Finger Pointing Will Stunt Your Growth

Four reasons to take it on the chin at work

Have you ever argued for your point of view until a colleague just gave up? I’m guessing there’s a chance. Have you ever dodged failure like it was the plague? What about “inviting” others to join in the blame the last time a project went south?

Well, I have too. It’s really not uncommon. America is a culture where winners are cheered, and losers are jeered. It’s a land where many coaches only give pats on the back when you get the V.

For me, being right and success were how I built my self-esteem — from the outside in. I learned the hard way that external validation has no substance. Success can be deceptive. You think it fills you up and moves you forward, but it really doesn’t help you progress in any material way.

It took me a long time to learn this, but it turns out that failure and being wrong are key ingredients to growth. Let me show you what I mean.

Being Right Is Hard

Humor me here and consider the obsession with being right as an addiction. You can make it whatever substance is your guilty pleasure: booze, candy, weed, sex…Whatever floats your boat. Dealer’s choice.

From the moment you rise to the second you sleep, you have that little addiction gnawing away at you from the inside. It’s subtle in the morning, but it grows bit by bit until you can’t ignore it anymore. You’re sitting in a meeting, and suddenly you snap. You make a nasty remark about how dumb someone else’s idea is, and all the reasons it would never work.

After the meeting, you go back to your desk, relieved, but then your boss calls. She’s not a happy. Your team’s big launch plan is not up to par; she wants it back tomorrow. It’s covered in handwritten redline edits.

Suddenly the craving rears its ugly head, and you need a giant hit. So, what do you do?

You probably assemble the team and serve up another heaping helping of “I’m right,” cocking your index fingers and spraying the room like you’re squeezing an AK…

It takes a lot of work to be right all of the time. Your mind is always on high alert. Constantly dodging blame, manipulating your way to plausible deniability, swooping in for praise, arguing relentlessly when you’re on the losing side, justifying your rationale. It’s exhausting.

“We consistently make poor assumptions, misjudge probabilities, misremember facts, give in to cognitive biases and make decisions based on our emotional whims,” writes Mark Manson in “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.” “As humans, we’re wrong pretty much constantly, so if your metric for life success is to be right — well you’re going to have a difficult time rationalizing all of the bullsh*t to yourself.”

“Being right” is like an addiction because it’s how some of us gauge our self-worth, which means we can be willing to do anything to get it. And if you’re exhausting all of that energy just trying to be right, how much energy do you think you have left over to do good work and grow?

Shaming is Sadistic

When you’re right all the time, someone else needs to take the fall. And when you shift the blame onto someone else’s shoulders, the blame turns into shame. Dr. Brené Brown, shame researcher, explains that:

“Shame is that intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

“We live in a world where people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous,” writes Brown in “Daring Greatly.” “Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders and bullying.”

Remember that belittling over the dumb idea earlier? It may have felt good and reinforced your feeling of superiority, but, well, that might just make that employee go home and try to cope with food and alcohol. I know because it’s been me.

“Researchers don’t find shame correlated with positive outcomes at all — there are no data to support that shame is a helpful compass for good behavior. In fact, shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution,” writes Brown.

When people are shamed and belittled at work, it can also lead to disengagement, lower performance, combativeness, gossip, deficiencies in creativity and the shaming can cascade to others.

In “Daring Greatly,” Peter Sheahan, CEO of global consultancy ChangeLabs, explains that “every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward.”

Growth Is Built on Vulnerability

When you grow purely by succeeding, it’s like building a house on a hollow foundation. Maybe you’ve gotten lucky and maybe you’ve succeeded by pure force of will. Either way, it’s the responsibilities that have grown, not the character or abilities.

This is how it was in my career. I had a little luck and a lot of force of will. I’d outwork the hardest, most difficult clients every time. But my insane drive to succeed and constantly prove my intelligence were really attempts to hide my fear of failure. As a result, I was unwilling to admit mistakes, take criticism and use my shortcomings to grow where I was weak.

“The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others,” writes Manson. “They close themselves off to new and important information.”

Again, that was me to a T. I believed that I could buck the traditional feedback loop and forge ahead alone under the burden of increasing responsibilities. I had hardened and closed myself off to the opportunity to grow from the inside out. I paid the price and eventually cracked under the pressure.

“Shame keeps us small, resentful and afraid,” writes Brown. “A sense of worthiness inspires us to be vulnerable, share openly and persevere.”

When you’re not worried about being shamed or belittled, you are free to stretch and take risks that expose your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It gives you the opportunity to take an honest look at yourself and commit to develop your weaknesses into strengths.

Empathy Is Built on the Process

According to Brown, empathy is the antidote to shame. It helps us understand that we are not alone when we have failed and are feeling weak, embarrassed or humiliated by our failure.

“Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us,” explains Brown. “Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.”

The only way to effectively be able to give empathy to another, however, is to experience failure yourself, understand the pain and endure the vulnerability. Once you’ve lived through these experiences, the humbling moments become easier to stomach. Not only do you build up resilience to them in the future, you’re more willing to take risks and stretch to grow.

The added bonus is that you can help others stand back up after their failures and build authentic, human relationships. And when your colleagues and direct reports see this process play out, they’ll likely start to open up too because you will have removed some fear of your index finger being pointed in their direction.

“If we want to be able to move through the difficult disappointments, the hurt feelings and the heartbreaks that are inevitable in a fully lived life, we can’t equate defeat with being unworthy of love, belonging and job. If we do, we’ll never show up and try again.”

Parting Words of Wisdom from Manson

“It’s far more helpful to assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.”

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