How to Thrive When You Feel The Sting of Unfairness
Unfairness abounds in organizational life.
Your company merged with a competitor and your position was eliminated.
You didn’t get the promotion. It’s not fair.
You never thrive when unfairness derails your focus and drains your enthusiasm.
“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” (Unknown)
It’s not fair when the refs get it wrong:
Basketball is the game of the gods. March Madness is the best three weeks of Spring. But…
Sometimes the referees get it wrong. During the Texas Tech/Gonzaga game, the ref clearly missed an out of bounds call. It happens! (NCAA video.)
Any player that worries about bad calls is playing below their potential. Forget the referees. Just go play your best game.
Successful players focus on the next play, not the last play.
“… whatever you have just done is not nearly as important as what you are doing right now.” Krzyzewski
When unfairness stings:
The sting of unfairness hits home when:
- Your boss takes credit for your idea.
- Lack of affirmation feels like disrespect. Nearly 80% of those who feel disrespected lose commitment.
- Your co-worker tarnishes your reputation with gossip.
Sometimes the people who DON’T do the work get ahead because they’re riding on the backs of people who do the work.
Ego:
Ego bristles at unfairness.
- Ego says, “I deserve better.” Humility presses through unfairness and continues serving. Ego throws in the towel.
- Ego whispers, “It’s not worth it.” Unfairness takes the wind out of ego’s sails.
- Ego wonders why others get ahead when they don’t work as hard as you.
- Ego incites anger and invites bitterness. Pay-backs are joyfully anticipated by ego.
Ego invites you to become your worst self when faced with unfairness.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Tighten your belt and press forward with enthusiasm.
What helps you thrive in the face of unfairness?
My faith helps me the most. Sure things are not fair some days. But if you tracked them, you’d find most days are actually unfair in my own favor. I never complain because I got that great parking spot or the cop pulled over the guy just ahead of me or that I didn’t get cancer today. Life is unfair and that works out most days. It wasn’t fair that Jesus died for me either. And that gives me some really good perspective when life kicks me in the teeth. And let’s be real. Most of the time when life is unfair, we had it coming to us.
Thanks Ron. We don’t seem to complain when things work out better for us than we expected or deserved. 🙂
Going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm is not success… it’s perseverance, which is seems crucial to finding success. No ones gonna succeed after they give up cause they failed.
All the points about ego… man they’re good.
Whew…hard to swallow pills. But, definitely needed my medicine this morning!
Thanks Jas. Yes, it’s one of the toughest pills to swallow. I hope we realize that unfairness is an opportunity to thrive, instead of take a dive.
Dan- this by far has been the post that struck me to my core. I always love reading your daily words of wisdom, but today meant so much more. Your words totally encapsulated my life for the past three years. After learning that my supervisor had been slitting my throat to senior management, I didn’t make the best decisions to handle it. However, through prayer, reading your blog daily, and my family I have been able to dig out of a deep pit of despair and self pity. Now I am at a new place within the organization and rebuilding my reputation. Although it is unfair, I now have a better understanding on how ego filled supervisors act when they are threatened. That is my hot take. Each day I do my best and try to be better than yesterday. I will let my works speak for themselves and rest in the fact that karma has no expiration date.
Thanks Michael. I’m so glad that you dug your way out of an unfair situations. It’s so hard to realize that we are shoot ourselves in the foot when we let this get the best of us.
Getting even isn’t the path that takes us where we want to go. Just keep on serving. Best wishes
We are going through a planned transition of leadership in the organization. Like Michael experienced, I see how ego-driven leaders react to the perceived opportunity or threat. What has helped me the most in the past year is to believe in myself and do what I think is right not because it gains approval and recognition from others, but because I am proud to do the best I can with my strengths.
Thanks Wayne. Nicely said. Just go do what you think is right. Bring your best. You won’t always be appreciated. But it doesn’t matter.
You have to lay your head on the pillow at night and think, I did what was right. I brought my best.
‘All complaining is sin’ – St Francis de Sales
I’d like to complain about that, but I better not! Thanks Daniel
Great articles and food for thought, thanks for helping keep perspective ☺
Respectfully,
Linda
Linda Beam-Senecal
Human Rights Analyst
Corrections-Operational Support
External Oversight and Compliance Branch
Thank you Linda.
Let’s look at this statement and break it down, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” So what is truly failure, not getting the acknowledgement because someone else took it, not getting the order, not getting the promotion etc etc. While on the surface those “events’ might be looked at as failures, I believe its how one looks at those events that is most important. If one looks at those events or similar ones as failures one will be dragged down and down. Best to look at all the events that life throws at you as learning events. Maybe three failures in a row is just the way for you to build up stamina, knowledge and success on the next go around. How does one not learn but not to have some so called “failures” along the pathway. So bitch, moan, complain with the failure and then move on learning from it. In 39 years of professional work life, I’ve failed forward many times but I usually squeak out successful on the back end, ready for the next swing at the ball.
