Small change: quit the blame game

Human Nature remains one of Madonna’s great tracks. This is not least because its spirit of defiant confrontation is expressed via the medium of whispering: “you’re the one with the problem”.

Each and every day, such sentiments are expressed in offices up and down the land, albeit with less artistic merit. ‘The problem isn’t us’, we say, ‘it’s them’. ‘It’s not me being unreasonable, it’s him’. There might be more than a grain of truth in this. But such sentiments ignore a more inconvenient truth about human nature: where relationships are concerned, we are always a contributor to the problems we experience.

The term for this is ‘othering’. This is when we project our own flaws and failings on to another and absolve ourselves of accountability for their origin or resolution. The brutal truth is that all relationships are co-created. When we acknowledge this, we acknowledge that we have a part to play in making things better.

Something to consider: how am I the one with the problem?

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