01 - Alex’s Story
Alex started in the Corporate Training Department 3 years ago, right out of college. He had a history of taking the standard training materials and delivering them to with skill and empathy. In short, he was doing a good job. Now, he was responsible for leading a big, new training session. His company was switching over to a new management app. His boss, Carla, had called Alex into her office, handed him the training manual that the software company had provided, and expressed confidence.”Here’s a list of all employees. Everyone is on the list. Divide everyone into sessions of no more than, oh, 20. And make sure that everyone signs off that they attended.”
Fast forward a few months. After the rollout, the software was being populated with faulty data. This should have been covered in training. At first, the software company was getting blamed for inadequate training materials. When they all checked a little more deeply, they found that a number of senior staffers had signed in, but didn’t actually sit through the training. They signed next to their name on the report. Then they left before the session started. That seemed to work so they told their team to do the same. “Too busy”, they later explained. Alex was reprimanded because the faulty system data had to be corrected and the people had to be trained. Again.
When Carla called Alex into her office, he was calmly reprimanded and a note was put in his HR file. That’s not to say that Carla wasn’t sympathetic. She understood that this was a bit unfair. But, she said, she was being forced into it. “Don’t worry about it”, she said. “It’s really not a big deal.”
But it was a big deal. Alex has never been reprimanded. This was a punch in the gut. He had done what he was told. He followed their instructions exactly. In the past, he had been complimented for his diligence in following instructions. That’s what had always worked for him. But not this time. .
The blame had rolled downhill until there was no one else to pass it off to. So he got stuck with it. Maybe that’s the way the world works and he needs to get accustomed to this reality. He would just need to figure out how to cast the blame somewhere else. Maybe he should have suggested that it was Carla’s fault for not giving more precise instructions.
Tossing around blame seemed pretty comforting. Everyone else was doing it. He saw it among peers within the training function and, well, everywhere.
But Alex quickly put that aside. He doesn’t blame people. That’s not how he was raised. His Dad is a mechanic. And he knew, from helping his Dad, that when the car doesn’t start, you don’t blame it. You don’t scream at it. And if you have any pride, you don’t wash your hands of the problem and walk away. You approach the problem systematically. You accept it as a challenge that needs to be owned and resolved.
That made him think of Frida, someone who had attended one of his management training sessions. She had shared stories about a prior boss who truly inspired her. This boss had never expected her to get it right every time. But, there was always an expectation for her to fix it when it went off the rails. The one thing, she said, was that he never listened to blame. It seemed tough at the time, she told Alex, but it was the most important lesson she’s ever learned.
And that’s when Alex recognized that there was a real difference between Frida and others in the company, including himself. Up until now.
So many people just did what they were told, and when things went wrong they kept their heads down and, if convenient, blamed someone else. They were the ‘survivors’. They usually kept their jobs, but were rarely the ones tagged for bigger things. That’s the group that Alex has been in. And that’s the course that his boss, Carla, was encouraging.
And, in the other group were those, like Frida, who fully owned their responsibilities.
And they were the ones who were consistently being given greater opportunities.
Alex was now sensing that he had been quietly sliding into the easier path - ‘just do what you’re told’. That was what got him the reprimand as soon as something went wrong. He had no control over that.
That had to change.