“The way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth upon them.”
~ Ida B. Wells-Barnett

In my last post, I addressed a pet peeve my cousin asked me to write about. In this post, I’ll take on another phrase she says she hears way too much, especially regarding family members and friends: “That’s just how they are.” She mentioned that to her it seems like an excuse to allow hurtful behavior — for example, when someone in a friend group routinely stands everyone up for a night out or has “a few too many.”

I’ll have to admit, when I first considered writing about this topic, I felt a bit uneasy. On the face of it, it sounds like the alternative to allowing the inconsiderate behavior involves confrontation, blaming, and shaming — my least favorite topics.

In business, addressing failings is fairly straightforward in the sense that you can set clear expectations, establish standards, and obtain commitments. People expect to be called out when they don’t perform. With family members and friends, the picture is much more cloudy.

When is it appropriate to speak up? And how?

I decided to do some research on the topic to see what the experts have to say about it. The first article I looked at included a video from a workshop. In it, bestselling author and TED talk presenter Joseph Grenny offered this one word of advice about holding people accountable: “Don’t.”

This was shocking to me. Much as I dislike confrontation, I bristled at the idea of not addressing problematic behaviors with others. He went on to offer a disclaimer which explained his philosophy. What he really meant was this: “Don’t do it with the goal of accountability.” Do it with a more important outcome in mind — that of inspiring change.

Accountability in relationships involves taking responsibility for your actions and how they affect others.

His idea is that “forcing someone to take responsibility for their actions provokes the opposite of what we want.” Instead, accountability can happen naturally as the effect, rather than the goal, if we encourage people to own their mistakes.

He goes on to suggest that the way to do this in close relationships is to approach people from a loving stance rather than a blaming one. This involves giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming the best possible reason for their actions.

When we start the conversation by asking them for their side of the story, we communicate that we care about them and want to preserve our emotional connection.

The goal is to help them become more self-aware so that in the future they will be able to take stock of what they are doing, evaluate the impact of their actions on others, and make their own course corrections when necessary.

Psychologically safe conversations encourage empathy in the receiver, which softens them and allows them to more easily acknowledge their wrongdoings.

In the video, Grenny shares an anecdote about his discussion with his teenage son after the boy threw a loud, raucous party while the rest of the family was on vacation in Italy. Grenny debated about what to say to his son when he got home, and the story of the resulting conversation led to his TED talk.

Interestingly, a similar scenario happened in our neighborhood just a few weeks ago. One Friday night when we were returning from dinner, we saw many cars coming into our normally quiet neighborhood. Most parked on the street, but a few turned into various driveways, including ours, apparently to turn around. Teens were either congregating or walking up and down our street.

Before long, the police arrived and blocked off some of our neighborhood for a while. We had no idea what actually happened until a few days later when we heard that the neighbors closest to the “action” had gotten a note attached to their mailboxes from a teen down the street. He had apparently invited a small group of friends over while his parents were out of town, but someone put the word on social media and a large crowd descended very quickly. The apology letter was one of the most sincere we’ve ever read. The kid took responsibility and asked that we not let the mishap reflect badly on him or his family. Now that is a good outcome from an upsetting situation.

Of course it’s one thing to address teen mistakes and quite another to talk about problematic behavior with adults.

One way to approach accountability in our peer relationships is to be proactive. We’re all operating on autopilot so much of the time, and making mistakes is inevitable. Very few of us actually intend to hurt others.

If we create a culture within our family and among our friends where it’s okay to check each other at times, it will lessen the sting when it happens.

Think about this for a moment. If, without realizing it, you were doing something that upset or offended someone, wouldn’t you want them to make you aware of it? I think most of us would. But we’d want them to do it gently and allow us to save as much face as possible. Although it might be uncomfortable at first, hopefully we would understand that their willingness to speak up opened the door for us to understand the wrong we’d done to others so that we could start to make amends. If, in our relationships, we give each other permission to do this, we can all benefit.

If a relative is doing something off-putting to us, they are likely doing it to others as well, and they may eventually lose some of their friends because of it. Our intervention can help alert them to that possibility. No matter how uncomfortable it is for us, holding a family member or friend accountable is another way of showing them love.

Affectionately,

Elaine