​The sun came out in Northeast Ohio this week. We have about 300 cloudy days per year. That’s right up there with Seattle. So the first moment of Not-Winter when you drive with the car window down is pretty special.
 
I had that moment last week. To top off the sunshine and warm breeze, my mind was in a pleasant place too. Work is going well, my family and friends are in good health. And I was headed to one of my favorite events of the year, a concert put on by two local churches – a mostly African American Baptist congregation and a mostly white Mennonite congregation. The Baptists concentrate to stay in the structure of sheet music and the Mennonites concentrate to sway on beat. The end result is a lot of laughing and plenty of truly outstanding music. All was right with the world.
 
That’s when I heard the buzzing in my station wagon then saw it in my rearview mirror - a bee hovering around a back window. “Great. This ruins everything,” I thought.
 
I imagined the bee flying into my face, stinging me repeatedly until I crashed on the side of the road. All was lost. Just when life comes together, disaster is around the corner.
 

What This Story Means
How did I get from thinking all was right with the world to meeting my doom by the side of the road? Here’s an explanation from Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.
 
"Negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense positive ones.” He describes the brain as "Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones."

 “The alarm bell of your brain - the amygdala - uses about two-thirds of its neurons to look for bad news: it’s primed to go negative,” writes Hanson. “Once it sounds the alarm, negative events and experiences get quickly stored in memory - in contrast to positive events and experiences, which usually need to be held in awareness for a dozen or more seconds to transfer from short-term memory buffers to long-term storage."
 
That means all those positive thoughts about sunshine and good life passed through my brain really quickly while that darn bee threat hung on. So what to do?
 
Step One: Bring it Back to Reality. Pull out of that negative spiral and address the concrete present moment. Here are a few facts I considered:

• I am not allergic to bees. In fact, except for the quick pinch at the initial sting, my body has almost no reaction. For me to get stung is not a big deal.*
• Honey bees don’t sting repeatedly. Only once. This was a honey bee. And there was only one bee in the car. I couldn’t get stung repeatedly.
• The bee never flew out of the back of the station wagon. It was nowhere near me or my face.
• I was on a road with no traffic, a speed limit of 25 mph, and plenty of side streets. I couldn’t careen into anything. I could pull over anywhere at any time.

 
*Not all problems are as small as this one. (For someone allergic to bees, this one isn’t even a small problem.) Before you dismiss this simple 3 step process, I ask you to consider how much of your thought space is taken up with small problems. If you pay attention to your thoughts, you might be surprised to find how many of them are just buzzing noises. Also big problems can still be helped by this process. It’s just that Step Two has more complexity.
                                                                                                                                     
Step Two: Consider Options and Address the Problem
Since the bee can’t sting me from the back of the car, I could just ignore it. Or I could easily pull over and shoo the bee out.
 
Step Three: Make time for the Positive Thoughts to Stick
Once I resolved the problem, I needed to go back to thinking about all the good stuff – the feeling of sunshine in a warm car, a job I enjoy, the pleasure of watching my family and friends thrive, the delight of this concert. It took some effort to concentrate on the specific details of these good things, but that concentration helps them stick.
 
In the end, I got to the concert a few minutes after hearing the first buzz and left the window open for the bee’s escape. We haven’t seen each other since.
 
​
Talk about It

• Describe something that’s going really well in your life. Spend time thinking and talking about all the layers of goodness. Give it time to “stick” in your brain.
• What little “bee buzzing” problems threaten to interrupt your mental ability to stay in thoughts about good stuff?
• How can you use the three steps (bring it back to reality, consider options and address the problem, make time for positive thoughts to stick) to make your negative thoughts less like Velcro?

When I sat down in my car recently, the snap at the waist of my pants popped open. Fortunately, I was by myself and saved the embarrassment of anyone else noticing.

I assumed the pants needed to stretch a little since I just pulled them from the dryer… until I realized these pants have made plenty of trips through the dryer and never caused this problem before. So I assumed I should get some new pants since these make me look fat… until I looked down at my waistline and realized “looking fat” wasn’t the problem either.

The problem was more straightforward than that.

My stomach was larger than it used to be and the failure of that snap was just a symptom. Frankly, the snap deserved an award for lasting as long as it did. The only real solution was for me to make some changes in my own behavior, starting with cutting down on my milkshake intake, which incidentally was my motivation for being in the car in the first place.

So now I had a choice to make: pick up my friends as originally planned and drive to Kustard Korner to get that delicious self-satisfying giant milkshake or do something else.

I often run into people with the same Blame-the-Pants problem I have.

