Terri, over at Barriers, Bridges and Books, wrote an insightful and interesting post last week called, “The Power of the Stories We Tell Ourselves. There’s an excerpt below. Normally, I’d just plop this on Google Reader but I think everyone will come away wiser if you take sec and read the entire post so I’m sharing it.
“I wasn’t long out of nursing school when the dynamic on the floor I was working on went down a poisonous path. They were between managers and somehow all of the staff had turned against each other and EVERYONE blamed EVERYONE ELSE for the situation. No one could see any way to change their behavior unless someone else’s behavior changed first.
A senior manager was called in to help sort things out and this manager told the staff that they not only could change their behavior, but they were responsible to—whether or not anyone else EVER changed. This statement met with blank stares and hostility. No one could imagine how this could work.
To illustrate her point she showed us a video of a woman displaying absolutely HORRIBLE behavior. The woman was stomping around, cursing, threatening and carrying on, it was upsetting to watch. The manager stopped the film and asked us what should be done about this person.
Well our staff was incensed at the behavior they had seen. They said the woman should be spoken to, limits should be set, she should be asked to leave, consequences should be levied, victims should be defended. Our manager wrote all of this down.
Then she told us that the next video we were going to see would probably upset us as well. She said that the gal in the film had just found out that her son was gravely ill, she was having serious financial issues and had just had a fender-bender on her way in.
Then she turned on the video. Guess what? She showed us the exact SAME video.
When she stopped the film again she once again asked what should be done about this woman. As you might imagine, the answers were completely different: Find her someone to talk to… see if she has a ride home… have the social worker share some of her community resources with her…”
