This part: “They give people endless victimhood fodder that makes them feel good in the short-term but that ultimately disempowers them.” Love it! For myself, it seems to come down to priorities and owning the decisions behind them. My response to this person would probably be something like, “Me having kids is irrelevant to your circumstances. This is about you. How can we work with time and energy that you DO have instead of what you don’t… OR shimmy around expectations and priorities?” It sounds like this person might have felt ashamed and accountability went out the door? I always wonder the why behind things😅 my instinct is to throw this person a little slack but I remember having a colleague that regularly and selectively used her kids as a crutch and left others to pick up her slack in an entitled kind of way. I would have been less annoyed if she just said thank you, owned her situation, and made a demonstrated effort to work within her circumstances. Instead, if she noticed someone would pick up her slack, she would use it as an opportunity to complain about her kids or give more reasons why she didn’t follow through on her commitments and responsibilities - it felt like a manipulative reach for empathy and I can get defensive when I sense that coming from people🥴 Sometimes she’d sign up for projects we all knew were not within her capacity, pawn it off on others then put herself on the parent pedestal. One time or a few times of not showing up is no problem, but regular occurrences combined with lack of ownership is a waste of everyone’s time. Dang, this triggered me. HAHA!
Haha love it! Thank you for the comment and sharing your thoughts and story, Peyton! Completely understand the frustration with your coworker. Like you said, I think it's always best to be as transparent as possible regarding your circumstances and your ability to meet job demands, especially with the people that can help you. You're likely right about the impetus for my client's behavior as well. I always want people to know I am in their corner first, which I've had to work on as empathy doesn't come naturally to me. I'm a logical person, so I look at the facts and then look at how to proceed based on those facts. And the facts are ALWAYS that you have the circumstances you have, and the only thing you can do is to act within the constraints those circumstances dictate. I would never ask someone to operate outside of those constraints. I DO need to a better job acknowledging those constraints, but other than acknowledgment, what more can I do? Questions such as "Why do these constraints exist?" or "Are they fair?" should be discarded the moment they lose their utility, which is immediately. Those sorts of questions serve mostly to absolve people of the responsibility to act.
This part: “They give people endless victimhood fodder that makes them feel good in the short-term but that ultimately disempowers them.” Love it! For myself, it seems to come down to priorities and owning the decisions behind them. My response to this person would probably be something like, “Me having kids is irrelevant to your circumstances. This is about you. How can we work with time and energy that you DO have instead of what you don’t… OR shimmy around expectations and priorities?” It sounds like this person might have felt ashamed and accountability went out the door? I always wonder the why behind things😅 my instinct is to throw this person a little slack but I remember having a colleague that regularly and selectively used her kids as a crutch and left others to pick up her slack in an entitled kind of way. I would have been less annoyed if she just said thank you, owned her situation, and made a demonstrated effort to work within her circumstances. Instead, if she noticed someone would pick up her slack, she would use it as an opportunity to complain about her kids or give more reasons why she didn’t follow through on her commitments and responsibilities - it felt like a manipulative reach for empathy and I can get defensive when I sense that coming from people🥴 Sometimes she’d sign up for projects we all knew were not within her capacity, pawn it off on others then put herself on the parent pedestal. One time or a few times of not showing up is no problem, but regular occurrences combined with lack of ownership is a waste of everyone’s time. Dang, this triggered me. HAHA!
Haha love it! Thank you for the comment and sharing your thoughts and story, Peyton! Completely understand the frustration with your coworker. Like you said, I think it's always best to be as transparent as possible regarding your circumstances and your ability to meet job demands, especially with the people that can help you. You're likely right about the impetus for my client's behavior as well. I always want people to know I am in their corner first, which I've had to work on as empathy doesn't come naturally to me. I'm a logical person, so I look at the facts and then look at how to proceed based on those facts. And the facts are ALWAYS that you have the circumstances you have, and the only thing you can do is to act within the constraints those circumstances dictate. I would never ask someone to operate outside of those constraints. I DO need to a better job acknowledging those constraints, but other than acknowledgment, what more can I do? Questions such as "Why do these constraints exist?" or "Are they fair?" should be discarded the moment they lose their utility, which is immediately. Those sorts of questions serve mostly to absolve people of the responsibility to act.