Episode 221 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: This episode is about how we identify a victim mindset and what we can do to either help ourselves get out of it or support one of our team members, our director port, who demonstrates a bit of a victim mindset to get out of it and adopt a more resilient growth mindset with a sense of ownership. Let’s dive in to see what that looks like. Here’s the question.

0:00:22 Ramona Shaw: How do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role, build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully, and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? That’s the question, and this show provides the answers. Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw, and I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source of stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection, and fulfillment.

0:00:50 Ramona Shaw: And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you learn how to think, communicate, and act as the confident and competent leader you know you can.

0:01:03 Ramona Shaw: Be welcome to this episode of The Manage Track podcast. I want to talk about victim thinking. And first, before I go any further, I want to quickly define what I mean when I referenced the word victim in this context. What I mean in this context of leadership and the workplace is when we feel powerless and we feel like we are at the mercy of external circumstances. And that could be things that happen.

0:01:36 Ramona Shaw: Layoffs, restructuring, change, salary, bandwidth. It could be people, our boss, a relationship that strains that we have with a coworker. It could also be specific behaviors or failures, setbacks, when something goes wrong and a mistake happens and we’re now part of the group who has to face up to the consequences? And how do we show up in such a situation when we might feel like more responsibility is assigned to us or other people feel like we’re assigning more responsibility to them than they’re willing or we’re willing to take on or accept and take responsibility for.

0:02:16 Ramona Shaw: So that is what I mean with victim mindset. I want to talk about, and I want to briefly share an example of how that happened to me and how tricky it was to get out of that victim mindset. Because when we talk about it in a somewhat abstract way or detach from our own problems, we might immediately see intellectually understand. Yeah, it’s not helpful to have a victim mindset. And no, I don’t see myself as a victim because it’s not really a label most of us feel good about taking on, intellectually speaking, but emotionally speaking, on a psychological level, it actually is quite easy to fall into that trap.

0:02:58 Ramona Shaw: And it is sort of a covert, a covert mindset in many ways that we see that show up that only becomes visible here or there in the workplace, but underneath of what’s going on in either us or in our employees, may really be driven by victim mindset. Okay, so enough said. I’m going to share a quick example, then I want to share a study with you. Then we’re going to go into why actually we fall into that trap of having a victim mindset and then what we can do to counter this, both for ourselves, or how we could help someone on our team to reframe and see situations differently and stop having that powerless stance or blaming others.

0:03:38 Ramona Shaw: The example that I want to mention is a long time ago, years ago, I was getting my coach training certification. I was in a nine or twelve months program where I learned how to become a professional coach and the coaching practice and tools and so forth. And part of that journey was for us as a group of coaches in training to reflect on ourselves and to start to sort of uncover some of these patterns that then later we would help our clients uncover. So we had to do that work ourselves first. So we did that sort of in parallel doing it ourselves and helping our fellow coaches in training before we would ever go out and then actually practice some of this on our clients.

0:04:24 Ramona Shaw: And one of those exercises, the question was, what is the dominant catabolic emotion that you feel most often when you’re not feeling well? And I reflected internally and I realized the catabolic emotion that I felt most often was being a victim. I felt that there were so many circumstances in my life that I didn’t have any control over, that I didn’t have any control over that I started to resent.

0:04:56 Ramona Shaw: The more I felt powerless, the more I felt like I couldn’t make a change. And really, so much of my life is not in my control. It’s in the control of the government or people in my life and decisions that other people made that I had to sort of be part of the consequence thereof. And it was not a good feeling, and I could not see a way out because the more I was in it, the less powerful I felt and the less creative or the less creative I felt and the less resilient I felt. Yeah. And looking back, a lot of this was very time bound.

0:05:32 Ramona Shaw: Yeah, there were maybe a few years of it, but really, if you think about a few years of it, but really, in the grand scheme of things at the moment. It felt like, literally, this was my life versus this was a phase of my life where I had to navigate circumstances. Yeah. That I didn’t have any control over, but there was so much still. And how I viewed those circumstances, how I interpret them, that I had control over in the way that I adopted and adapted my life to those circumstances was also fully in my control.

0:06:04 Ramona Shaw: But I did not see that. Yeah. And it felt energy draining. Every time I would sort of linger in that emotion, it would feel energy draining. And I can totally still relate to this victim mindset. And I also know that every once in a while, I find myself, like, dabbling in this thought of, oh, I’m. I’m powerless. It’s the external circumstances. And I catch myself, and I remember, no way. And I skipped the curse word here, no way will I let myself go back to a state where I go down that rabbit hole or that vicious cycle of falling into this trap.

