The Frustration Factor

Your children's development starts with their physical, doing dimension. It incorporates their physical bodies, their potentials and capacities to do and behave, and most of what is visible in terms of their actions and activities.

Part of your role is to help your children grow to respect and appreciate their physical abilities and skills, to know how to behave in a variety of situations, and to recognize and utilize their physical capacities and potentials. This physical, doing dimension starts at infancy and is central to your children' adjustment throughout their journey to adulthood.

The emotional dimension is equally important. Here are found feelings, fears and frustrations, sadness and joy, disappointment and excitement, love and hate, fun and futility. Your growing children experience all of these emotions and must learn how to interpret them, how to express them, and how to manage them. …

All management is based on guiding principles; and the effectiveness of management derives from those principles. This is true whether the principles are appropriate or inappropriate, reasonable or unreasonable, consistent or inconsistent. Similarly, the derivative nature of management holds whether the guiding principles are vague or well-defined, followed faithfully or haphazardly, applied day-to-day by managers who are highly skilled or fundamentally incompetent. Effective management, then, is a product of:

 

* Guiding principles that are appropriate, reasonable, and consistent;

 

* Managers who clearly understand the guiding principles, faithfully adhere to them, and who are fundamentally competent.

 

It follows from this that the effectiveness of an organization's management is a product of the Principle/People equation:

 

* Principles + People = Outcomes. …

You want your children to become effective, successful adults. Reaching this goal begins with having clear notions about what qualities and characteristics effective and successful adults share. You then encourage them in your children. Alternatively, those qualities and characteristics not found in effective and successful adults should be discouraged.

Most all adult characteristics, good or bad, are seen in children at some stage in their development. Small children, for example, take things that do not belong to them. With adults, this is called stealing. Three- and four-year-old children have temper tantrums as a normal part of their emotional development. If they still have tantrums when they are twenty-five or thirty years old, it is clearly unacceptable. Small children frequently misrepresent what has happened and do not tell parents how things really are. In adults, this is called lying.

Small children are loving and affectionate. Hopefully, they are still that way when they are grown. Small children are spontaneous and enthusiastic. If all goes well, they are still that way when they are adults. Qualities and characteristics desirable or undesirable in adults should be encouraged and discouraged as your children grow and mature.

As a project transforms from an ad hoc initiative by a concerned group of people to a mature human services agency, there are many points at which things can and often do go astray. These range from the relatively minor and inconsequential to points where the process shifts significantly off the intended track. What the Initiators intend is only more or less realized. At times, the result has little but a vague relationship to the original intent. Let's explore the creation process for human services agencies and see how things go right and how they go wrong. …

The Helping Triangle developed in this chapter is what

Legerton and Castelloe 1999 call an organic model, "…one developed primarily through active participation in social life e.g., primarily through practice rather than independence from social life e.g., primarily through academic reflection."  In the Introduction, we saw how people helping people represents human services at their most basic level. You see someone in distress and decide to do what you can to help. Perhaps you recruit a few of your friends to pitch in and help too. Usually this ad hoc human services provision works fine and you and your friends move on with your lives. Sometimes though, this generous level of help is insufficient. There are more people needing help than you and your friends can manage, you have other priorities, you do not have the resources needed to provide the help people need. Instead of just walking away, you decide to create a human services agency with sufficient resources to provide the needed help on an ongoing basis. Help will be there for the people who need it, when they need it, for as long as they need it.

Perhaps this does not seem like anything you will do or can do. If asked If not you, then who? You answer They will. This clearly puts you with the majority. Most people do not notice the distress of others and most of those who do simply walk away. The good news is a few people do notice and a few of those who notice choose not to walk away. If you are among those who choose not to walk away, understanding the Helping Triangle as explained in the iterations below and in later chapters enables you to create a human services agency that can and will provide the help the people in distress need. The model is a product of many years of trial and error; it is an organic model known to work in real world situations. It will not help you decide if you will stick around and help; but if you do, understanding the Helping Triangle makes it likely you can do what needs done. With this assurance in mind, let's consider how human services agencies are created. For alternative perspectives and approaches, see Brueggemann, 2006 and Netting, Kettner, & McMurtry, 2008. These authors focus on macro social work which is generally inclusive of the concepts and processes incorporated into this organic model. Additionally, Fauri, Wernet, & Netting, 2008, provide a thoughtful collection of case examples highlighting macro practice within a variety of situations and contexts.

