Do you lead with Guilt or Shame?

As many of you right now, my calendar is full of end of year gatherings, parties, kids’ performances, presentations etc. It can be hard to juggle priorities and ensure that you give everyone the attention they deserve. In my case, with four kids, this is always a challenging time of year when it comes to getting to everything and being a supportive, loving parent whilst maintaining my sanity.

My daughter, being the youngest of four, has gotten the least amount of attention of all my kids. Not surprisingly and ironically, she is also the child that wants the most love and affection from me. For that reason, she tends to know which of my ‘guilt strings’ to pluck to get me to show up. Two weeks ago, she was ready to perform at the end-of-year dance recital. She had practised to music at home religiously for months getting the moves timed perfectly with the music. Her costume looked fantastic and, I was looking forward to seeing her express herself in a performance that she had worked so hard to perfect.

The big day finally arrived, tickets in hand and the recital was scheduled at the very end of a very busy Saturday which involved Japanese School, Karate, Basketball, and a trip to the Physiotherapist. The recital was due to start at 6:30 pm and went for two and a half hours including an interval. As you can imagine, with such a tight schedule, there was not a lot of margin for error and by now, you are rightly predicting that we faced a lot of error that day.

“The fear of what might happen is often worse than the outcome itself. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, and my massive generalisation of guilt vs shame culture is by no means definitive but in my experience and that of my clients, the truth is a far better option when it comes to maintaining your wellbeing both personally and at work.”

We dropped my daughter off at 5:30 pm to get her make-up and hair done prior to the performance and would not see her again until after the show. In the hour before the performance started, everything that could have gone wrong did….and predictably we were going to be late. It was only a few minutes late initially…but that soon turned into 15minutes. Exasperated and hoping that they hadn’t started yet, we rushed into the theatre and were ushered to our seats. Once seated we had an opportunity to review the program and see when my daughter’s routine was due to start. I saw my daughters dance listed second from the top and based on the performance that was currently happening….I realised that we’d already missed it. My heart sank. My wife leaned over and asked when she was due to perform…I said “We’ve missed it”. I didn’t take in much of what was going on around me after that. I was so angry at myself, disappointed, annoyed, looking to blame my son for putting his shoes on too slowly, my wife for changing her dress at the last minute and the very slow driver in the carpark that held us up for a couple of minutes. I also felt annoyed at all of the delays that had happened earlier in the day to contribute to us being late. In addition, I was now sitting through a 2.5-hour recital watching other kids perform that I had no connection with…. it was somewhat of a nightmare. To make things worse, we weren’t allowed to see our daughter until all of the performances were finished! Painfully, this gave me ample time to think about what we were going to say to her.

What would you do?

She’s 9 years old and has been working on this for months. She knows you are watching her but due to the theatre layout, we were up on the balcony so there is no chance she would have noticed our absence in the audience. We see that it is being professionally filmed so we will be able to get the recording at some point. Do we tell her that we missed it? Or do we allow her to have her moment of joy without bringing her down?

Guilt or shame….what drives you?

I didn’t want to face the reality that I’d have to break my daughter’s heart so, like a coward, I turned to my wife in the hope that she would resort to her cultural heritage to decide. My wife is Japanese so as a generalisation Japanese culture along with most Asian cultures adopt what is known as a ‘shame culture’[1]. Basically, this means that if you’ve done something that you aren’t proud of (like miss your daughter’s dance recital) then there would be no point in sharing that with her or anybody else. By sharing, it would bring on a feeling of shame that would tarnish your personal brand. In Japanese culture and many Asian cultures, shame is a feeling to be avoided at all costs. Much to my surprise, my wife has become more Australianised than I thought and quickly stated “it’s up to you…but I think we should tell her”. All I could hear at that moment was the plucking of my ‘guilt strings’ even louder. As an Australian, I belong to what is known as a ‘guilt culture’ that has derived from a society dominated by Christian values. In simple terms, if I’ve done something I’m not proud of then it eats me up inside until I come clean. It was clear what I needed to do….confess!

Confession time

Like most difficult conversations, what I think is going to unfold is much worse than the reality. This conversation was no different. I picked her up from the stage door told her she looked beautiful (which she did in her sparkly costume and make-up) then asked her how she felt. She then asked me “Did you see me Papa?” which I could tell was a rhetorical question. I paused very briefly before I gently said: “I’m sorry Keira….we were a little late so I didn’t get to see your performance”. She took about ten seconds of silence while she looked down at the pathway then looked up at me and said, now you have to buy the DVD (with a surprisingly evil grin), to which I responded: “of course”. She then said “Can I perform my dance to music when we get home?” to which I responded, “of course you can….I’d love that”.

While guilt still plagues me and shame is something I have felt, the alternative to both of those is the truth. If you ever find yourself wanting to ‘protect’ somebody from the truth I’d challenge you to consider if you’re coming from a place of guilt or shame…or potentially both. Rather than avoid either of these, challenge yourself to share the truth. The fear of what might happen is often worse than the outcome itself. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, and my massive generalisation of guilt vs shame culture is by no means definitive but in my experience and that of my clients, the truth is a far better option when it comes to maintaining your wellbeing both personally and at work

[1] For a discussion on the topic of giult vs shame culture, please see the following article. Revisiting Shame and Guilt Cultures: A Forty-Year Pilgrimage: Ethos, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 279-307 (29 pages)