The six deadly excuses

 What? What?

    In Keith Ferrazzi’s Leading Without Authority rule two, he talks about how it is all on you to take on responsibility and take care of your key relationships with others. One of the practices he talks about is the six deadly excuses which are ignorance, laziness, deference, playing the victim, cowardice, and indulgence (Ferrazzi, 2020). These six deadly excuses are an easy way for us to just not do an assignment or project when we face difficulty. Everyone faces difficulties so, avoiding these six deadly excuses makes you stand out among the rest of the pack by pushing through them and not letting these challenges define your outcome.

So What?

    Ferrazzi describes the six deadly excuses as a way to overcome challenges and not be afraid of confronting conflict when it comes to a project or other work (Ferrazzi, 2020). Ferrazzi describes ignorance as an excuse that is inexcusable because you should know the processes and tasks that your work is supposed to be. When you have ignorance at work you put not only yourself in danger but also put other people in danger. With laziness, you lack the ability to co-elevate others and avoid the responsibility of your job or tasks that are bestowed upon you. One quote from the textbook that really made me think about laziness was "if you hang back with a not. my job attitude, then you might wind up with not a job" (Ferrazzi, 2020). if you have purpose in your job then you should want to complete all your tasks which will help the overall performance of the company. The third excuse is that should be avoided is deference in which you put the role or task on someone else. This leads to you not wanting or having responsibility in your work and having the mindset of pushing your boundaries. The fourth excuse is playing the victim. The best thing about accepting the mindset of leading without authority is the ability to cure yourself of seeing yourself as a victim (Ferrazzi, 2020). when you play the victim you are depriving yourself not only of the responsibility of your role, but you are also depriving the authority that you possess by not taking action and responsibility. Playing the victim lacks the ability for future co-elevation with team members by not accepting that it is all on our own. When we work in groups we have other people to fall back on and the same should be accepted when they need another hand through co-elevation. The fifth excuse from Ferrazzi's six deadly excuses is cowardice. Ferrazzi describes cowardice as something to look at positively as if you tend to be scared of something, there is something to be learned from it. The opposite of a coward is someone who speaks up for their ideas and beliefs and has the ability to be heard while leading the group (Dolfing, 2020). You can never grow or learn anything if you stick to what you know as you are letting yourself become stagnant which also hurts the idea of co-elevation with other team members. The sixth and final deadly excuse that Ferrazzi says to avoid is indulgence. According to Ferrazzi, indulgence can take many forms as we are to easily reluctant to come to peace with ourselves and relinquish our anger, resentment, and attitudes towards someone or something (Ferrazzi, 2020). When we want things to go our way we tend to lose our ability to lead others which is a massive failure in terms of co-elevation with others in your group.

                                               

Now What?

    These six deadly excuses are a great list of things to avoid when working in the future not only for yourself but when working in groups. I think these deadly excuses make you a terrible team member and a worse person because you will not co-elevate with others and will regress in your knowledge and skills. The excuses I can work on personally are laziness/procrastination and a slight hint of ignorance especially when it comes to learning new things. I get scared to learn new things because what if I never understand it or it will not benefit me in the future? So I need to forget those thoughts and focus on always creating a better version of myself while also helping those around me to grow as well.

Dolfing, H. (2020, February 3). Leadership is not for cowards. Henrico Dolfing - Interim Management and Project Recovery. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/02/leadership-is-not-for-cowards.html

Ferrazzi, K., & Weyrich, N. (2020). Leading without authority: How the new power of co-                elevation can break down silos, transform teams, and reinvent collaboration. Currency.