Stopping workplace guilt: It's possible!
28 November 2011
Read by 1926 persons
You feel like you're not good enough, never doing enough for your boss or your teams? Learn to free yourself from this burden.
"I took her place!" It was when she crossed a tearful colleague in front of the coffee machine that Mathilde, recently promoted to head of business development at a major food giant, began to feel guilty. "I had been her rival without knowing it. She had been aiming for the position for a long time. However, this sales manager had much more expertise than I did, coming from another sector. I felt like an imposter."
When this type of discomfort assails you, it can undermine you from within and paralyze your decisions. "This guilt is unhealthy," analyzes coach and psychologist Yves-Alexandre Thalmann, author of "To hell with guilt" (Jouvence Editions). Nothing to do with so-called "useful" guilt, which prevents you, for example, from committing an offense. It is a morbid feeling, which feeds on ultimately very subjective faults." An overwhelming remorse that must be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. Here's how to do it in six steps.
Acknowledge your state to overcome it
We are not always aware of the guilt that eats away at us. Because it is often masked by other emotions, such as sadness, anger or a thirst for revenge. Let your intuition guide you: you feel that you haven't returned the favor in time, that you have unjustly favored an employee, that you have reprimanded a member of your team too harshly. And that's probably why you feel this discomfort.
"I often reproached myself, in the way: "I should have diversified my business, why didn't I do it?" recounts Gontran Lejeune, former boss of a poultry trading company that almost went bankrupt in 2006 due to avian flu. This refrain of "I should have...", "what if I had...", "why didn't I..." is a sign that does not deceive. "Entering into such a process is opening Pandora's box," warns Sonia Garèche, coach at Inchigo. We rewrite history constantly. We feel that the situation would be much better if we had acted differently." In short, we indulge in self-flagellation.
This excessive guilt is often linked to a lack of self-esteem. "The superego, the seat of taboos, prohibitions and morality, is then strongly expressed," explains Edouard Stacke, psychosociologist and coach at 100 Ways. We need to constantly justify ourselves because we feel we are not up to par. As a result, we develop a fragility of which guilt is a symptom." There is no point in repressing it. The guilt would grow. It is better to accept it in order to overcome it.
Verbalize your emotion
The goal is to move from a simple feeling to a structured and reasoned analysis of your discomfort. "You will be able to give shape to your guilt, visualize it," indicates Yves-Alexandre Thalmann. This is the first step to taking a step back." Magali Bernard blamed herself for not having salvaged her semi-industrial butcher shop near Quimper, which was liquidated at the end of 2008. One day, she took up her pen. "I wrote everything I felt: the weight of failure, the feeling of having failed in my mission, of having weakened my twelve employees, who found themselves unemployed, and my family."
Talking to friends, relatives and professional acquaintances also helps to put things in perspective. "After a few discussions with other business leaders, from the Centre des jeunes dirigeants in particular, I realized that I was blaming myself too much," confirms Magali Bernard, who emphasizes the cathartic effect of these exchanges. Gilles Dufour, coach at B Lief (consulting firm), advocates an even more radical method: write down your self-destructive thoughts and burn them! "It may seem surprising," he admits, "but it is very effective for extracting guilt from your mind."
Don't exaggerate your impact on others
The mechanics of guilt are subtle. It tortures you and, at the same time, it gives you the illusion of having power (that of acting, deciding, making mistakes...) and therefore, a hold on life. Faced with a major difficulty in his factory, the CEO of an Ile-de-France SME remained paralyzed for weeks at the idea of warning his boss. "The latter being seriously ill, he thought that he would deal him a fatal blow by telling him, recalls Patrick Marchand, coach at Menway, a recruitment and potential assessment consulting firm. As a result, he found himself crushed by double guilt: that of jeopardizing the company and that of hiding information from his boss, for fear of harming his health."
Believing that one influences the course of events to this extent is a mistake. "No one can be responsible for the misfortune of others," insists Yves-Alexandre Thalmann. At worst, we only contribute to it." But never in the proportions we imagine. This belief haunted Elise Lucet for many months. At the end of 2010, the presenter of the program "Pièces à conviction" admitted to feeling "a sense of guilt" for having sent Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, the reporters held hostage for a year and a half, to Afghanistan. But the two men could have refused to leave. They were volunteers and knew the risks. The chain of events simply escaped them. And in the end, no one was responsible.