Once I met with a team of leaders because someone suggested we discuss their company’s retention problem. During our conversation, the chair of the team dominated the talking space, often interrupting and talking over other members of the team. At one point, I redirected the conversation, asking someone to finish a thought that had been interrupted by the chair. The chair responded by mentally checking out of the meeting and spending the next 20 minutes absorbed in his tablet.

He eventually closed the meeting by announcing they didn’t have a retention problem. They just had a young 20-something team of employees who didn’t yet know how to handle pressure. Whenever the company was up against a deadline or there was a glitch in their product that slowed down production, he expected to lose a few people.
 
What This Story Means
Changing this team’s product won’t solve their problem anymore than buying new pants would have solved mine. Low rates of retention are a symptom that something else is wrong in the culture. In this case, it’s certainly related to the chair’s domineering then dismissive way of communicating and to the leadership team's willingness to put up with that behavior.

The only way to a solve problem is to accurately define the situation, own your contribution to the problem and make helpful changes.

Here’s how that might look for my Blame-the-Pants problem.

1. Accurately define the situation. "My belly takes up more space than it used to."
2. Own your contribution to the problem. "It takes more space because I fill it up with things like giant milkshakes."
3. Make helpful changes. "I’ll meet my friends at Kustard Korner and have a small cone instead of a giant milkshake. Then suggest we take a little stroll together. And I’ll stop putting those pants in the dryer... just in case."

 
And here's how it might look for the chair of that team.

1. Accurately define the situation. "During times of discomfort or stress, we consistently lose good employees."
2. Own your contribution to the problem. "I have a habit of either dominating conversation or checking out of uncomfortable conversations. My aggressive and passive behaviors create an unpredictable and intimidating workplace that prevents employees' from doing their best work, especially in times of challenge. "
3. Make helpful changes. "I will apologize to my team and hire a coach who can help me develop listening and empathy skills.

Talk about It

• Describe a time you had a Blame-the-Pants problem where you blamed someone or something else rather than taking responsibility for your own contribution.
• Why is it so natural for us to Blame-the-Pants first rather than starting to face a problem by examining our own contribution?
• How might keeping these steps in mind affect your team’s ability to solve problems? 

​I am in a leadership role with someone who responded with a nonverbal cue I often see in Millennial employees. We’d each agreed to follow through on some action items, and when we met to talk about results, he offered this response: “There was a problem,” followed by sucking air through his teeth as he winced.

I never like that response. It uses passive voice instead of taking responsibility and owning his role in the situation. And it sets a posture that assumes I’m dangerous, that I’m going to attack. The nonverbal behavior says, “I better brace myself for when you bite my head off.”

So now I’m backed into a corner. I can either be frustrated and come off as a heavy-handed jerk or I can say something weak and dishonest like, “That’s okay.”
 
My Wincing, Air-Sucking Business Associate brought 2 problems to the conversation, and I brought a 3rd one.

• Problem 1: He did not complete the action we’d agreed on, so now it isn’t taken care of.
• Problem 2: He let his own fear/threat/insecurities prevent him from taking responsibility and that affects my ability to trust him now and in the future.
• Problem 3: I let my own fear/threat/insecurities prevent me from effectively addressing the first two problems.

 
It’s natural to think the first problem, the uncompleted task is the most important one, and it would be more efficient in this moment to say, “Fine, I’ll take care of it.” The task gets done and I could think the problem’s solved. But it’s only a matter of time before those other two problems creep into future tasks and corrode our ability to work together.

To be truly effective and efficient over the long haul, we’ve got to start from the last problem and move up from there.
 
To Address Problem 3: Settle myself down
The thing I have the most control over is: me. Notice how quickly I felt threatened.  By feeling backed into a corner and defensive, I turned the conversation into being about me. This isn’t about me. He wasn’t talking about me. He wasn’t even thinking about me. He didn’t wake up that morning and think, “That stupid, Celia. I’m really going to stick it to her on this one.”

I should have recognized the power dynamics at play: I’m older, more credentialed, in an assigned leadership role, and I have all of the decision-making power. Of course he comes to our conversation feeling intimidated. He made a mistake and has no idea what I’m going to do about it.
 
To Address Problem 2: Deescalate the threat
We can’t make progress on that action item until we both access the logical, problem-solving parts of our brains rather than the self-protective survival parts. He needs to hear that someone in a leadership role believes he is capable. 

The truth is I’ve been in his spot before and what saved me was wiser, more experienced professionals believing I could right my wrong.

For example, I had trouble hitting deadlines during the final project for my Master’s Degree. My failure to complete action items affected my academic adviser and my boss, who’d promoted me with the assumption I would get that academic credential. I remember how intimidating it was to go into a meeting with either of them, and I remember how empowering it was to hear each of them say, “You can do this. I need you to do this.”

