Everyone Pinned the Blame on Her
Are you your ‘personal brand?’
Are you the sum of your accomplishments and successes, or your failures and regrets?
My personal branding journey began when I was working at Goldman Sachs.
For years, I firmly believed that “My work speaks for itself.”
So what if I liked to float around the office dressed in pink chiffon every day?
When I finally decided to stop blaming my manager for holding me back in my career
And see if my changing my appearance would make a difference after all
My career finally gained traction.
The problem was
Inside, I was the same old me.
Thinking the same old thoughts.
“Fake it till you make it.”
Boy, was I faking it.
To the outside world, I showed up as smart, successful.
Inside, I was so afraid of being called out, being exposed for who I believed I was.
I was Not Good Enough.
This thought, this belief, ruled my life.
I passed up on several great internal transfer opportunities because I was afraid of failing, of being found out.
And this didn’t begin at Goldman.
I still remember my classmate from Korea University, who was so surprised when she found out I was managing a small medical office in Vancouver (one of my first jobs after graduating university before I moved to Hong Kong).
She was leading an exciting life flying around the world, working for one of the top global consulting firms.
“Natalie, you’re capable of much more than this. Have you considered doing something else, like consulting?”
I remember shrinking into myself.
I felt ashamed and wanted to find a place to hide.
I don’t remember what I mumbled in response to her.
But I do remember what my inner voice replied
“But I’m not good enough.”
If I were to be very, very honest with you
I got to where I am today in spite of myself.
It can be painful looking back to see how much more I could have accomplished
If only my beliefs served me, and not worked against me.
Because “Not good enough” ruled my career, my choices and decisions.
So no, I’m not my image or personal brand.
Nor am I my accomplishments or failures.
Who am I?
And more importantly, who are you?
You are what you think.
You are the sum of your thoughts.
My client, Susan, thinks her colleagues her bosses are obstacles in her way to doing good work.
They are out to get her.
She believes work is about fighting battles to survive.
And she is isolated and fighting everyone alone.
Susan is a textbook angry victim.
I think you can guess what experiences she has at work.
It’s not about the Law of Attraction
It’s about the Law of Creation.
Your thoughts decide the experiences you create in your life.
Your beliefs dictate how you feel about everything that happens in your life.
What would you describe as your most common emotional state?
Do you mostly feel happy, peaceful, and fulfilled?
Or do you mostly feel anxious, depressed, helpless/hopeless or angry?
If you don’t enjoy your main emotional state
If you’re not happy with your life
Change your thoughts
And you change your life.
And you change the emotions you experience in your life.
How?
STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR THOUGHTS
Just like you can’t manage what you don’t measure
You can’t change what you don’t see.
It takes a high level of self-awareness to do this well.
If you aren’t there yet, there’s a simple way to get there.
When you notice your emotions are triggering, reverse engineer to discover what thought is driving this emotion. For example
What is the emotion I’m feeling? (Anger)
Why am I feeling this emotion? (The incident)
Why does this incident make me (Angry)?
What is the thought/belief behind this (angry) emotion?
STEP 2: BRING IT BACK TO REALITY
Ask yourself, Is this true?
Me: Is it true I’m not good enough?
Susan: Is it true everyone is out to get me?
Be as unbiased as you can.
Keep digging, keep asking yourself, until you can see the whole picture.
Until you can see the reality that it’s simply not true!
In my case, no matter what I did, how much I accomplished, and how much positive feedback I received, I refused to see the reality that I was good enough.
In Susan’s case, something blew up at work and EVERYONE involved was scrambling to avoid blame for this issue that went all the way to the top of the company.
And all fingers pointed at Susan.
She was being set up for something that wasn’t her fault
Or even in any way remotely under her responsibility.
Sound familiar?
VICTIM
Perfectly aligned with her belief and story.
(i.e. They are out to get her, she is isolated, alone, fighting everyone alone)
We worked together to strategize how to contain the issue and avoid becoming the scapegoat.
I helped script her meetings and coached her on how to tell the truth strategically and avoid being trapped by others’ twisted logic
(Her usual response when attacked was to freeze)
But while fighting this fire is super important
It’s even more important that Susan saw her beliefs - and understood they aren’t reality.
1. Susan’s boss was actively supporting Susan to give the responsibility for the issue back to the rightful owners, she was not trying to pin it on Susan.
Susan’s stubborn belief that her bosses are her obstacle was preventing her from seeing how her boss was helping and not harming her.
In reality, all along Susan had never accepted the reality of corporate life to work strategically within its rules. She enjoyed going rogue - and getting burned is a natural consequence.
2. Everyone was scrambling to pin blame not because they were out to get Susan, they didn’t care about Susan enough to make it a personal attack. It was simply because they were scared of losing their jobs. And it was precisely because Susan would regularly get involved in things that were not her responsibility (going rogue), that it made it easy to for people to pin the blame on her when things went wrong.
3. The top leaders in the firm knew what the real problem was, but were too risk-averse to make the big changes necessary to fix the problem. Susan’s overcompensating for others’ failures made it easy for leaders to keep ignoring the problem.
In fact, Susan was part of the problem precisely because her superhuman efforts to always make it work and salvage the situation allowed the problems to continue, and then she resented her bosses when they told her to stop getting involved.
Where’s the victim in the story now?
Susan wasn’t entirely up to seeing the reality.
Reality sucks because it means you can’t put all the blame on someone else.
In some way, shape or form, you are responsible too.
The last thing Susan expected or wanted was to ‘wake up’ and see that in spite of her good intentions, she was just as much a part of perpetuating the problem as the others.
But I’m proud of Susan because even though the message was uncomfortable for her
She recognized this was a necessary step for her development
She embraced reality and brought a new attitude to her meetings.
And the universe responded.
Her big boss found out from the source the cause of the issue.
The responsibility (blame) was placed where it belonged.
Overnight, Susan was completely vindicated.
Justice is sweet.
Only a balanced view of reality can overcome your stubbornly irrational beliefs.
And allow you to create the life you want.
What beliefs do you choose in spite of reality?
STEP 3: REPEAT
Each time you trigger emotionally, repeat steps 1 and 2.
Deep-seated beliefs are difficult to change
But the important thing is, they CAN change
Your persistence will pay off.
And in the process, you are choosing to experience a much happier emotional state of living!
What's your experience? Drop me a note and let me know what your thoughts/beliefs are and how they have impacted the life you have created. I would love to hear from you!
I work with a select group of senior leaders 1:1, July is full but for August I have 2 openings for my Senior Leadership Coaching Program intake - contact me if you’re interested.