"I managed to convince myself that I couldn't be perfect across the board. To dream of being an exemplary mother and a highly involved and high-performing professional is a guaranteed burnout," warns Sandra Le Grand, CEO of Canalce (solutions and services for works councils). Like many women torn between their family life and their careers, this former saleswoman for Coca-Cola France felt guilty about leaving her children at the daycare for too long, about only cooking frozen meals and, at the same time, about leaving the office a little earlier some evenings. One day, she decided to stop these internal conflicts.
Like Magali Bernard, who understood after the liquidation of her company that it was impossible for her to satisfy everyone: at the office, at the workshop and at home. Both of them knew how to thwart the injunctions well known to practitioners of transactional analysis: "be perfect" and "please". "Anchored in our brains since childhood, these leitmotifs guide our adult behavior and generate guilt," notes Gilles Dufour, at B Lief.
The solution? Lower your expectations and focus on what's essential. Do your boss, your partners or your loved ones really ask that much of you? Sandra Le Grand listed the areas where she had no added value and which, yet, took up a lot of her time: following her children's homework and shopping. "In the first case, I delegate. In the second, I order fresh products online," she explains. However, she makes it a point of honor, when she is with her children, to be 100% available. Smartphone off.
Refocus on your responsibilities
"I couldn't stand his reproaches anymore!" Thinking back to this episode, Sabine, HR director of an SME in the pharmaceutical sector, cannot help but get carried away. At the time, she had to deal with the displeasure of a colleague and friend to whom she had not given the expected position. If this attitude had, at first, generated some remorse in her, she had ended up putting things back in their proper place. "This girl did not have the necessary scope for the job. I had an obligation to tell her."
It is necessary to be able to take the necessary step back to identify one's real responsibilities. If it is not simple, this step is nevertheless crucial. You are responsible for your actions, your words, your emotions, but not for those of others. You therefore do not have to assume what they feel.
This is the lesson that Didier Fitte-Duval, HR director France of Chateaud'eau (water fountains, Eden Springs group), learned from his experience when he had to manage two very heavy redundancy plans, in 2004 and 2006: "I saw delivery drivers and managers crying in front of me because they had debts on their backs. I felt enormous guilt. I then refocused on my job as HR director. I had a mission to accomplish. And then, I realized that some had not used the tools that had been offered to them for years, such as validation of acquired experience, which would have allowed them to enhance their skills and bounce back. I couldn't feel guilty for everything."
Another antidote to this "morbid" guilt is to remain true to one's values. If you have a difficult decision to make or to apply, do it honestly and fairly. Like Magali Bernard, who bent over backwards to help the employees she laid off find a job. Didier Fitte-Duval also remembers being involved: "I identified with those who were leaving: what would I have liked to hear in their place? I conducted the interviews based on this feeling." Gontran Lejeune, the former boss of the poultry trading company who reproached himself for having driven his company to the brink of bankruptcy, acknowledged to his troops that he had lacked strategic foresight. A mark of respect for them.
Know how to repair when necessary
What if you really made a mistake? For example, by accidentally deleting data from your colleague's computer. Saying nothing is taking the risk of endlessly ruminating on your blunder and living with nagging guilt. Because even if you did not intend to harm your colleague, you should not have used his computer. The solution to lighten your moral burden? Pay your debt and repair the damage. Start by making your mea culpa, by acknowledging the facts. "Then try to find solutions," advises Patrick Marchand, of Menway. Be proactive, it will make you more credible."
Thus, in the hypothesis considered, you can offer the services of a computer technician to try to recover the data. For minor errors, on the other hand, circumstantial apologies are generally sufficient. Olivier de Lavalette, Southern Europe CEO of Regus (office space rental), had one day sharply reprimanded an employee, convinced that the latter had not completed a file on time. In reality, the person concerned had sent him an email a few hours earlier to tell him that the document was waiting for him on his desk. "I lost my temper because other problems had annoyed me," he confides. I went back to see him and I explained, publicly, that I had lost my temper wrongly." Fault confessed...
