. Now, we're talking.

Jen: And I haven't read this in so long. So it's, you know, I just pulled it up on my computer, so I'm not going to like fully read it to you all right now. But the thing that I remember thinking, as I'm looking at this, when I was writing it, is, "Giving away the blame also means giving away your power."

Pete: Mmm. Can you say more about that?

Jen: Yeah. It's like, if nothing is your responsibility, then nothing is your responsibility. And so, you know, in the blog post, I talk about how often I hear actors lamenting their experiences in the audition room, where they're putting the blame on the casting director for something not going right in the room. And sometimes, that may be true. But it is equally possible that what's true is that the actor didn't take responsibility for bringing themselves into the room, or acknowledging the other people in the room, or making eye contact, etcetera. And so, if you are giving away all of the responsibility and the "blame" to the casting director, then what you're essentially saying is, "I'll never be able to own this room. Like, I'll never be able to bring the energy in that I want to bring, because it's out of my control."

Pete: Right. "This whole career, this whole thing is outside my control." That's so disempowering.

Jen: Right.

Pete: I feel like I don't know if I believe this just yet, but I wrote it down. It came to my mind. Maybe we could stress test it. I feel like maybe what I hear you saying is, empowerment is a choice.

Jen: Yes. Self-empowerment, for sure.

Pete: Self-empowerment is a choice. Yeah. I can't remember who it might have been, Seth or someone else, who shared this idea of like, choosing yourself.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Picking yourself is a really important part of being a linchpin, being a leader, being someone who makes stuff happen. Because if you sit around and wait to be picked, you'll probably never be picked. And so, you'll never be able to pick yourself and do the thing that you think you need to be able to do to get where you want to go.

Jen: Well, this is immediately connecting to the concept of actually playing the game versus waiting to be picked to play the game.

Pete: Right, exactly. Yeah. Can you say more about that?

Jen: I can. But as I'm looking at my notes, you know I'm a big word nerd.

Pete: Yeah, here we go. Let's word nerd it out.

Jen: And I don't like the word "victim".

Pete: Fair, yeah. I mean, you're allowed to not like it. Tell us why.

Jen: Well, the reason I'm going to say is, I think, her entire point. So, I might take this whole thing back.

Pete: Let's do it.

Jen: But the reason I don't like the word "victim" is because it is so disempowered and everything is happening to that person. I think what I'm longing for is something that feels more opposite to the word "player".

Pete: Yeah, I hear you. And I actually think there's a deliberate use of a provocative word like "victim", because it's more memorable.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: It makes the framework more sticky, because people have a reaction to it.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: You know? Like, I've heard Michael Bungay Stanier talk about when he facilitates, he's manipulating the room. And I've been in the room when he's facilitating, and he's said like, "Yeah, I've been manipulating this room the whole time. Like, the way I've structured this conversation is me manipulating your experience." And more than one person was like, "I don't like the use of the word 'manipulate'. Can you tell us what you mean by that?" And he goes, "Well, I kind of like using it, because it's provocative."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like, he's intentionally provocative, because it's sticky and it's memorable and it causes a reaction. Which is, I guess, part of the point of trying to create an intervention, is you're trying to create a reaction.

Jen: Okay. You might have convinced me.

Pete: You know? Like, it's so unappealing. No one wants to go, "Oh, I'd love to be the victim." No,

Jen: No. It's actually, it's probably pretty smart of her to use it.

Pete: "I want to be the player. I want to be the player. I want to be the player. Tell me how to be the player. I don't want to be a victim." So I don't know, maybe that's deliberate.

Jen: This is a very smart woman we're talking about. So yes, I'm going to assume it's deliberate, but I had to go through the process of accepting it.

Pete: And I think, like all these frameworks that we think about and we share and we discuss, they're not like always applicable to every single situation in the world.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: They're useful in certain contexts. And I feel like it's worth taking them where they're useful and ignoring them where they're not. The reason this is so top of mind is, I've seen this come up a lot where I'm talking to a leader and they're having a really hard time managing a particular team member or a team, and they've basically shared example after example of this team member not taking accountability. And so, I've just used it as a shorthand, like, "Oh, it sounds like what you're describing is this framework that Claire Hughes Johnson calls victim versus player." And every time I share it, their like eyes light up and they go, "Oh my god, that is exactly what's happening. I have a team member or a couple of team members who are victims to the organization and the fact that we're having to do a restructure or make a change, and not going, 'Okay, so the change is amazing. We don't love the fact that we have to restructure this team. However, we do. And here's what I'm going to do about navigating that, to set us up for success,' rather than, 'I hate this restructure. I'm just going to cross my arms and just get annoyed about it.'" And so, it's like a shorthand that is designed to help leaders go, "Yeah, let's try and move people from victim to player."

Jen: So I'm wondering if this is the kind of thing that leaders know, and sort of like scan the room and can assess who is taking the posture of a victim and who is taking the posture of a player. And/or (yes, and), is it useful to actually use this language within a team? As you're calling, you know, a huddle, for example, and say, "Okay, we have hard things to deal with right now on this team, and it will be tempting for us all to play the victim right now." (Oh, that's an interesting turn of phrase: play the victim.) "But let's play the player."

Pete: Right. "Let's be the player." Yeah. Or, "Play the player." I love the use of it, in the context you described, which is when we use it by acknowledging we are all going to be tempted to take on the role of a victim. There's a "we" to this.

Jen: Well, isn't that being the victim? Saying you're going to want to be the victim?

Pete: Exactly. Like you could get super contradictory about this, if you didn't apply it in the right way. If a manager was blaming the team for being victims, without taking responsibility for how they're leading the team.

Jen: Oh my god, this is so meta.

Pete: So yes, I think you're right. Depending on the team, depending on the psychological safety, depending on the leader (of course, all those caveats aside), I think there's a world where this could be a useful shorthand to try and rally a team together and go, "We don't want to be victims of this hard thing that we're about to go through. We want to create, navigate, empower ourselves through this change, i.e. we want to play the game that we're about to play."

Jen: Right. Okay, I think I'm onboard now.

Pete: Okay, great. I mean, I guess it's a pretty narrow focus that I was thinking through. Maybe trying to extend it beyond that was too hard. But ultimately, what it reminds me of and speaks to me is, we can't control outcomes. We can't guarantee the things that we want to happen will happen. So, what can we control? The things that we can control. I can control how I react to situations. I can control the way I prepare. I can control the level of preparation, and time management, and the things that I can do to increase the likelihood of getting a great outcome. But ultimately, I can't control the outcome.

Jen: Right. You know what image came to me, when we were just hypothesizing about this meeting where the leader is taking the victim role by telling other people they're taking the victim role? You know when you look in a mirror, but there's a mirror behind the mirror, and the image just goes on for infinity?

Pete: You see yourself like a thousand times? Yeah.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Ah, gosh.

Pete: I also think...I don't know if I said this, but I'll say it if I haven't already. I want to say it. If I have, I'll say it again. And that is, this is not something that we are always in one camp.

Jen: Right.

Pete: This is something we all, at various times, find ourselves stepping into the victim role.

Jen: Right.

Pete: That is, I think, the nature of being a human and getting annoyed at things that change that we can't control. The point of this is to empower yourself to step out of that, into the role of a player. That, I think, is a choice.

Jen: Yes. And because I know that you and I and everyone who listens to this podcast, we all want to be performing at the peak of our potential, this is a way to confront ourselves when...well, I was just going to say when things get hard, but sometimes it's not even when things get hard, just when things don't go as planned.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.