IF I WERE UNEMPLOYED PART II

Since the beginning of this year, the wage-earners within four of the families who live in some of my properties have been unemployed, two still are. So I’ve had the privilege of talking to them about their time of unemployment. I say privilege because I’ve been amazed at how the conversations get to the heart of things very quickly. What typically would take a lot of pacing, a lot of getting through the roles and personas that people normally put up and hide behind. But with unemployment, things quickly go back to fundamentals— money for food and shelter. And so frustration is right there on the surface, and immediately behind it are all kinds of other strong feelings and thoughts— anger, injustice, blame, fear, confusion, etc.

One young guy lost his job and he defined it immediately and entirely the fault of his manager. “If she was a decent person she would not have done that; she plays politics and never did like me; she increased my hours without increasing my pay; she was out for me from the beginning.” After a dozen of those “reasons” which he offered as why he lost his job and didn’t have his rent money, I said, “So you take no responsibility for losing your job?” He immediately agreed. So I slowed the tempo of my words and asked the question again, “So you take absolutely not even one percent of the responsibility ... you are a complete victim of your manager’s actions? Really?”

He still would not step up to his personal powers and responses and instead tried to give me a psychological profile of “that bitch.” When he finished his dark description, I said, “This is great. What’s her name? I have to go study this totally depraved and pathological manager. I’ve met some incompetent ones, some that were over their heads, some others that brought lots of personal problems to work, but never in my life someone with that much pathology. There’s always a way to manage up inside an organization, but this may be the exception. What’s her name?”

That shook him a bit, perhaps knowing that I was a psychologist made him think I’d actually go talk to her. “Well, she’s not that bad.”

“Oh, okay. So what did you do to make friends with her, build a relationship of rapport and exercise your influence so that you managed upward?”

Silence. “Don’t tell me that you just reacted in fear and anger and frustration to her? Don’t tell me that you let her set the atmosphere at work and you just lived inside that atmosphere without bringing your influence in? Don’t tell me that you let her set the frame for the games there?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so.”

“So you played the game that you were a victim of her meanness and nastiness! That’s what you did? That’s how you gave your power away to her and let her control your emotions and thoughts? You handed her the strings to your inner responses as if you were a puppet in her hands? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah, but there was nothing else I could do.”

“Yes, I know —that’s the song you sing and the dance you dance.”

“What song? What dance?”

“The victim song and dance, of course. Just as you are doing with me this very moment, you played the victim. You set the frame in your mind in that whiny tone — ‘There’s nothing else I can do.’ And so with that frame in your mind, you have to play that game, the Victim Game. And it sounds like you did a good job, and are still dancing to that tune.”

That finally got his attention and from there he began to come out from behind himself and that false identity (of being a victim) and the conversation began to became real. Eventually he asked me what I would do with such a mean and nasty boss. “I would manage her.” He wanted to know how.

“If you have a relationship with someone then you have a role that you play in that relationship and that gives you power. The other can only make the responses that he or she makes. You have the power to make your responses—to set frames. And that’s what I would do. I’d manage her with my responses— I’d set a high intention to win her as my internal champion in the company by creating a deep rapport with her, by letting her know that I wanted to be on her “A List” of valued employees, by bringing out the best in her, and so on.”

“But I don’t like her enough to do that. I could never do that.”

“Ah, so is that your choice— to not like her and refuse to do that? [Yeah.] And if she was the warden in a prison with life and death in her hands would you still do that? [Well, no.] Ah, so you do have a price! That’s good. If you have a big enough intention, you’d stop being a slave to your emotions, and take the effective actions. Good. Now you know where to start.”

While he was processing through all of that, I said, “Do you know what’s one of the worst things about being unemployed? It is having an attitude of being helpless. It is acting as if you are without your own powers of influence. If I was unemployed, I’d make sure to super-charge my attitude to keep it robust and resilient. That’s what I would do.”