A few years ago, I worked with someone who had high ambitions. He talked about wanting to climb that corporate ladder to the top; maybe the company would create a high-level position for him, he’d say.
I rooted for him; he was a nice guy. But after a couple of years, I saw something happen to him that prevented him from achieving his goals, and it’s something that I think all business leaders should be aware of, whether they recognize it in themselves or their employees.
He let his failures bring him down.
I saw it happen again and again. He’d be excited when chosen to tackle a special project or lead a team but then would get bogged down in some problem. When he failed, I would hear him angrily muttering to himself, “You idiot!” or “Did you actually think that was going to work?”
He spiraled down a self-recriminating path. Eventually, he stopped pursuing leadership opportunities, and his career stagnated. When I cautiously asked him about it, he said, “What’s the point? I just mess things up.”
I was confounded. He didn’t fail all the time. He actually was very competent at his job. But when he missed the mark, he blamed himself instead of actively learning from what went wrong and then applying that knowledge to the next project or task at hand.
In psychological terms, this is called “learned helplessness.” It came from a study in the 1970s where researchers took three groups of people — groups A, B and a control — and exposed A and B to a loud, annoying noise. The people had to figure out how to turn it off. Those in group A discovered they could easily turn off the noise with the press of a button. Those in group B tried everything, including that same button, but nothing turned off the sound. The control group had silence.
In the next part of the experiment, the scientists programmed the noise to shut off with a simple 12-inch motion of the subject’s hand. Most of the people in group A and the control figured it out and were able to turn off the noise. But as for group B, the majority did not even try. They had failed in the first round and learned that nothing they did had an effect, so in the second round, they were passive. They had learned to be helpless.
This all sounds terribly depressing, I know. The good news, though, is that resiliency can be taught. But it takes a good leader to recognize this destructive pattern of behavior and be able to help good employees reach their potential. If you’ve had this happen to you or to others, what have you found helpful to combat it?
