A carpenter was working on an outdoor project and lamenting about how the work had been pushed into the colder months. “We had all summer to do this; I don’t know why he didn’t get it scheduled,” he grumbled. Yet, the same person also had his own home improvement project that had languished. “You had all summer to do it,” I said. He replied with a litany of reasons that have kept him from the task.
Legitimate as those reasons may be, it is a classic example of external attribution — where when someone else attributes other people’s negative behavior to their character (not scheduling the job was the fault of the person) but attributes their own negative behavior to their environment.
Another example comes from Patrick Lencioni In The Five Dysfunctions where he contrasts seeing someone scold their kids in the grocery store and thinking the dad is a “mean, angry man” — vs. when Patrick scolds his own kids and thinks “I have some unruly children.”
It’s easy to have empathy for the extenuating circumstances that impact our own performance, and much harder to give that grace to others. Raise your consciousness on both sides of the coin — taking greater responsibility for your own actions and acknowledging that the environment may be affecting the behaviors of others.
