A Fateful Choice in the Seconds After You’re Accused

September 30, 2018 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

When you’re threatened, everything that ends up mattering happens in seconds. You take a defensive, even defiant stance and can’t (or feel that you can’t) step back and retain any credibility. You pick up a gun and, as often as not, end up shooting your innocence and outrage in all directions.

Almost nothing is more threatening to people than to have “how they view themselves” called into question. When I believe I’m generous and am accused of acting selfishly, my self-esteem is challenged. And it’s not just how I see myself. It’s how I’ve presented myself to others too. When determining my response, it’s also about everyone else who’ll be disappointed if I don’t defend how I want them to see me.

That larger group always starts with the people who are closest to me: my spouse, children, parents and friends. If you’re ambitious and need others to vouch for your work, their number expands. Teachers, coaches and priests who can attest to your character for first jobs or college admissions; colleagues who can speak to your honesty; subordinates you’ve mentored and bosses you’ve impressed. If your rise is meteoric enough, your supporters might even include Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and President George W. Bush.

So if you’re Brett Kavanaugh, you won’t just be defending yourself when you’re accused of wrongdoing, you’ll be defending what your legion of supporters think about you too. As a result, the frontline in need of defending is long and you’ll feel that it’s up to you to be “brave enough” to defend every inch of it.

And yet…

The fateful decision on how we’ll respond is often made in seconds, because that’s how the “fight or flight” response works when we’re threatened “to our very core.” At such times, it’s too easy to confuse our instincts for bravery.

You almost never stop to think about what you’ll do next because in that moment it’s incredibly hard to leave the reptilian parts of your brain for the more dispassionate parts, where it’s possible to admit that you’re not as perfect as you’ve convinced yourself and almost everybody else to believe that you are.

We also know that the most fateful decisions should never be made in a rush, particularly when you’ll be insisting that your white coat has never gotten dirty—not even once—in the ways alleged. But of course, that wisdom isn’t enough to overcome a knee-jerk urge to defend your honor. Part of what was so compelling about this week’s confirmation hearing was the defiance and combativeness that taking an irrational position always seems to require.

Some righteous outrage is warranted if you are wrongly accused. Some anger is certainly justified when accusations are distorted into parody. But unequivocal denials require more. Their nature almost demands that outrage at your challengers never waivers.

It can reveal more than we intend to those who are trying to keep an open mind and understand what really happened. What I saw were hours of defiance on Thursday, a reminder of Queen Gertrude’s comment in Hamlet that: “Thou dost protest too much, me thinks.” That is, too much reptile and too little rational judge if there really is nothing to your fall from grace.

In that initial “moment of truth,” when you first hear what you’re accused of, you don’t think of anything other than “protect myself,” “protect the queen,” protect everything that it’s taken me all these years to build. Unfortunately, I’ve had those moments and never thought once that I had an option other than to “go down swinging” if I have to, because everything I hold dear seemed to be at stake.

Somebody needed to tell me that I had an option, so maybe/hopefully I would remember the next time that while there are instincts hell-bent on defense inside of me, there is higher order biology inside me too.

It’s a pathway from instinct to emotion and onto thinking that I need to be reminded about. I can step back from the precipice and say: “I don’t have to start my denials right away, my ego is not so fragile that a searching moment or two is impossible.”

It’s a pause we almost never take, but could always take, if we thought about it beforehand, before someone confronts us again about a time when our pants were down.

Maybe I could respond not selfishly but with generosity towards myself (given the terrible costs of defending my perfection) and towards others (who say they’ve been damaged by far less flattering parts of me).

It’s hard to respond generously when you can’t see the option in the heat of the moment. You have to think about other ways forward long before your instincts take over, and too many of us never do.

This post was adapted from my September 30, 2018 newsletter.

How to Bring Your Reach Into Your Resume

March 3, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

How you want the world to see you no longer fits on your resume or comes from a few endorsements.

The words you use to describe yourself on a piece of paper are still useful—particularly when you give those words three dimensionality during face-to-face time. And yes, personal references still matter, because it says there are people out there who believe in you enough to step to the fore and say nice things. But more and more, who you are is revealed by the web of your connections: by what you say, by who responds and shares your conversation, and by how you pick up that thread the next time around.

The boundaries around you have changed. When it comes to introducing yourself effectively, your reach is also who you are.

Part of it is your ability to engage and influence others. But while your Klout or Kred scores can speak to your success as a marketer or thought leader, that is really all they say.

What is most significant about the web of exchange around you isn’t your impact on others, but what all of these conversations reveal about you. Your tone and content speak volumes about who you are to everyone who’s paying attention.

