Resentment In The Workplace

Most people don't realize that resentment comes from being victimized. In fact, remorse, regret and resentment are all feelings of the victim. Before you can feel resentment, you have to have been victimized by a situation or circumstance. You must have given up your power to someone or something else before you can feel hard done by that someone or something else. My friend Bobby Ng taught me that years ago.

Accountability, on the other hand, is free of resentment, remorse and regret. Through accountability, you agree that somehow along the way, you attracted this situation or circumstance. And perhaps this situation can teach you something. That is, without a doubt, the most difficult personal notion for people to wrap their heads around. But once they do it, it's freeing.

Some say that resentment is more difficult to overcome than substance abuse. I think that is accurate. You can walk away from alcohol, cigarettes or drugs and once they are out of your system, you can begin your new life. However, resentment can stay with a person for a lifetime. Some people just never get over being hard done by. They use that feeling to garner attention - not necessarily positive attention. They are filled with concern about how they look to others more so than how they feel to themselves. Resentment comes from a poor self-image. Until a person's need to be happy outweighs their need to be right, nothing will ever change.

Is there resentment in the workplace? You bet there is. But organization after organization believe that they have no need for soft-skills training. They think it's too fluffy. So they allow many of their people to harbor feelings of resentment and represent the company in this way. People who harbor feelings of regret, remorse or resentment become the victims in the business world. They come back to the office claiming that their own prices are too high or the customer isn't buying or it's the economy. Victims have a pile of excuses for why they're not doing well. But still, there's no need for soft-skills training.

You need to change your attitude on soft-skills training.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Any good leader will know that you build your organizations from the inside out. Build up your people on the inside, allow them to do the work within the organization, and build your organization stronger from the inside out. It takes more than just time management or communication skills training to improve an organization. The more you fix your people, the more you enable your people to fix the problems on their own. Business gets better when the people in the business get better.