The Natural Blame Game
Being in a blaming mindset seems as easy as waking up in the morning. Calling it ‘natural,’ is to say that it is part of human nature to point the finger at others and call them out for where they let us down, where they break an explicit or implicit promise to us, where we are disappointed in our relationship with them. Sadly though blaming someone else just as naturally spurs the person I blame to justify himself and pay me the favor of blaming me in turn.
I was thinking of this pattern in my life due to it’s prevalence and because of reading a book: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. The authors (which is actually listed as an organization – The Arbinger Institute) describe ‘being in the box’ as that mindset wherein we blame others and justify ourselves and our own actions and responses: “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive…. to feel justified, to be right.” (p. 101)
I don’t have the time in this post to cover the many facets of this concept – buy the book! But I do want to cover two thoughts: where we devote our focus in and out of the box and how to stay out of the blame-game box as much as possible. The authors suggest that in any moment we have two foci – a what-focus and a who-focus. When I’m in the box my what-focus is justification, and my who focus is myself. Out of the box, my what-focus is results and my who-focus is others.
Staying out of the box requires a change of mindset—from focusing on myself to focusing on others. The fruit of this change opens up the possibility of focusing on and achieving results in a way that honors and respects those we are connected to whether in the domain of marriage, family, work, or volunteer groups.
January 1, 2013