Above and Below the Line
Are you a Victor or a Victim? Most of us would prefer to associate with the former rather than the latter! In business this is especially important since your personal mindset has a dramatic effect on your ability to achieve (note Henry Ford: “whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right”), so what are the characteristics of each?
Victors are “Above the Line”. They take ownership, responsibility and accountability when things go wrong as well as when things go right. These are the people that get things done, you can probably think of people like this. You give them a task and can be confident that you will get the result you need when you need it. They will also let you know ahead of time if there is a problem. They take “ownership” personally which doesn’t mean that they need to do it all, but they will ensure that it gets done. Responsibility and accountability are often used interchangeably being very similar, however in a business context I tend to think of accountability as the responsibility for reporting on things. The word itself derives from the old French word “acontable” meaning to count things (e.g. money), so a characteristic of Victors is that they will typically check on things to ensure that they get completed.
Interestingly, Victors tend to be more positive and optimistic. They know that there are always choices and that they have a degree of control over every situation. We all know that things can go wrong, and when they do, the Victors’ approach is to first think ‘what can I do about it?’ Victors see opportunity in problems (as Benjamin Franklin famously stated: “Out of adversity comes opportunity”) and understand that even if they fail, they will have learnt something from the experience.
Victims on the other hand believe that everything happens to them. They do not feel they have any control and see problems in opportunities. Their belief that they cannot control things leads them to determine that there is little point in taking responsibility for anything and their language is characterized by blame, excuses and denial. Give a task to a Victim and you are likely to get multiple reasons why either it cannot be done or did not get done, none of which will relate to them personally.
Whilst it might seem that opting out of taking responsibility is an easier position to take, Victims actually tend to be more stressed than Victors. The reason for this is that ‘stress’ is actually a symptom of a lack of control over things. If you inherently believe you have no control, stress is an inevitable consequence. Likewise, the inherent feeling of powerlessness means that they will also be more pessimistic. Often cloaked in ‘playing the role of the devil’s advocate’, the reality is that Victims are looking for reasons not to take action, safe in the belief that they will go wrong anyway.
We are all human so prone to drop into the ‘Victim’ role from time to time, but it is important that we do not occupy this space for very long. It is clearly a disempowering place to be and will inevitably have a negative impact on business. The trick is to recognize when you are blaming, excusing or denying as the mindset of the Victim, and then change your belief into one of ‘I can control this’.
The key here is that being above or below the line is purely a personal choice. No one can you force you into either space, the choice of whether you want to be a Victor or a Victim is entirely yours.
