Don’t the head-spinning and logic-numbing excuses flow fast when people fail to perform their agreed-upon tasks or meet important deadlines at work? What today’s workplaces have in common are tons of logical-sounding excuses why managers, executives and team members alike have failed to perform as expected – that’s a tidbit I’ve found from my workshops and business consulting practice. Are we all getting too carried away with psychological excuses about why we shouldn’t be called on the carpet…and held accountable for the good results we’ve failed to deliver upon? You can bet your psychology license on it!
RATIONALIZING: LOGICAL SOUNDING REASONS FOR EXCUSING IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR
SO, IF talk is so cheap, are we ever going to learn anything important and use good stuff to fix what’s broken? Here are a few of my favorite leadership excuses that keep others focused on words instead of effective actions and productive outcomes.
1. TOO TIRED…PRESSURED…AND SO STRESSED OUT. This is the psychological excuse of being too tired, too busy to do it, too stressed out to deliver in-time, too moody to pull it off with a difficult person or project. The “too tired” excuse of being too fatigued is used to justify an inability to meet required minimum standards.
2. BEING LAZY. This is the psychological excuse of just “feeling off today and too lazy,” too unfocused, too mentally scattered, too upset due to a personal or family crisis to meet an important deadline or deliver a quality product. Works well in combination with “psychoexcuse” #1 to avoid feeling guilty for “forgetting” to do something on time and holding up everybody else on the team.
3. LIFE’S BEEN AWFUL TO ME…SYMPATHY STORY. This is the psychological excuse that life is going so gosh-awfully bad, and that stress circumstances are so overwhelming unfair, that normal performance is not morally justifiable at this time. The “life’s awful” excuse gets other people to feel bad for you and not hold you accountable for your actions. Works every time!
4. I’M AN IDIOT. This is the psychological excuse if I haven’t thought through consequences, or failed to think before I speak or act, then I can’t be held accountable for stupid actions I have taken or smart actions that I’ve failed to take. It’s good for getting sympathetic souls to offer extra help when a person isn’t helping out him- or herself.
5. MY MIND RACES. This is the psychological excuse of the “short attention span” or “my mind races and I can’t keep up with it.” The “wandering mind” is a great excuse to explain why I don’t take better physical or emotional care of myself. Works well to keep people from looking squarely at a lack of business ethics or integrity issues.
6. DON’T FOCUS ON THE BAD. This is the psychological excuse that “being negative begets more negative things to happen” so “don’t look at the mistakes because that’s discouraging team self-esteem,” or “just put bad outcomes in the past and don’t re-hash failure.” This is the leading cause of not learning to do something new, and promoting old habits that our bad for the health of our organizations that can be dys-fun-ctional.
Excellent leaders overcome personal and emotional stresses without ignoring or excusing them or allowing them to negatively impact their work performance. Humility and flexibility are key traits of successful leaders who are accountable and communicate in positive and realistic ways.
I’M TIRED…IT’S TOUGH
So, are you able to keep focus at work or is your mind filled with all of these types of psychological excuses, rationalizations, psychobabble, psychoanalytic poppycock and poor performance alibis? Say it ain’t so because it ain’t so! Listen to how your co-workers use psychological excuses to keep others off their back, and themselves off the hook of being responsible for what they do and what they fail to do.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP: EXECUTIVE EXCUSES VS. EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP COACHING
Learn from your past mistakes…practice using different and more “colorful excuses” but don’t take them seriously. Do learn from past errors, change what isn’t working, and come up with a better system of doing things that work at work. In fact, DO something new each day to improve your performance a little bit. Smile inwardly as you watch and hear others who “take the bait” and “buy the storyline” of why agreed-upon results have failed to materialize. Observe how problems are repeatedly swept under the doormat at work, only to pop up again causing additional problems that we all can get upset about.
Good talking to you! And talk to me about any favorite “psychological excuse” you’ve recently heard used that got a leader or co-worker “off the hook” at work to the loss of us all!
Dr. Dennis O’Grady provides executive coaching and professional development training in Ohio and surrounding states. Dennis is the author of “Talk to Me: Communication Moves to Get Along with Anyone” which is a leadership training workbook and is available in the resource store at his Web site www.drogrady.com. Dr. O’Grady leads workshops, and provides leadership executive coaching and business consulting, about two new communicator types called Empathizers and Instigators. One example of a talk difference between the two is that Empathizer-type communicators have a high need for interpersonal trust and honesty, while Instigator-type communicators have a high need for interpersonal power and planning. Knowing who you’re talking to in the workplace by communicator type and temperament, makes all the difference in the “mood” in your workplace and the “effectiveness” of your management team.