Bad Habits: The Excuses

So I'm reading this book 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' currently and its about how often the very behaviours that have made us a 'success' only bring us thus far. You hit a certain level where your talents/technical know how has brought you as far up the food chain as it can and to move on it becomes about interpersonal issues or relationships.

As someone who has pretty much cruised through life based on talent alone (I was in bed by 9pm every night of year 12, and only did more than an hour of homework a day if I had the day off school, and generally if those days off occured in August-October) the book is relevant to me, even if I'm not sitting in a corner office wondering why the board passed me over for CEO just yet.

The author talks about methods by which to gather feedback, one being asking people directly (which I did), voluntary and involuntary feedback, looking homewards etc. One more was 'observation' which is basically becoming conscious of other peoples reactions.

I actually have a fair idea of which of the 20 bad habits I'm guilty of, because I do observe and recieve 'involuntary' (or unpremeditated) feedback for them.

The 20 bad habits as identified in the book by the way are:

1. Winning too much (as in an obsessive need to win in all situations)
2. Adding too much value (as in critiqueing and commenting on every offering)
3. Passing Judgement
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with 'no' 'but' or 'however'
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry.
8. Negativity (or 'let me explain why this wont work')
9. Withholding Information.
10. Failing to give proper recognition.
11. Claiming credit we don't deserve.
12. Making Excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing Favorites
15. Refusing to express regret.
16. Not Listening
17. Failing to express gratitude.
18. Punishing the messenger.
19. Passing the buck.
20. An excessive need to be 'me'

Fittingly it ends with 'An excessive need to be "me"' and that is what I'll redress in this post.

I do believe the 'quantum leap' of management, that is where you go from a self interested employee to a manager of employees lies in the revelation that other people think differently to yourself. No matter who you are.

Thus I'm a big fan of behavioural profiles like DiSC, Myers-Briggs, and the one I know well that I guess would be called 'DEAA' (for Driver Expressive Analytical Amiable). They are all based on Myers-Briggs. It's just DiSC and DEAA are the simplest to use.

That said, there is the leap beyond realising for example that you are ENTF and you have an ISTP working for you. Or that you are a Driver working in a company largely populated by Conscientious and under an Influencer boos. Which is to say, there is realising that you are different from other people, and then there is adjusting yourself to the known differences. Which is harder to do.

So 'An excessive need to be me' is understanding that by being a Driver you are prone to going by your own opinion (or gut) and caring about the task at hand rather than the people involved, and employing them as excuses. Rather than say realising that actually being conscientious and seeking other peoples input on big decisions will produce a better outcome. Or that if you reduce turnover by treating your staff like human beings rather than serfs you will increase the companies bottom line.

Traditionally, everything I have learned about myself I have employed as an excuse. For example:

In Ballarat, my social circle consisted of disrespecting eachother. That is ribbing eachother, coming up with offensive nicknames, making insunuations about sleeping with others mums... that sort of thing. Amazingly I'm quite comfortable in this environment, I'm not comfortable in one where everyone is supposed to be complementary, polite and sensitive to other people. So I apply this standard to my interpersonal relationships elsewhere, it thus isn't my problem if I'm offensive. This is called 'being hilarious' and that I cause offense in others is really their problem. If they can't take a ribbing, they don't make the grade as a friend.
Pretty empowering excuse, but there are no excuses. What do I gain by the behaviour? A 'pure' crop of friends. If I can 'get away' with being 'hilariously' offensive to people, what do I get away with?
In many ways its a tragic situation, where what I 'get away with' is being the Alpha in a situation, it means I've created a situation where the offended party feels defenseless and has no choice but to suck it up. A toxic environment, even by my own ideal, as what I'm looking for is for myself to be challenged in turn.
It is the exact same logic as 'getting away' with shoplifting. You got away with a candybar but will never be welcome in the store again once the clerk catches onto you. So please if you catch me employing the excuse stop me.

Furthermore behaviours like just plain not listening or lack of gratitude I put down to something as simple as 'being shy' I'm incredibly nervous about introducing myself to people. I hate starting conversations because I feel I'm intruding etc. I'm petrified of sounding disengenuous. So I don't engage people, I don't ask questions etc. When I stumbled on the term 'introvert' it allowed me to take shyness to a whole new level. Don't you understand me? I can't enjoy making new friends because I find socialising exhausting! These are excuses. I can envy somebody who is an extrovert, because they are energised by meeting new people, going to parties etc. Stuff I really drag my feet over. But hard is not impossible, and the rewards are there for the effort. The excuse doesn't work. Once again, if you catch me playing the 'introvert card' please stop me.

