Some people have a sense of entitlement that they refuse to take responsibility for what is showing up in their lives.
They are familiar with blaming others and the world and fail to look at their actions and sometimes at the expense of others.
Most people are doing this subconsciously because society frowns on mistakes and we get punished quickly for it too.
It is in their best interest to save their reputation and reputation usually isn’t at stake, it’s the EGO that tries to bury itself from being laughed at by others.
Why do I share this? Almost every day, I would witness or hear about the behaviours of people around me or stories told by others and loved ones as well as encounters I see or experienced with cashiers, servers, customers, passengers, drivers, passersby and more.
For example, many years ago, when I was in charge of organising corporate wellness talks for a company I worked for, I met with a Director of a global brand who was keen to introduce wellness talks to his hundreds of employees.
I meticulously planned for the event, scheduled all my teammates to be available and even ensured that all logistical matters were sorted and that we would be on time for the talk. I had also reminded this Director about the date and time so that we would be on the same page and booked our calendars accordingly, I even created the EDMs for the event.
Lo and behold, on the day of the talk itself, I learnt that the audience have already been seated an hour early and they are getting riled up and impatient. The Director asked if I could start, I was not sure what was going on, there was no explanation about why his employees were getting impatient with me and my team.
I asked specific questions and I learnt that the Director had created his EDM and somehow perhaps accidentally changed the time to an hour early. I looked him in the eyes and said that I had reminded him about the events from Day 1 until the day before the talk, verbally, through text and e-mail with the time that we both had agreed on. He did not apologise and merely brushed it off and said that he thought that it was at a different time even after he had confirmed that I had never once said a different time.
The expert of the talk was on duty at that time and he won’t be able to make it any earlier. The crowd was so angry and the Director did nothing to assure them and kept asking me to just begin the talk and he stood there with arms folded as if waiting for me to clean up the mess he created. At first, I did not know how to address the blunder because clearly it was the Director’s mistake to invite them an hour earlier for the talk and he even said not to say that it was his mistake and wanted me and my team to cover up his mistakes for him.
I rose to the occasion, I took the microphone and apologised to an auditorium filled with angry and hungry employees, it was lunchtime when this fiasco happened. I then assured the audience that their time would not go to waste and there were some discrepancies with the posters that were given out to them by their company. I invited them to take the packed meals to eat as I began the presentation that was supposed to be delivered by the subject matter expert, thankfully it was I who prepared the slides. At the end of the presentation, we garnered positive feedback about the session itself and generated an overwhelming number of sales at the end, although I know that I would need to answer to my CEO back in Headquarters about what had happened, so you see, when one does not want to take responsibility for their mistakes someone else may need to shoulder that responsibility, in this case, it was me.
I’m grateful that I can resolve such conflicts at work and I have no qualms in trying to make things work out because in that situation I value my time and effort as well as the audience’s time and effort for showing up. That gave me the drive to suck it up, muster the courage to face it and focus on the results.
This is just one of the rare situations that happened at work, and most people do not seem to know how to take on being responsible when they make mistakes what more rise to the occasion and make it right.
If you are surrounded by situations where you are constantly taking the blame and you do not know how to handle it with power and allow situations to then turn in your favour, you may consider booking a coaching session with me. I hear this type of situation daily and it can be as simple as people not wanting to take ownership of broken or lost items and so forth at the expense of others, how do you face this situation without losing your cool?
