day 238: Silence Is Golden

Have you ever noticed how more finger pointing happens at work than maybe any other place other than an elementary playground. All day long, work conversations are filled with; "She didn't do it right", "He never got around to it", "He really dropped the ball on this one", "She didn't know what she was doing", yada, yada, yada. All day long the fingers come out and point and accusations are leveled against people. And, we all buy into it because it is such a normal course of action. It doesn't seem at all out of the ordinary to talk about someone when they are out of the room. I was recently in a Board meeting where you would have thought that every problem ever known to the organization was because of the performance of a recently departed executive. Some of it was true, but the rest was like when the CFO says we are going to need to take a financial charge this quarter, are there any other things we should be writing down or off? All of a sudden the spending that was the big idea last year, comes out of the woodwork to be written down or off as a failed expenditure, etc. And because, it's okay to take a write-off, we just lump it all in as fast as we can. That is what we end up doing with people as we pile-on and make accusations. It becomes natural to just fuel the fire. One day though those accusations come back to us and we are the ones who have to answer to others. How to handle those accusations is critical. I have watched too many people lose step in their careers, or throw away their careers because they don't realize that most of these accusations and words are meaningless in the bigger picture and to let them take us at of our game, or off our purpose, is exactly what others want, and what we must avoid. Jesus gave us the best example of this. At the moment He was being accused and persecuted, He chose to keep Himself lifted above all of it, and stay on His purpose. He did it with silence. We read in Matthew 27:12; "But when the leading priests, and other leaders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent." Jesus said nothing. He knew that their accusations against Him meant nothing in the bigger scheme of things and to have opened his mouth to argue or debate would have only been to lower Himself to their level and lose the high ground that He stood upon. The same is true with us. Today, the accusations that are so broadly thrown around in the office will come your way. The best reaction, may well be no reaction. Today, let us test the gold within silence.

Reference: Matthew 27:12 (New Living Testament)

day 35: Accusations

Yesterday, I wrote about taking credit and boasting where neither is warranted. It is a part of being dishonest at work. There is another dishonesty that happens at work and that is when things aren't going so well. This is when there is blame to pass around for something that went wrong like when the customer is upset, a report was incorrect, a sale fell through, a person quits because he/she was upset with how they were treated, a part fails, or a presentation wasn't ready in time. You know the drill. The boss or person of authority comes looking for rear ends to kick and chew. And we all know certain people who no matter the problem, they will not stand up and take accountability for themselves and instead will pass it off on someone else. They look like Teflon on the surface but inside they are being dishonest and falsely accusing others for blame when they should be standing up and taking it themselves. This is almost such a common decency and baseline treating of others that it doesn't need a Biblical reference to convince the point, but the reference is there when Luke in Chapter 3 of the same named book, describes what it was that John the Baptist came to preach as he was preparing the way for Jesus. In verse 14 of Chapter 3, John the Baptist responds to a group of soldiers who were asking how they should live their lives. He said to them to be sure that they were fair financially and not extort others and also "don't accuse people of things you know they didn't do". In that time, if a soldier was to falsely accuse someone of something they didn't do it could lead to death. Fortunately, in our country that doesn't happen at work, but there can certainly be a deathly emotional outcome each time someone is falsely accused at work. It doesn't take but a few times to have the false blame come your way that you don't want to be at that job any longer and you feel "run out". For that reason alone, we all need to choose our words carefully and be very, very sure before we pass along any blame on anyone so we not take the chance that we are falsely accusing. Better yet, it is better to stand up and take a part of the blame and instead of allowing the witch hunt to continue, change the conversation to how we ensure it never happens again, before someone else gets dragged in rightly or wrongly. When we are willing stand tall for our actions and results, we stand along with the example of one who was willing to give His all when He was wrongly accused.

Reference: Luke 3:14 (New Living Testament)