I was volunteering in a job mentoring program and reviewing a participant’s job history, which included several short-term jobs. When I asked him why he left each position he replied, “It was the people.” After hearing him repeat this four consecutive times, I stopped being polite, and said, “You’re the people!”
He looked startled and said, “What?” I explained that he had two options: he could either get a restraining order against these people who were stalking him from job to job, or he could look at himself—the common denominator. He became quiet, looked angry, and hesitantly said, “You may be right.”
After this, we discussed creating a stable job history, dealing with conflict, and the art of transitioning without the blame game.
Sometimes, you have to look at “your people” (me, myself, and I) first, and with honesty, to get to the root cause of your state of discontent or transition. This is hard for most of us, because blaming others is much easier than examining the clues that our successes and failures tend to leave. Like any other investigation, ours should establish the facts from the clues, and evaluate them to come up with an objective conclusion. Depending on your objectivity, you will end up with the ugly truth, or a pretty lie. The ugly truth will provide insight behind your discontentment or constant state of transition, and a pretty lie will constantly keep you in a place where you are “swinking,” that is, not quite swimming, not quite sinking. “Swinking”is where you will find:
- Short-term job hoppers—blaming “the people” for pushing them out.
- Frequently downsized people—blaming unstable companies versus their unstable performances.
- Fired people—blaming it on the company or boss who obviously had it in for them.
When you’re out of sync, and living a pretty lie, you become a defiant victim with a narrative that only speaks to what is working against you. I often ask people who are terminated, “What did you learn?” Very few have learned anything about themselves. They talk about what they learned about the bad company, manager, coworkers, or industry.