0:06:45 Ramona Shaw: But it can be tempting. But again, before we get there, let’s talk about a study to better understand the implications of having a victim mentality, which in the workplace often shows up as blaming others for situations or for how we feel. They make me angry, they make me feel disrespected, they make me feel undermined, or we feel helpless in certain situations. It could also be that we focus on the problems a lot more, and we are sort of unable to work on or propose or embrace solutions.

0:07:21 Ramona Shaw: It may also be a total avoidance of responsibility. So, like, no, no, I’m not taking on this responsibility. I can hardly cope with what I have, or I am rejecting taking responsibility for something that happened, where something had happened that seems to be out of my purview or out of my hands, or only slightly involved me. And so we are pushing away the responsibility. Those are often the behaviors that we see with people who demonstrate a victim mindset.

0:07:53 Ramona Shaw: This study here that I want to reference was done by Stanford University, and what they found is that playing the victim leads to a sense of entitlement and to narcissistic or selfish behavior. And the people who demonstrate it don’t notice it. So what happens here is that the researcher divided 104 people into two groups. One group was told to write a short essay about a time when they felt bored.

0:08:20 Ramona Shaw: The other group was told to write about a time when their life seemed unfair. Perhaps they felt wronged or slighted by someone. And after writing the essay, when they were, like, in that mindset of, okay, someone wronged me, someone slighted me. Again, it’s like cultivating a bit of my victim thoughts versus when they were bored. After writing the essay, the participants were interviewed and asked if they wanted to help with a simple, easy task.

0:08:49 Ramona Shaw: Now here is what happened. Those who wrote about being wronged were 26% less likely to help and were rated by the researchers as feeling 13% more entitled. So less likely to help and feeling more entitled. And what does that cultivate and whole environment and has a like a ripple effect on other people and other people also not feeling well in a leadership role particularly. This is dangerous because your impact is your behaviors has an even stronger ripple effect on others.

0:09:23 Ramona Shaw: But if you do see it in team members again and you ignore it and don’t address it, you have to know that their victim mindset likely influences their coworkers and the team overall as well. Now in a separate experiment, those in the unfair group were 11% more likely to express selfish attitudes. And a fun side note that was mentioned here is that the researcher found that those with a victim mindset were more likely to steal the experimenter’s pen. Okay, pen stealing aside, this study illustrates that victim vitality can manifest itself in thinking that everything is personal.

0:10:00 Ramona Shaw: Like let’s say your colleague doesn’t respond to one of your emails, you email them one or twice again, but yet they don’t respond. So instead of walking to their desk to see if their email was going into the spam folder, or if they were dealing with some urgent matter, or if they just generally don’t read emails, and there are plenty of people in organizations like that, we, if we’re in a victim state, would then make up the story about the situation that is about ourselves. Like we would totally invent the story that they’re sliding us, or they don’t want to support us or work with us, and we’re taking it personal.

0:10:33 Ramona Shaw: So those are all ways that it shows up and the ripple effect that it may have or impact it has on other people. And so I want to connect right into what the study was showing with taking things personally. How we identify that someone has a victim mindset is often through, again, not taking on responsibility, blaming other people, but also sort of the inability to see that other people’s behaviors is likely about them.

0:11:00 Ramona Shaw: And we look at everything that other people do as something that is personal against us. So we put ourselves into the box of victimhood almost voluntarily through the stories that we make up in our minds. It could also be through over generalization. So instead of having the willingness to look at something through different lenses or different perspectives, let’s say you’re running a marketing campaign and you’re depending on the, the Google algorithm for clicks to the website.

0:11:32 Ramona Shaw: And so you start to realize that you’re not hitting the numbers that you’ve set out in your forecast. When we’re over generalizing, we might say, well, the algorithm has changed what worked six months ago. Clearly it doesn’t seem to work anymore. This is Google’s fault. And so we are generalizing the situation versus saying, okay, let’s see. I’m sure part of that, and we can, might be a fair assumption, is that the algorithm changed and it’s Google’s fault.

0:12:02 Ramona Shaw: But also let’s look at what else might have changed. Where can we dig a little bit deeper to understand what the problem might be versus just generalizing it as the one lump sum issue being the Google algorithm? When we have the ability to look at the audience, is it the words that we’re using? Is it our SEO ranking that is influencing the algorithm? Is it that we have a new competitor who’s also spending on the platform? And that changes things.