Discipline has a negative side as it relates to rules, boundaries, and to the life-circle. Somewhat simplistically, this has to do with making your children mind and assuring they avoid unnecessary risks. Discipline also has a positive side. It encourages your children to participate in those activities and experiences that are good for them, even though this Sometimes means insisting.

Here are the most important principles underlying effective discipline.

Your discipline should be reasonable, fair, and effective. …

Sally and Tyler are relaxing on the patio at a restaurant near their office. This is Tyler’s first day working with Sally and they are taking some time just to get to know each other. Sally has an ice breaker for their conversation. Please listen in to see how they get their working relationship off to a comfortable start.

Henry Allen walks into the teachers' lounge where Doris is saying, "It's their fault down in that office. They always get things fouled up. We work our tails off and they can't get anything right."

 

Picking up on the assault, Greg says, "Do we ever get a thank you or how do you do? Not a chance!"

 

Henry joins in, "You can say that again. It's about time we start calling them like they are. It's time to put the responsibility directly on the people who are causing the problems. We all know who they are too. It's just a few who make us all look bad and make it impossible for us to do our jobs."

 

Greg says, "I know people have bad days but that's no excuse. They have to do it right every time, including the little things. Taking it out on us is intolerable. It is professionalism we are talking about and the students are the ones to suffer in the long run."

 

Everyone nods at the profundity. Doris says, "It's attitude. It is our responsibility to keep things on a positive note, no matter how we feel. I do it and don't see why everyone else can't do it. Greg is right, it is a matter of professionalism."

 

Management and psychology texts argue that people will do as well as they can under the specific circumstances. They only need to accept the underlying values, understand the problem, and receive support and encouragement. Faultfinders like those in the teachers' lounge do not buy into that. It is only necessary for them to look around to see the absurdity in the people-are-good-and-want-to-do-the-right-thing hypothesis. These players can look at almost any behavior, activity, or project and point out things that should have worked out better or faster. They can point to people who should have been smarter or sharper. They also call attention to events or circumstances that someone should have handled more smoothly or efficiently.

 

They always do better, they believe, so it is reasonable for them to expect others to do the same. Faultfinders reason thusly:

 

If things were done right the first time, we would not have to waste our time straightening out messes other people are causing.

 

There is no excuse for that - whatever that happens to be.

 

If you can't do the job, we'll find someone who can - and that will be easy to do.

 

What can you do?

 

People trying to deal with these players are apt to see them as confident people who have high standards and a low tolerance for anything less than perfection. The real issue is that they cannot separate the important from the unimportant, the essential from the unessential. They can recognize an exact duplicate of something, know when people are following the rules or tell when things are not right. What they cannot recognize is a reasonable example of something. They cannot tell when someone does a job well enough for the purpose. They cannot see that behavior sometimes only varies in style or as a function of personality. They need an exact match or they see no match at all and of course, there are never any extenuating circumstances.

 

As with anyone who drives you up the wall, do not react, do not come to the bait. The bait is the urge to react negatively, to tell them off, to refuse to work with them, or to resign to the inevitable while you are boiling inside. Instead, make the changes that are appropriate and reasonable. Remember that they are sometimes right and not just faultfinding. The rest of the time, do only what needs to be done, as well as it needs to be done.

 

Here is the real trick. Without overdoing it,

Is there someone where you work who absolutely, totally, and unequivocally drives you up the wall? Do you sometimes feel like climbing the wall all by yourself as the quickest way to escape? If you are saying Yes! Yes! Yes! you have had first-hand experience with "The Frustration Factor," up close and personal.

 

The players of the world are alive and well and ready to drive you up the wall. Some are aggressive, some passive; some are extroverts and others introverts. Whatever their personalities, they are mostly motivated by personal needs, status goals, and insecurities. If their private goals are coincidentally compatible with your company's, so be it. If not, their selfish interests prevail.

 

Rich is an experienced player.

 

Rich's approach to driving people up the wall is B-t-B: By the Book. In a less linguistically correct time, we called this CYA.

 

His main play is to do things the same way he always does them. What has worked before is likely to work again. He knows people seldom find fault with his handling things in the usual way, whether it works or not.

 

Next, Rich always looks at how things can go sour and little at how they can succeed. He asks, "What are the three strongest reasons for not doing this?" His motto is nothing ventured, nothing lost.