Not so long ago, literal word of mouth accounted almost entirely for your reputation. It was mostly impressions and feelings from one-on-one conversations that were leveraged into a frame of positive judgments around you–as long as the right people started blowing your horn. It was also a tightly managed process, because the older guy usually trumpeted the younger guy who was just like him. Women, ethnic and racial minorities all got their turns feeling the exclusionary aspects of this. Individuals who never fit the mold did too.

If the past seemed clubby, the present is much less so. Making the name that you want for yourself has a far more open and public dimension today. How public?

Well, a network provider just announced that it is accepting applications for a six-figure position via Twitter. The ad doesn’t call on you to make a 140-character argument for why you should be hired over somebody else. And it certainly doesn’t involve attaching your resume to your tweet, because nobody at the other end is interested. As the company’s chief marketing officer told USA Today:

The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references.

While this well-paying job does involve managing the company’s network communications, there is something far more consequential going on here.

Assessing who you are and what you’ll bring to a job by “researching you on-line” is no longer about finding that errant picture of you after too much beer on Facebook. (Those pictures are becoming a thing of the past anyway, as people use Snapchat to forward images that automatically disappear shortly after they’re sent.) No, this is more about the conclusions that can be drawn from the mosaic of information that you’re generating and that swirls around you in the ether like so many “mass references.”

What will the onlookers discover about you when they start looking? They’ll see conversations you’ve had with friends and comments you’ve left for strangers. They’ll note how you said it in a blog or restaurant review. They’ll get a sense of your sarcasm, your curiosity or your politics. Maybe they’ll learn about new talents or unexpected commitments. Most of all, they’ll find what you’ve left for them to find. Check out this recent infographic which lays out several of the ways you can use your on-line platform to tell the world what you want it to know about you.

The first impressions that we make today come from several directions at once. Your digital footprints tell the world a lot about where you’re been, where you’re going, and who you are. It’s useful to think about that whenever you put on your shoes.

Oprah Winfrey, Confessor

January 15, 2013 By David Griesing 23 Comments

I wrote about Lance Armstrong in early October and later that same month for a couple of reasons that relate to the work we do.

When you make mistakes that affect your ability to continue working & your reputation, you need to “speak for yourself about what happened” if you hope to regain your productivity. First off, it’s looking in the mirror and owning your mistakes so that you have the chance to be trusted and have influence again.

Coming to this acceptance also involves seeking the counsel of wise people around you—if you’re fortunate enough to have them. It’s only after “the owning” and “the reflecting” that you tell those you’ve affected what you did, why you did it, what you’ve learned, and how you’re going to do things differently in the future.

Each step hard, but necessary.

While its taken 3 months (or at least as many years since the allegations against him started to build), on Thursday Armstrong is promising to come clean to Oprah Winfrey. In an intimate television kind of way, her backstory is joining with his. Afterwards, we’ll draw our own conclusions.

We care about all of this because we need role models in our work—people to show us how—and for many of us, Armstrong fit that bill. Disciplined. Motivated. Triumphing over hardship. We were fortified by his example.

We also care about this because we know that the moral training we have today often comes from such “teachable moments” (as the president once reminded us)—that is, as long as we take them.

So we’ve followed the arc of Lance’s story. It was hard to absorb the allegations about a doping conspiracy he masterminded, to see him fired as the spokesman for products we buy, and finally to watch him have to break ties with his LiveStrong foundation. We were saddened by his apparent betrayal and surprised by his retreat into silence. Was it embarrassment? Was it shame?

In recent weeks, there have been some odd, Armstrong-initiated pop-ups. A surreal picture of him reclining in his den below his victory jerseys with the remark “Back in Austin and just layin’ around.” Rumors that he was figuring out what he had to do to get back into the competitive sporting circuit, and how admissions he might make would impact the lawsuits & investigations still swirling around him.

The picture and its tag-line suggested denial. The rumors suggested the machinations of lawyers and media advisors instead of soul-seekers.

We’ll see.

Because what he’s looking for from Oprah is not merely a stage that’s big enough for him and his story, but also for a confessor who will help to change our perception of him. Facilitate our forgiveness. Lance Armstrong’s goes to Oprah’s mountaintop in order to be healed in our eyes.

When our turns come it won’t be about teams of advisors or media blitz, and maybe not even about a catch in the throat when you get to the hard parts. Because it’s not about orchestration. It’s just about telling the truth and being genuinely sorry.

Otherwise you shouldn’t bother.