0:12:29 Ramona Shaw: What else might it be that we didn’t see or consider before? What are our opportunities to address this versus assigning it all to a Google algorithm? And that plays right into this other way of thinking, which is the all or nothing thinking. So over generalization is one blaming, is one assigning blame, like elsewhere externally. And then the all or nothing thinking is if it’s either a whole bunch of things, all of things, or it’s nothing. So we don’t have, again, this ability to look at. Huh. Maybe it’s this and that.

0:13:03 Ramona Shaw: Maybe it’s partially their fault and partially my fault. When someone on my team once was surprised that they didn’t get automatically promoted in their third year, and they said that they remember me saying that they will be promoted in year three, which was far from my knowledge, far from the company’s ideology and doubt that I ever said that in those words. But what I do take responsibility for is that I could have totally said in terms of like an outlook, yeah. You know, a lot of people start here and then within two, maybe three years, if performance goes well, they might get promoted into this other role. So this is like an example of a career trajectory of what they could expect.

0:13:45 Ramona Shaw: I might have said that in a conversation as I was onboarding this person, but if I look at what they said when they were disappointed that they didn’t get automatically promoted, and I would have said, no way, this is their problem. I had nothing to do with that I would never say it, and that’s ridiculous. That is all or nothing thinking. So instead, I have to say, okay, that is not something that we do or that there’s evidence for that. You get automatically promoted.

0:14:15 Ramona Shaw: However, let me get curious, like, where could I have been misleading in my communication or unclear in my communication, or what else could have happened along the way where this expectation was formed and seemed totally valid in their head and was so far away from what was in my head. So somewhere along the way, I made mistakes. I didn’t realign that expectation. I didn’t set that one clearly. And that obviously means looking internally, like being self reflective and having the ability to look at, how can two things exist at the same time, and how can I find and really look for where I can take responsibility for it?

0:14:54 Ramona Shaw: These are the common behaviors that I see either in speaking with a client or a team member, or when I speak with employees in an organization. What comes up most often? Again, blaming. Again, blaming. Feeling helpless over generalizing an all or nothing thinking. Now, when we find ourselves sort of tempted with the victim mindset, or if we experience it, or maybe you realize, like, yeah, I do have some of this. In this often it’s in one area of our lives.

0:15:27 Ramona Shaw: When we have a victim mindset, that doesn’t mean in all areas of our lives, we constantly show up that way. It may just be in one relationship or in one aspect of your life, and it could only be for a few weeks. But regardless of where it’s at and for how long it’s existing, it’s really good for you to detect it. And then do you actively not just wait for it to dissipate with the hope strategy, but to actively undo it?

0:15:54 Ramona Shaw: And in order to do so, we have to understand why we find ourselves in it in the first place. Okay, how many benefits do I have here? I have five benefits that I listed that came to mind. One is we get attention. So when we say that we’ve been wronged, we’ve been slighted, it’s a story that creates attention. People will listen to, people will empathize with you. People will provide or offer support, even. It’s just verbal support.

0:16:26 Ramona Shaw: The attention that we get by putting ourselves in a victim mindset or telling the story with us being the victim is definitely way larger than if we tell this story with us taking equal responsibility to everyone else or taking full responsibility for what happened. The second one, after the attention, is that it’s comforting. Like it can make us internally feel like we were the victim and so we don’t have to offer this self criticism and self reflection.

0:16:57 Ramona Shaw: So if I say, let’s go back to that initial example that I shared, look, all of these things that are not going well in my life have to do with external circumstances. None of this is my fault. That relieves me of responsibility. And so I don’t have to closely go inward and, like, reflect and criticize my own behavior or challenge myself to, say, step it up. Ramona, just because this one thing is sort of externally driven doesn’t mean that everything else is impossible or inaccessible. That is not true.

0:17:33 Ramona Shaw: It’s not true that you don’t have power, but that takes effort, and it’s often uncomfortable. It feels more comfortable for us to be in a victim mindset. The third one is it’s bonding, actually being a victim. And again, getting some empathy or sharing with someone else how we’ve been wronged or how we have no power, no control, they can likely relate to that as well. They feel that, and so temporarily, that is a bonding experience, and some hormones will be released along the way, and we feel like we’ve connected in the moment.

0:18:08 Ramona Shaw: The tricky part is to recognize while we’re doing it, or when we have sort of this temptation to do that and say, okay, never mind, I’m not going to leverage this opportunity to bond based on a victim mindset. That’s just something that doesn’t align with who I am or how I see myself. Instead, I want to bond by being vulnerable and looking inward of, okay, this is what’s not working, and here are all the factors. But, like, I have to also look at myself and figure out what is it that I can control, I can influence.