 

Finally, any time he has to do something that has some risk, he spends most of his time figuring out what to say if it goes sour. Of course, the best thing to be able to say is, "I was uneasy about this but went along reluctantly. I handled it the same way we always handle things. I did it By The Book."

 

Rich's play calls for doing things the same way he always does them. He avoids all risk whenever possible and has an explanation for failure made up ahead of time. Sure, there is a more simple version of Rich's play. Do not do anything new or innovative and try hard to keep others from making that mistake. What can you do?

 

Playing with B-t-B players like Rich is not a game for the impatient or impulsive. It helps to understand that these players have little faith in their abilities and less faith in their basic grasp or understanding of situations or circumstances. Since they do not believe they can trust their judgments or instincts, they do not take any chances on themselves.

 

Next, they do not have much ability to anticipate or predict the behavior of others. The idea is that they cannot predict if a specific action will lead to praise or punishment. Usually, they think the likely outcome of following their judgments is punishment.

 

You can use disciplinary and other negative approaches to show that negative outcomes can come from playing B-t-B. But if you do, take pause. If the only response or reaction folks get from you is negative or critical, reasonable people do the reasonable thing. They put most energy into avoiding negative reactions. Consider the possibility that the B-t-B player is a product of your negative behavior.

 

suppose you are Rich's manager. His rigidly sticking to the way he has always done things is driving you up the wall. He never uses his personal judgement even when he knows that the old way will not work. You can say, "What do you think? Is there a better way to do this? He may say Yes in some situations or No in others, depending on what he thinks is safest. Whatever he says, the question is then, "Why would you go that way?" The idea is to walk this B-t-B player through the decision making process. In most situations, you can close with, "You seem to have some ideas about this. Use your best judgement."

 

Henry Allen walks into the teachers' lounge where Doris is saying, "It's their fault down in that office. They always get things fouled up. We work our tails off and they can't get anything right."

 

Picking up on the assault, Greg says, "Do we ever get a thank you or how do you do? Not a chance!"

 

Henry joins in, "You can say that again. It's about time we start calling them like they are. It's time to put the responsibility directly on the people who are causing the problems. We all know who they are too. It's just a few who make us all look bad and make it impossible for us to do our jobs."

 

Greg says, "I know people have bad days but that's no excuse. They have to do it right every time, including the little things. Taking it out on us is intolerable. It is professionalism we are talking about and the students are the ones to suffer in the long run."

 

Everyone nods at the profundity. Doris says, "It's attitude. It is our responsibility to keep things on a positive note, no matter how we feel. I do it and don't see why everyone else can't do it. Greg is right, it is a matter of professionalism."

 

Management and psychology texts argue that people will do as well as they can under the specific circumstances. They only need to accept the underlying values, understand the problem, and receive support and encouragement. Faultfinders like those in the teachers' lounge do not buy into that. It is only necessary for them to look around to see the absurdity in the people-are-good-and-want-to-do-the-right-thing hypothesis. These players can look at almost any behavior, activity, or project and point out things that should have worked out better or faster. They can point to people who should have been smarter or sharper. They also call attention to events or circumstances that someone should have handled more smoothly or efficiently.

 

They always do better, they believe, so it is reasonable for them to expect others to do the same. Faultfinders reason thusly:

 

If things were done right the first time, we would not have to waste our time straightening out messes other people are causing.

 

There is no excuse for that - whatever that happens to be.

 

If you can't do the job, we'll find someone who can - and that will be easy to do.

 

What can you do?

 

People trying to deal with these players are apt to see them as confident people who have high standards and a low tolerance for anything less than perfection. The real issue is that they cannot separate the important from the unimportant, the essential from the unessential. They can recognize an exact duplicate of something, know when people are following the rules or tell when things are not right. What they cannot recognize is a reasonable example of something. They cannot tell when someone does a job well enough for the purpose. They cannot see that behavior sometimes only varies in style or as a function of personality. They need an exact match or they see no match at all and of course, there are never any extenuating circumstances.

 

As with anyone who drives you up the wall, do not react, do not come to the bait. The bait is the urge to react negatively, to tell them off, to refuse to work with them, or to resign to the inevitable while you are boiling inside. Instead, make the changes that are appropriate and reasonable. Remember that they are sometimes right and not just faultfinding. The rest of the time, do only what needs to be done, as well as it needs to be done.

 

Here is the real trick. Without overdoing it,