Managers hear a lot of excuses. I know because they tell me. I also know the reason is because they make a lot of excuses, only they do it more subtly. One of my martial arts teachers once said to a group of black belts, “Watch the white belts very carefully. They make the same…
Last week Dropbox raised their prices. Here’s the announcement. As you read it, ask yourself how honest it is: Hi Josef, Dropbox Plus just got an upgrade. And a new price—starting on May 10, 2020 (that’s your next billing cycle), Dropbox Plus will be $119.88 a year (plus any applicable taxes). The all-new Plus plan…
Today we’re going to talk about Whataboutism, one of the most popular ways people deceive you. Early last year, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word whataboutism to its catalog: “The technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.” Whataboutism is the perhaps…
I grew up in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts, a couple miles from Thoreau’s Walden pond, the site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War, and a dozen other things that would probably bore you as much as they did me as a kid. In third grade, my class took an intrepid field…
“I’m working on the mustard on my chin. It used to be way worse.” I helped a CEO (let’s call her Jane) of a financial services company identify her over-responsible tendencies and how she caused herself overwhelm. She was spread incredibly thin and wasn’t making time for what was most important. I discovered she had…
“In an ideal world, there’d be no mustard on my chin. I agree with you, but we have to deal with the practical realities of the real world.” A client I’d worked with for years was moving a lot of meetings. That’s often a red flag. She was busy, but she was always busy. Something…
I recently asked a group of my members to define in two sentences what they got out of our work together last year and declare what they want to get out of 2019. Here was one participant’s response: Member: “In 2018, the group taught me how to notice and question behaviors I’d like to change…
Playing the underdog is a form of victimhood that forms a noble identity around the delusion of powerlessness and the fear of change. The deflection attracts good-hearted, sincere, hard-working people who truly mean well. However, their relationship to their own power is deeply conflicted. They unconsciously create an external world that matches their anxious inner…
This deflection is named after the oft-called “father of western philosophy,” who was killed for how he used not-knowing and powerful questions to expose flaws in people’s perception, reasoning, and values. It won’t surprise you that he’s one of my heroes, and certainly one of my teachers. After you learn to use the Socratic Method,…
In my series of excuses, today I’ll be talking about Self-Contradiction. It’s a lack of clarity on its surface but often arises from deep-seated commitment issues. Not often used blatantly, this type of deflection may be tricky to spot. The contradictions are sometimes so subtle they require deep listening to detect. Manager: So who’s going…