0:18:44 Ramona Shaw: How can I show up as the greatest version of myself in this situation and say, like, look, I struggle with this, or I’m having a hard time thinking about it or getting myself out of it. But you’re creating a bond based on the experience of trying to rise to the occasion versus giving in to the victim mindset.

0:19:03 Ramona Shaw: Here’s the question. How do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role, build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully, and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? That’s the question, and this show provides the answers. Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw, and I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source of stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection, and fulfillment.

0:19:32 Ramona Shaw: And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and grows. In the show, you learn how to think, communicate and act as the confident and competent leader you know you can be.

0:19:47 Ramona Shaw: Transitioning from being an individual contributor and IC into your first leadership role is one of the biggest transitions that you’ll make in your career because the things that made you successful as an IC will not be the same things that will make you successful as a leader.

0:20:05 Ramona Shaw: And especially in a new role.

0:20:08 Ramona Shaw: When all eyes are on you, when you know your boss wants you to succeed and is watching closely, your peers are having an eye on you. Your team members are keen to figure out how to work with you and whether or not they can trust you during this time. By the way, whether or not you’re a first time manager or you’ve led teams in the past, but you’re in.

0:20:27 Ramona Shaw: A new role as a new manager, to the team or even to the.

0:20:30 Ramona Shaw: Business, this is a time in which you don’t want to wing it. Go into such a situation with a plan and with specific tools that will help you build trust and gain the.

0:20:40 Ramona Shaw: Respect of your coworkers.

0:20:42 Ramona Shaw: In our new manager toolkit, we’ll give you guides, tools, checklists, and lots of things that are important for any new manager to keep in mind. Head on over to arkova.org free toolkits to grab your. You can also find that link in the show notes or the captions. I’ll see you over there.

0:21:02 Ramona Shaw: Okay, I’m going to circle back to these benefits. I talked about the attention that you got. I talked about the comfort that you’re getting. I talked about it being bonding. It’s also self assuring. Again, we don’t have to criticize ourselves. We can feel good about who we are because we are powerless due to these external circumstances. It frees us from accountability. And that’s the last item here.

0:21:29 Ramona Shaw: We don’t have to show up. We don’t have to take accountability. We don’t have to do the hard thing or have the hard conversations. That is why it’s easy to fall into the trap of victim thinking. Now, in order to counter this, I already said a little bit about it with how you might shift away from bonding by being a victim to bonding through the sort of the journey to growth. Another one is really that accountability.

0:21:58 Ramona Shaw: And especially if it’s your someone on your team that you’re coaching through this, developing a sense of accountability. And that happens by addressing what is it that they can control? What is it that they do have power over? What is it that the solutions that can bring or the way that they can engage in a solution finding process, what kind of responsibility they could be taking. Really call them up, call them to the stance, challenge them in their thinking to think beyond what the victim voice would say, asking questions such as what would the great version of you like, the greatest version of you, what would they do right now? What would the most powerful version of you do right now and how would they want to interpret that situation? Those are all sort of coaching questions you can help them with.

0:22:55 Ramona Shaw: But then when you set accountability, you define what it is that they’re going to do or what it is that you’re going to do, write it down and then check back in. And if they don’t do what they said they were going to do, then the accountability comes from saying, like, look, you’ve agreed and you’ve committed to doing this, but now I see that it didn’t happen, what was going on. That is the accountability conversation.

0:23:25 Ramona Shaw: What happened most often, or I see this go wrong is you might have the conversation but then you don’t get clear on what it is actually that they’re going to do. Vague, I’m going to get better at so and so. You can never hold anyone accountable for betterment. That’s so vague. So I’m going to have a conversation with this person. I’m going to propose three solutions. I’m going to apologize. Those are all ways that you could be holding them accountable or encourage the sense of accountability.

0:23:53 Ramona Shaw: And then you have to write it down because if you put it into your memory box, high chance that depending on how stressful or how much is going on in your work, you won’t remember. So you have to write it down, then schedule to check in on that and then have a meeting in the future where you will check in and follow up and then let them know if they didn’t do what they said you’re going to do, that. This is a moment to encourage accountability and that you want to look at what happened. And it’s likely in a victim mindset that they decided, well, I changed my mind. I actually didn’t want to do that or I didn’t think that was useful because again, victim mindset, and this is where you have to like lean into it yet again and say, if you drop this like sense of not having a power, being a bit of a victim in this and not taking responsibility, let’s shift gear and look at where and how can you take responsibility. So that goes hand in hand with clear expectations.