Perhaps my biggest excuse, one I've only recently been made aware of (literally by reading it in the book) is my inability to listen. I had one clue, of course from my mentor Rod, which helped. It was that listening involves asking questions. Simple as that, and it helped a lot. (Though probably most still don't notice). I have only recently learned that listening isn't really about gathering information, its also about how you make somebody else feel.
My school-days trick was my ability to play a computer game (Skyroads) on my laptop, or talk to my friend next to me in a VCE class and when challanged repeat back verbatim what the teacher had just said. I thought this proved that I was listening, the teacher just couldn't recognise that I was particularly brilliant at it and thus could multitask. Later since out of school you don't really get challenged on listening, it evolved into my own understanding that I listened through 'observing' or rather I indirectly listen to people. If somebody made a comment, rather than ask them about it, I'd just go read up on whatever the topic was in wikipedia, they never saw the effort I went to, so I could understand why people felt I didn't pay attention to them, but this was a tragedy of their lack of understanding how much I cared as I was cursed with introversion and an aversion to actual human interaction.
pretty sophisticated excuse to not listen, to not engage, to not pay attention. And really for me, it only unravelled to have listening explained in interpersonal relationhip terms, not technical terms.
Which is to say, for my teacher it didn't matter that I could repeat word for word what they said, listening constituted simply focusing, paying attention and most importantly being respectful. The damage wasn't to my knowledge per se, but to the effect I had on their esteem and self worth. My mind however as a VCE student wasn't sophisticated enough to think on these near karmic terms. Tragically infact VCE remains dedicated to reinforcing the notion that technical know-how is what will carry you through life, and that abstract mathematics is more helpful than advice on dealing with the opposite sex. Which in turn is an excuse.
There are no excuses and I can no longer employ 'my style of listening' as an excuse for not listening. As the book points out, when I'm on a first date or talking to a boss or tutoring Zaman, my listening skills are exemplary, because I actually care enough to make those people feel important to me. But I can choose to treat everyone that way.

What underpins excuses, is that all behaviour is a choice. Sure we have preferences, each of us. Many will go through life never even coming up with decent excuses, because they just can't comprehend that people think differently to themselves and that their values aren't universal.
Also to an extent, understanding the excuses you make for yourself can be helpful, I have one positive example:

When I was a child, my mother Janice, was one of those mums that buys treats for her kids but not for herself (for appearances sake). Thus whenever she bought us an icecream, she would collectively take 'just a bite' from all our icecreams. The bite itself was actually so unpleasant and disenchanting it almost eradicated the good will of the icecream. Not only did it vastly diminish the total asset base of icecream, Janice unfortunately has an eating style that equates to 'making love to our icecream with her mouth' which knowing what we know now is probably more graphic than is fair. Really we just had confronting traces of her two front teeth scraped through the icecream and lipstick marks on the vanilla surface.
My brother years later caused the penny to drop when his best friend pointed out that the only way he shared food was when he could control the portion size. If you asked for some of his chips he stabbed the alloted number with his fork and transferred them to your plate. If you wanted to try some of the chicken parma he would slice off a section for you to take. I had the exact same behaviour.
We thus had the breakthrough that it was a mother-issue.
Once I understood this and convinced myself that not everyone in the world would violate my food like Janice did(does), I was able to be more trusting and share food with my fellow man. Misaki and I often would just eat off the same communal plate. Their was no need to portion out the chicken before serving it on the table etc.

So any behaviour is a choice, even one seeded as early as infancy. That said, a great excuse is worthless. I've worked now with clients that collect them as if they are gold. My father says 'Success = Failure minus a Good Excuse' and claims it is a mathematical proof. Which it is. Excuses in other words only result in failure.

The exist for one purpose and one purpose only, that is to stave off punishment. To make failure palitable. They are not entirely irrelevant, as if you show up 40 minutes late for your own wedding people will probably want to hear your excuse. You can't just intellectualise such interpersonal transactions by saying 'look there is no excuse, what matters is that I was wrong and I'm sorry' (which actually sounds pretty good, but is not reassuring that you hadn't overslept after a debaucherous night with a prostitute).

As 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' points out, nobody has ever recieved a letter saying 'Man I thought you were a Jerk until you won me over with those great excuses' or 'I thought you should be overlooked as CEO given your dismal performance, until I heard your excuses, they completely turned me around!'

If people want excuses, it is for forward planning. That is to eliminate that excuse from your repertoir. If I was 40 minutes late because I needed to fill up the tank, you're going to remind me ahead of schedule to fill up the tank next time. If I'm 40 minutes late again, I don't have that excuse.

Excuses don't serve us well, and even 'dodging a bullet' serves us poorly, as punishment is usually negative reinforcement which we deny ourselves. 'Seeking success is not the avoidence of failure' the pity is the world is lacking in hardliners to stop excuses from holding us back.

I remember reading 'How To Become CEO' when I was in highschool, and I still remember the lesson in reinforcements entitled 'Earthquakes don't count' which was an anecdote about a salescompany that set quarterly targets for its various divisions across America. The night before one deadline the California office which was on track to achieve its target was hit by an earthquake, dropping its phonelines and preventing them from meeting the target. The division manager made the argument that 'if not for the Earthquake, we would have made the target, therefore our people should get the bonus' to which the CEO replied 'Earthquakes don't count' as the reality for the company was that they didn't have the performance agreed to for the bonuses to be paid. That division subsequently set about making sure it made the target with days to spare from then on. Or so the anecdote goes.

In my experience people are rarely so company minded as to accept such a decision, and I would expect high turnover. But the manager I imagine would learn from the experience. The point of it all being, that excuses don't work on the bottom line. They have no real value. I intend to stop employing mine.