They didn’t stop there with some self-image pep talk. They knew I had to face the problem I created, and the kindest thing was not to rescue me from the task. They set me back to it, which is what we’ll look at next.
 
To Address Problem 1: Address the task
Put the action item back on him and turn the threatening conversation into a rewarding one. Nobody wants to let people down. When we make mistakes, we want to put them right. Find out what kept him from following through. Did he need different information but didn’t know how to find it? Was he stuck in a thought process and needed a new idea? Was he overwhelmed with other demands that should be addressed?
 
Here’s how that opening story could have looked if I took the effort to address all 3 problems.

I am in a leadership role with someone who responded with a nonverbal cue I often see in Millennial employees. We’d each agreed to follow through on some action items, and when we met to talk about results, he offered this response: “There was a problem,” followed by sucking air through his teeth as he winced.

So I took a deep breath, nodded my head and looked off to the side to soften my eyes and my tone of voice. (Settled myself down) Then I said to him, “Thanks for telling me. I really appreciate your honesty." (Deescalate the threat) “Let’s figure out what to do. Tell me what happened." (Address the task) Then we worked through the task until we identified the problems and came up with solutions.
 
Talk about It

• Tell about a time you missed a mark and how it was handled by those affected by your mistake.
• When have you done what Celia did and personalized someone else’s remarks to make them about you when they weren’t?
• Of the three steps mentioned in this article (settle yourself down, deescalate the threat, address the task), which is the most difficult for you? What’s that about? What makes it hard?
• How would using these three steps affect the next conversation you have with someone admitting his/her mistake? How could it affect your relationship with that person? How would it affect your ability to work together 6 months from now?  

It really was a dark and stormy night when my friend Sarah and I drove through the curves and hills on a backroad in Eastern Ohio. The kind of driving conditions that require extra concentration and make your body a little more tense than normal.

Another car came towards us with their bright lights on. I squinted and flashed my lights so they would adjust theirs. They did.

I was irritated by the other car making it harder for me to drive safely and said to Sarah, “When somebody’s driving along with their brights like that, don’t you think - what a jackass.”

She looked at me, confused, shook her head, and said “No.”

Sarah’s one of those nice people so I rolled my eyes in my mind and thought, “Oh please… everybody knows that guy’s a jerk.”

Another 5 minutes down the road, a second car came over a hill with its brights blinding our windshield. Sarah leaned forward in her seat and yelled, “Jackass!”

I laughed. I got the joke - and it was funny - even if Sarah looked a little foolish. Then I painfully realized her joking behavior is the actual behavior of the foolish voice in my own head sometimes.

A few minutes later, a car came around the curve and flashed its lights at me. I had my brights on. Busted. “Hmm,” I thought, “At least I’m not a jackass. I just missed my lights because I was being a good friend and focusing on the conversation.”
 
This story is an example of Attribution Theory. That’s when we attribute (or assign or give) a motive to someone’s behavior. The theory says we tend to assign internal motives to others’ bad behavior and external motives to our own.

For example, when I saw the bright lights, I assigned an internal motive to the driver. I went straight to that person's character by calling them a jackass. When I got caught with my bright lights on, I gave myself an out by assigning an external motive - it wasn’t my fault. The conversation, never mind my character as a good friend, caused me to have the brights on.
 
Attribution Theory shows up all the time at work. Think about typical internal responses you have to someone being late to a meeting (they are rude or bad time-managers or just plain selfish) compared to when you’re running late (I had to take that important phone call, there was something pressing that needed my attention).

Or maybe when someone hasn’t replied to an email (they’re a jerk for ignoring me, how unprofessional) compared to when you haven’t replied (I like to take time to write a thoughtful response, I have so many emails to get to).
 
Recognizing Attribution Theory at work gives us power to respond more competently and compassionately to ourselves and others. Sometimes behaviors (like bright lights, lateness or email response times) need to be addressed in ourselves and in others. If you start the conversation like you’re the good one in the story correcting the inept one (think about my knee jerk reaction to call other drivers “jackass”), you’ve set the conversation on a dishonest and unhelpful trajectory. If you can come to the conversation on even ground, recognizing that most of have to work on these things, you stand a better chance at positively affecting behavior and building the relationship.
 
Talk about It 

• Tell about a time you experienced Attribution Theory when you blamed someone else’s behavior on a defect in their character and/or gave yourself unfair credit that prevented you from taking responsibility?
• What makes Attribution Theory so easy to fall into?
• How can your team help identify times when you each act out of Attribution Theory?
• How would it affect your work and your relationships if you recognized Attribution Theory and worked to respond with a more balanced perspective?