0:24:49 Ramona Shaw: If you have someone with a victim mindset and they tend to blame others, get really clear on the expectation that when something goes wrong, the first thing you’re going to look to them for is one, an explanation of what happened, pure facts. Second, an assessment of how they contributed or co created the issue. And then third, solutions to that. It could be different. I’m making this up. You could say, give me the facts first, then tell me what their assessment is of what the reason is for the failure. But then also propose solutions or show that you’ve tried to come up with solutions, whatever that is. But if someone has a victim mindset, you got to really lay out the expectations, and then the other ones to focus on is really hone in on those actions.

0:25:43 Ramona Shaw: What specifically can be done? So first, self reflection. How can I be part of the solution, not the problem? What could I do if I took full responsibility? So this self reflection, then clear expectations of what you’re expecting of yourself or other people. In those moments, like for me, when I notice I’m going into a victim mindset, it’s immediate. Like, no way we’re going to immediately turn this around, ask the right questions, and then go into action.

0:26:15 Ramona Shaw: And then the third is actions. You want to see actions, even if the mindset’s not quite there yet, but through the process of taking actions again for yourself or others is what can turn things around, while you’re also encouraging them to self reflect. Okay, how can you be part of the solution? How can you take on responsibility here without addressing actions is likely going to fall flat. Addressing actions where you’re telling other people or yourself, here’s what I have to do in order to fix the situation or in order to move forward, progress or reinstate trust, or whatever it may be.

0:26:56 Ramona Shaw: But I’m not addressing the thoughts that go along with it that hold me back in the victim mindset. So I’m not asking myself, how can I be powerful in this situation? What is it that I can control and orient my mind to that then the actions will either be wishy washy or they will be executed with a victim mindset. And that never works out. So we have to change the mind in the way that we think about it as well as what we do.

0:27:24 Ramona Shaw: I hope this is helpful. We find ourselves at times in, like, pretty significant victim mindsets. They did things wrong. They didn’t understand. They didn’t get it. They’re making mistakes. They have no clue what they’re doing. If they only knew, they would have never done like, there’s a lot of it. That feels really heavy. Then there’s also the sneaky ones. My boss never listens or never provides any positive feedback. I don’t think I’m valued here.

0:27:52 Ramona Shaw: Doesn’t seem like a really heavy victim mindset, right? But it’s sneaky because underneath that is, you feel valued only if someone else does something, you’re giving away your power. It’s so annoying to have all these meetings every week. Is there something you can do about it? You’re just accepting it. It’s all based on external circumstances. Or is there a way for you to take responsibility and initiate conversations about which meetings we should continue to have, which we don’t, and give some feedback and so forth?

0:28:24 Ramona Shaw: When you get tasks assigned or responsibilities and you’re like, oh, why was this assigned to me? They think that I’m just always saying yes, that’s why I get it. And they’re totally taking advantage of me. Or they’re playing favoritism and they’re giving the good tasks to their buddy and the bad ones. To me. It’s really sneaky thoughts. Again, it’s really these small thoughts that ultimately just add up. The more we think them, the easier it is for us to step into a victim mindset.

0:28:57 Ramona Shaw: And when that becomes a hard no, a hard line in the sand of no, every time I catch myself, I’m going to reframe and say, okay, if that’s what I observe, what can I do to either check if the observation is actually accurate, check the facts and the evidence for your assumptions. And two, what can I do about it? Instead of just feeling powerless about it and actually giving away your power to other people in external circumstances.

0:29:23 Ramona Shaw: So that is an episode on victim thinking. I hope that some of these examples, sentences and ideas resonated with you and you can see how to make them work and actually start to pick them up in your own head. Or observe when you work with your doctor reports where this may come up, and then lean into the conversation and coach them. Oregon yourself out of the victim mindset into a mindset of high accountability and high responsibility.

0:29:51 Ramona Shaw: I’m also going to link in the show notes a video from the conscious leadership group on taking responsibility. I often show this video in training sessions with teams where taking responsibility is an issue. It’s a great video. I don’t have any affiliations with the conscious leadership group, but if you notice that taking responsibility is an issue and a challenge in your organization, I definitely recommend checking out that link. That’s what I got for you today. I’ll be back with another episode of the manager track podcast next week.

0:30:22 Ramona Shaw: Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

0:30:25 Ramona Shaw: If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes my best selling book, the Confident, incompetent new manager, which you can find on Amazon or@ramonashaw.com book, and a free training on how to successfully lead as a new manager. You can check it out@ramonashaw.com masterclass these resources and a couple more you’ll find in the show notes down below.