Thanks Roger. The learning mindset solves so many frustrations in leadership and organizational life. One of the best ways to see the learning mindset is in our response to failure, mistakes, and falling short.
Read Mindset by Charol Dweck,
Sometimes I just capture my response to “failures” this way, “I will not let the bast…ds get me down” That seems to energize me for moving on.
Nothing wrong with a little bit of “I’ll show them!”
Just was blindsided by being let go from a job where I was kicking a** – saving the company lots of money, making great new connections, etc. Who knows what happened there, since my boss never gave me any negative feedback until I was abruptly let go.
But you are right. I brought my best, and it’s their loss. Onward and upward!
Thanks Cathy. Your comment is a sobering reminder about the pitfalls of organizational life. We can be out of touch. Others can be manipulative. The environment can change. We can be IN on one day and OUT the next.
I wish you the best as you move forward.
A very meaningful, powerful, and accurate meditation on the travails of unfair situations: thank you! When I went through a tough restructuring that resulted in reassignment to a lower-level position, one statement I heard stuck with me: “you will not get your revenge.”
Many times, in situations like these, you have to continue to work with (or for) the very people who treated you unfairly. The best response to this is to focus on the work in front of you and demonstrate that what happened in the past was wrong. But you should never expect that acknowledgement, that recognition, to be spoken. Instead, keep moving forward.
Thanks Michael. The thing that sticks out to me in your comment is, “Focus on the work.” It feels like a moment of clarity.
People are frail. People disappoint. Focus on the work.
“Put your head down and GRIT it out. Ignore the ones riding on your back … just keep moving forward as an enthusiastic drone no mater what the obstacle”. Until when? You collapse from sheer exhaustion? Until your back breaks? Showing grit and determination while trying to be enthusiastic are lofty ideals. There are those who look out for these happy workers, and use them to their advantage to get ahead … slowly adding weight … sucking them dry of drive and grit until the hard working person wakes up one day to see the illusion … and realize that they’ve been walking in circles while the abusers got ahead. Statue quo true stories.
Thanks Michael. “Until when” is an important question. Some tend to move on too soon. Others tend to hang on too long.
I like Adam Grants idea in Givers and Takers. Do your best to work with givers. Don’t let takers take advantage of you.
Good topic for this conversation. Thanks again.
No truer words! And my thoughts exactly! I want/need to be in a position where honest & beneficial feedback is accepted for the gift that it is and not seen as a threat to an egotistical superior. I’m WEARY of that, at this point and have lost (almost lost) my ability to just keep on trudging through, because I’m being taken advantage of. The stress and inability to affect positive change is weighing me down. It’s easy to keep doing what I do to the best of my ability! (It’s just hard not to feel like a hipocrite when I work in HR & see that the “retention tools” I’m told to practice with new hires stops being practiced above that level.) How can I “unsee” what I learned is wrong and unfair, when what I want to do is show my company (in a non-threatening way!) that… it’s not necessary!
Dan-
Dweck’s research on growth mindset is eye opening as well as utterly amazing. By shifting our thought about failure to learning opportunities we can learn great, powerful lessons that will come in handy down the road.
Thanks Michael. Yes indeed. She’s a must read.
Company politics are something to be keenly aware of. I have seen many quality people demoted or swept out the back door just because vision and mindset were not in alignment. This article has great tips for reflection to get through some of these tough times.
Thanks Tim. Politics are real and they aren’t always bad. Frankly, it seems like a good idea to build relationships with decision-makers.
Healthy ego (boundaries) should bristle at unfairness that is premeditated by dirty players. Walking away with your dignity intact is an artform in these cases.
The feeling of self-pity can really derail an organization because misery loves company. The environment can become toxic just by continous thoughts/discussions on ‘why this job didn’t work out’ or ‘how come they got promoted.’ Those tend to distract individuals with the egos that serve them. But I agree, someone who is successful looks at the longterm goal. They realize opportunities will come but how you recover is what’s important.
Thank you sir. Very hard pill to swallow
Wish I’d seen this earlier. I threw in the towel…quite sad. Lesson learnt
Unfairness leaves a bitter taste in your mouth for a while. This is defintely something that happens quite frequently to some. However, this is an experience that leaders need in my opinion. This makes them know that everything will not happen the way they expect and people will not buy into there idea regardless of how good it is.