"I took her place!" It was when she crossed a tearful colleague in front of the coffee machine that Mathilde, recently promoted to head of business development at a major food giant, began to feel guilty. "I had been her rival without knowing it. She had been aiming for the position for a long time. However, this sales manager had much more expertise than I did, coming from another sector. I felt like an imposter."
When this type of discomfort assails you, it can undermine you from within and paralyze your decisions. "This guilt is unhealthy," analyzes coach and psychologist Yves-Alexandre Thalmann, author of "To hell with guilt" (Jouvence Editions). Nothing to do with so-called "useful" guilt, which prevents you, for example, from committing an offense. It is a morbid feeling, which feeds on ultimately very subjective faults." An overwhelming remorse that must be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. Here's how to do it in six steps.
Acknowledge your state to overcome it
We are not always aware of the guilt that eats away at us. Because it is often masked by other emotions, such as sadness, anger or a thirst for revenge. Let your intuition guide you: you feel that you haven't returned the favor in time, that you have unjustly favored an employee, that you have reprimanded a member of your team too harshly. And that's probably why you feel this discomfort.
"I often reproached myself, in the way: "I should have diversified my business, why didn't I do it?" recounts Gontran Lejeune, former boss of a poultry trading company that almost went bankrupt in 2006 due to avian flu. This refrain of "I should have...", "what if I had...", "why didn't I..." is a sign that does not deceive. "Entering into such a process is opening Pandora's box," warns Sonia Garèche, coach at Inchigo. We rewrite history constantly. We feel that the situation would be much better if we had acted differently." In short, we indulge in self-flagellation.
This excessive guilt is often linked to a lack of self-esteem. "The superego, the seat of taboos, prohibitions and morality, is then strongly expressed," explains Edouard Stacke, psychosociologist and coach at 100 Ways. We need to constantly justify ourselves because we feel we are not up to par. As a result, we develop a fragility of which guilt is a symptom." There is no point in repressing it. The guilt would grow. It is better to accept it in order to overcome it.
Verbalize your emotion
The goal is to move from a simple feeling to a structured and reasoned analysis of your discomfort. "You will be able to give shape to your guilt, visualize it," indicates Yves-Alexandre Thalmann. This is the first step to taking a step back." Magali Bernard blamed herself for not having salvaged her semi-industrial butcher shop near Quimper, which was liquidated at the end of 2008. One day, she took up her pen. "I wrote everything I felt: the weight of failure, the feeling of having failed in my mission, of having weakened my twelve employees, who found themselves unemployed, and my family."
Talking to friends, relatives and professional acquaintances also helps to put things in perspective. "After a few discussions with other business leaders, from the Centre des jeunes dirigeants in particular, I realized that I was blaming myself too much," confirms Magali Bernard, who emphasizes the cathartic effect of these exchanges. Gilles Dufour, coach at B Lief (consulting firm), advocates an even more radical method: write down your self-destructive thoughts and burn them! "It may seem surprising," he admits, "but it is very effective for extracting guilt from your mind."
Don't exaggerate your impact on others
The mechanics of guilt are subtle. It tortures you and, at the same time, it gives you the illusion of having power (that of acting, deciding, making mistakes...) and therefore, a hold on life. Faced with a major difficulty in his factory, the CEO of an Ile-de-France SME remained paralyzed for weeks at the idea of warning his boss. "The latter being seriously ill, he thought that he would deal him a fatal blow by telling him, recalls Patrick Marchand, coach at Menway, a recruitment and potential assessment consulting firm. As a result, he found himself crushed by double guilt: that of jeopardizing the company and that of hiding information from his boss, for fear of harming his health."
Believing that one influences the course of events to this extent is a mistake. "No one can be responsible for the misfortune of others," insists Yves-Alexandre Thalmann. At worst, we only contribute to it." But never in the proportions we imagine. This belief haunted Elise Lucet for many months. At the end of 2010, the presenter of the program "Pièces à conviction" admitted to feeling "a sense of guilt" for having sent Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, the reporters held hostage for a year and a half, to Afghanistan. But the two men could have refused to leave. They were volunteers and knew the risks. The chain of events simply escaped them. And in the end, no one was responsible.
