It's the Feeling of Honor

Posted by Jim Jensen...

This post is a follow up to my recent article, Victim/Warrior Model: A Tool to Support Your Vision of a Healthy Leadership Team. It supports the Victim/Warrior model and adds some cool depth to the Warrior loop, specifically on taking ownership. It comes from Dan Mulhern’s, Reading for Leading series. I was struck by a couple things. One was Mulhern’s description of how a relationship can end up in a better place, because of having gone through a challenging interaction together. The other was John Haidt’s poetic descriptions of the challenge of seeing our own faults, and of the internal reward that comes from successfully searching for and finding “your part”. 

Excerpt from blog post: What to Do When an Important Partnership is Getting Worse

I've hit rocky patches with bosses, and when I was the boss, ran off the smooth road with business partners, friends - and even my bride/best friend. In at least a few cases, we never recovered. In some, we found our way back to the road, but subsequently walked together with suspicious glances. With Jennifer and some others, I not only recovered, but moved together better than ever. Every rocky patch shared a common aspect. And the prospect of every recovery - to my simplistic mind - turned on how we moved through a single gateway. 

Here's how to miss the gateway. If you're in a partnership that's bad and perhaps getting worse, here's a certain route that will take you away from recovery: Package the other person in your mind. In other words, keep seeing and thinking you know their faults. Keep looking for the proof of why they are so                                 (small, judgmental ((that's ironic)), critical, anal retentive, negative, pushy, etc. ). Believe me, you'll find the proof to support your conclusion. It'll support your explanation, your summary of their character: "she thinks she's so..." or "He thinks I ..."

I was fascinated to read how modern science and psychological study are mapping the ruts that have been recorded in age-old truths. Here's a summary of the path we ALL take off the road and to avoid the gateway to a restoring a healthy partnership. It comes from Jon Haidt's wonderful book The Happiness Hypothesis, which explores what truly makes us happy:

"We judge others by their behavior, but we think we have special information about ourselves - we know what we are "really like" inside, so we can easily find ways to explain away our selfish acts and cling to the illusion that we are better than others."*

Jesus advised us to take the log out of our own eye before worrying about the speck in our neighbor's. The Buddha is quoted as saying, "It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one's own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice."** Haidt says you won't just stumble onto this speck in your own eye. If you're judging someone - like a partner who's important to you - then you have to be determined to figure out your part (instead of obsessing about theirs). Try it. Right now, if you dare. Think of a frayed relationship. Haidt wonderfully warns that you'll hear your "inner lawyer" who will defend you zealously. 

But he points us to the gateway. Look, he says "for at least one thing you did wrong." And I can't improve on Haidt's luscious description:

"When you find a fault in yourself it will hurt, briefly, but if you keep going and acknowledge the fault, you are likely to be rewarded with a flash of pleasure that is mixed, oddly, with a hint of pride. It is the pleasure of taking responsibility for your own behavior. It is the feeling of honor."***

When we can do this, we reach a key gateway, towards apology and restoration and conversation, to

Lead with our best self, 
Dan

If you would like to read Dan’s original post click on this link: What to Do When an Important Partnership is Getting Worse 

Click here to read: Victim/Warrior Model: A Tool to Support Your Vision of a Healthy Leadership Team Team 

I hope you found this helpful!

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​A version of this blog post first appeared in Crux Move Consulting’s blog