Everyone’s a little bit self-righteous sometimes

Having recently seen Avenue Q I have had the words to the songs endlessly swirling around my head, so it’s not surprising that I started coming up with new lyrics for some of the songs.

Avenue Q is a great musical because the puppets say things that we generally don’t want to talk about, but which are nevertheless factual.

So whilst humming along to “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, I wondered if everyone is also a little bit – something else that’s not so nice. What other traits does everyone have that you could write a song about? So having resolved many disputes throughout my working life, it occurred to me that everyone is a little bit self righteous too, particularly when they’re under attack; but no-one would want to admit it.

I’m right, you’re wrong
If there is one thing I’ve learned over all my years working as a mediator and conciliator is that when there is a dispute everyone always believes that their position is right – well at least initially. All of us are a bit precious when we’re under attack – it’s only human. If we are not self-righteous and defensive when someone says that there is problem, it could mean that we have to accept that we deliberately acted in a way that has now been judged as being wrong or inappropriate; and no-one wants to admit that upfront. This is about ego; about saving face.

You might have also noticed that people who are self-defensive and self-righteous are not good listeners and they can’t negotiate anything. They’re in battle-mode – they have a point to prove and they’ll keep arguing with you until the cows come home. It’s also probably no surprise that the higher the stakes the more likely we are to hold our position, the more self righteous we can become.

So how do you handle a problem like self righteousness? It’s easy. You go with it. You don’t fight it, because you can’t. When a person is under attack they will usually only listen to you if they think you are on their side.

To give you an example, there is a Dad who, during a heated mediation, is being challenged by his ex-wife because he is always late to pick up his kids for contact on the Friday nights. She says that it’s not fair on the kids who start to “lose it” when Dad’s more than 2 hours late. But the first thing Dad does is to justify his behaviour by telling you (the mediator) that he has a very important and busy job and that he just can’t get away by 5.00 pm on Fridays and that she, Mum, needs to understand that. You go with that argument; you don’t fight it. You tell him that you understand that he is busy and important and that it’s very hard for him to get away on Friday nights; but then you gently add that the kids are important too, so what arrangements could we put in place to make this situation work better for everyone?

The bottom line is don’t fight insanity. When any of us go into that self-righteous state, we’re not operating on full throttle. It’s like we are holding our hands over our ears singing la la la, so that we can’t hear anything anyone is saying.

But awareness is a wonderful thing. Next time you feel that you’re under attack take a note of how you respond to that situation; does your heart rate change; what are you thinking? Notice how hard it is to listen properly to the other person and how you immediately feel the need to defend yourself and justify your position. You might also notice that your voice becomes higher pitched and strained?

And then you can tell yourself to stop and listen and think and rephrase what you were going to say in the first place. Think about what you can say to defuse the situation and best of all ask questions, so you can determine what is the genesis of this attack.

Finally always remember that if you turn the attack back on the other person, they’ll just become self righteous too.

No wonder we still can’t avoid wars.