"I managed to convince myself that I couldn't be perfect across the board. To dream of being an exemplary mother and a highly involved and high-performing professional is a guaranteed burnout," warns Sandra Le Grand, CEO of Canalce (solutions and services for works councils). Like many women torn between their family life and their careers, this former saleswoman for Coca-Cola France felt guilty about leaving her children at the daycare for too long, about only cooking frozen meals and, at the same time, about leaving the office a little earlier some evenings. One day, she decided to stop these internal conflicts.
Like Magali Bernard, who understood after the liquidation of her company that it was impossible for her to satisfy everyone: at the office, at the workshop and at home. Both of them knew how to thwart the injunctions well known to practitioners of transactional analysis: "be perfect" and "please". "Anchored in our brains since childhood, these leitmotifs guide our adult behavior and generate guilt," notes Gilles Dufour, at B Lief.
The solution? Lower your expectations and focus on what's essential. Do your boss, your partners or your loved ones really ask that much of you? Sandra Le Grand listed the areas where she had no added value and which, yet, took up a lot of her time: following her children's homework and shopping. "In the first case, I delegate. In the second, I order fresh products online," she explains. However, she makes it a point of honor, when she is with her children, to be 100% available. Smartphone off.
Refocus on your responsibilities
"I couldn't stand his reproaches anymore!" Thinking back to this episode, Sabine, HR director of an SME in the pharmaceutical sector, cannot help but get carried away. At the time, she had to deal with the displeasure of a colleague and friend to whom she had not given the expected position. If this attitude had, at first, generated some remorse in her, she had ended up putting things back in their proper place. "This girl did not have the necessary scope for the job. I had an obligation to tell her."
It is necessary to be able to take the necessary step back to identify one's real responsibilities. If it is not simple, this step is nevertheless crucial. You are responsible for your actions, your words, your emotions, but not for those of others. You therefore do not have to assume what they feel.
This is the lesson that Didier Fitte-Duval, HR director France of Chateaud'eau (water fountains, Eden Springs group), learned from his experience when he had to manage two very heavy redundancy plans, in 2004 and 2006: "I saw delivery drivers and managers crying in front of me because they had debts on their backs. I felt enormous guilt. I then refocused on my job as HR director. I had a mission to accomplish. And then, I realized that some had not used the tools that had been offered to them for years, such as validation of acquired experience, which would have allowed them to enhance their skills and bounce back. I couldn't feel guilty for everything."
Another antidote to this "morbid" guilt is to remain true to one's values. If you have a difficult decision to make or to apply, do it honestly and fairly. Like Magali Bernard, who bent over backwards to help the employees she laid off find a job. Didier Fitte-Duval also remembers being involved: "I identified with those who were leaving: what would I have liked to hear in their place? I conducted the interviews based on this feeling." Gontran Lejeune, the former boss of the poultry trading company who reproached himself for having driven his company to the brink of bankruptcy, acknowledged to his troops that he had lacked strategic foresight. A mark of respect for them.
Know how to repair when necessary
What if you really made a mistake? For example, by accidentally deleting data from your colleague's computer. Saying nothing is taking the risk of endlessly ruminating on your blunder and living with nagging guilt. Because even if you did not intend to harm your colleague, you should not have used his computer. The solution to lighten your moral burden? Pay your debt and repair the damage. Start by making your mea culpa, by acknowledging the facts. "Then try to find solutions," advises Patrick Marchand, of Menway. Be proactive, it will make you more credible."
Thus, in the hypothesis considered, you can offer the services of a computer technician to try to recover the data. For minor errors, on the other hand, circumstantial apologies are generally sufficient. Olivier de Lavalette, Southern Europe CEO of Regus (office space rental), had one day sharply reprimanded an employee, convinced that the latter had not completed a file on time. In reality, the person concerned had sent him an email a few hours earlier to tell him that the document was waiting for him on his desk. "I lost my temper because other problems had annoyed me," he confides. I went back to see him and I explained, publicly, that I had lost my temper wrongly." Fault confessed...
