Mental Moment-How Your Perspective Clouds Judgment

When I work with clients around staff issues one of the things I suggest is that they look at staff behavior from a different perspective. For example, a client came in last week struggle with one of his staff. My client was talking about how this particular staff person was not motivated and used passive-aggressiveness to get what she wanted. We started by talking about motivation. Whenever I hear a client bring up motivation, for themselves or others, I have to know more. Lack of motivation is what we see because of certain characteristics but there is always something behind it that’s the culprit: fear, anxiety, stress, lack of confidence, etc. After having this conversation with my client about his staff person, he softened. There are preconceptions attached to motivation, like lazy, that bring with it anger but seeing it from a different perspective helped my client to understand that lack of motivation is actually deeper than what he see’s. I asked him if he ever struggled with motivation. He said yes and explained situations where he lacked motivation. I asked him if his occasional lack of motivation was because he was lazy and he said no. He quickly understood where the conversation was going. 🙂

Next we moved into the struggle he was having with his staff person’s passive-aggressiveness. I suggested that being passive-aggressive may be a coping mechanism and that his staff person doesn’t know of any other way to deal with situations. Again, being passive-aggressive was the manifestation for dealing with uncertainty, fear and anxiety.

• Dr. M: do you think your staff person woke up this morning and said, I want to be passive-aggressive today?
• Client: no.
• Dr. M: where do you think her passive-aggressive behavior came from?
• Client: well, it helps her get what she wants.
• Dr. M: where did that come from?
• Client: it probably helped her get what she wanted when she was kid.
• Dr. M: you are probably absolutely right. When your staff person was a child she used passive-aggressive behavior to get what she wanted and it probably worked. Without realizing it she’s kept using it and to a certain degree it probably still works. But she didn’t get up this morning wanting to be passive-aggressive to get her way. It’s self preservation and she doesn’t have another way to deal with taking care of herself.

This scenario was causing a lot of anxiety and frustration for my client not only at work but at home. This shift in perspective helped my client move forward in a completely different way. He was more emphatic and it didn’t have to impact his personal life.

Happy Wednesday!

Dr. Michelle

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