How to Coax Productivity Out of Shamecrastinators

Stop difficult conversations from degenerating into confrontations that destroy morale! Part 3/3

Quick recap of part 2, How to Fight Shamecrastination (Without Being a Bosshole):

• Shamecrastination Equation: check ☑

• Five ways to reduce shame ↓: check ☑

• Notes on lifting motivation ↑: check ☑

• Shame reduction ↓ is a reliable workhorse; motivation boosting ↑ is a fickle beast. Check ☑

Part 2 focused on strategic planning and logical decision-making, while this final essay covers tactical maneuvers in the emotional trenches. Brace yourself – we’re going to get into the touchy-feely stuff for a few minutes. After that, we’ll stop beating the dead horse.

Or…in the context of shamecrastination, we’ll stop administering beatings until morale improves.

How to Confront Have “The Talk” with a Shamecrastinator

If you’re one of the lucky leaders who are immune to shamecrastination¹, you don’t need to implement Step 1. However, you might benefit from reading through anyway so you can better understand what’s going on inside the hearts and minds of your subordinates. Chances are, at least one of the people in your hierarchy is a conscientious and conflict-averse shamecrastinator.

Step 1: Conquer your own shame

The mere thought of confronting a shamecrastinator triggers shamecrastination in us. Ironic, right?

We know what we need to do…but we don’t want to do it. As we prepare to have A Difficult Conversation™ with a shamecrastinator, the feeling of shame immediately rears its head and tells us:

• “You’re the big bad wolf for hurting their feelings.”

• “Remember when you used to work under bossholes? If you create workplace conflict, you’re just like them.”

• “If you were a good enough leader, your subordinate wouldn’t be shamecrastinating in the first place. You’re a failure. YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”

Ouch. Right in the ego.

When we seek help from other leaders or consult the Harvard Business Review, we usually receive logical advice to address an emotional problem. For example: stop twiddling your thumbs and Just Do It ✓. Difficult conversations are why you get paid more, so grow a spine and do your job. Document everything – how long it took for your beatings to improve morale, the make and model of the beating stick, etc.

Some articles will cover the emotional component, but it’s usually about increasing motivation ↑. Eat more frogs! Do it in the morning! Give yourself a deadline as you tell yourself positive affirmations in the mirror while power-posing! Doesn’t hurt to try these methods, but your mileage may vary. We’ve never gotten consistent results out of them.

Time to apply the lessons from earlier posts. Recall the Shamecrastination Equation:

Shamecrastination = shame > motivation

We’ll focus on reducing shame ↓, not increasing motivation ↑.

🐑 Let’s sit around and bleat about our feelings 🐐

Our preferred method of shame reduction follows the “Regard → Reframe → Refocus” Framework that we first described in How Leaders Can Manage Their Emotions. Here’s how to apply the framework to shamecrastination and difficult conversations:

1. Regard: First, we admit that we have an emotional problem. Shame and guilt cause emotional debris in the same way a logjam accumulates in real life: shame causes procrastination → procrastination causes more shame to pile up → feedback loop of emotional constipation.

2. Reframe: Next, we reframe our emotions as a bunch of zoo animals living inside our heads. Let’s add two new critters to the menagerie: Shame Sheep and Guilty Goat, who bleat about how we’re bad people who’ve done bad things. What happens next depends on what we choose to do:

   1. If we feed Shame Sheep and Guilty Goat our attention, they grow stronger and louder. Worse still, their noise emboldens Imposter Pig (who starts squealing that we can’t do anything right) and Procrastination Monkey (who starts screeching, pooping everywhere, and throwing its turds at us). Shamecrastination worsens.

   2. If we starve Shame Sheep and Guilty Goat of attention, we enfeeble them and prevent them from inflaming the other animals.

3. Refocus: By recognizing our feelings of shame/guilt (1. Regard), then anthropomorphizing them (2. Reframe), we buy ourselves the distance we need to pull ourselves together². At this point, Shame Sheep and Guilty Goat’s bleating cries no longer drown out our thoughts. With renewed cognitive control, we can refute specific feelings to further reduce shame ↓:

   1. Shame Sheep: “You’re the big bad wolf for hurting their feelings.”
      Our response: you’ll have to hurt their feelings even more later if you allow the shamecrastination to continue. Failing to have a difficult conversation (act of omission) is more shameful than having the difficult conversation (act of commission).

   2. Guilty Goat: “If you create workplace conflict, you’re just like the bossholes you hated.”
      Our response: suppressing all workplace conflict creates toxic positivity. Conflict-avoidant leaders will find themselves mired in the Career Swamp with the same bossholes they sought to avoid; the only difference is the path they took to get there³.

   3. Imposter Pig: “If you were good enough, shamecrastination wouldn’t be happening.”
      Our response: better to be surmised a poor leader than to shamecrastinate and remove all doubt.

With practice, the Regard → Reframe → Refocus process becomes a mental habit that only takes a few seconds. The framework sounds unnecessarily complicated…but then again, human emotions are messy and complicated. If you use a different method for reducing shame ↓, please let us know in the comments below. We’re always hunting for better ways to accomplish the same tasks!

After working on the shame reduction ↓ side of the equation, we can move on to increasing motivation ↑. We like to ask ourselves rhetorical questions to get the ball rolling:

If not now, then when?
If not me, then who?

Step 2: Turn the confrontation into a rescue mission

The key to correcting a shamecrastinator’s behavior is to minimize your time in the Straits of Conflicting Interest. Staying out of the Straits allows you to: A) make the difficult conversation with the shamecrastinator less uncomfortable, and B) refrain from twisting your collaborative relationship into an adversarial one, thus reducing the risk of extinguishing the shamecrastinator’s motivation.

We’re still refining our procedures, but this four-step process has worked well for us:

1. Start by empathizing with the shamecrastinator. Many people can relate to the slow-to-respond example from part 1, so we use it to introduce shamecrastination to the uninitiated.

2. Characterize shamecrastination as a common enemy, and offer to help them defeat it.

3. Guide the shamecrastinator back to their responsibilities, help them re-prioritize their workload, and mutually agree to a reasonable deadline.

   1. Beware of Parkinson’s Law, which is the adage that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The shamecrastinator should feel just enough urgency to prevent a relapse.

4. Invite the shamecrastinator to call for allied assistance (i.e. confess to you) earlier next time.

This method avoids the trap of increasing a shamecrastinator’s motivation ↑ through punishment (which works in the short term, but damages motivation in the long term). Instead, it shines light into the Taboo Tunnels to reduce the inhibitory effects of shame ↓.

Some people will get defensive at first, especially if a previous boss taught them to expect punishment. However, after you step out of the Straits of Conflicting Interests by offering support instead of brandishing punishment, most people will ease up.

Step 3: Prep for a marathon, not a sprint

Feelings of shame and guilt often arise from deeply-ingrained beliefs and well-worn mental ruts – some dating back to early childhood. Even if you successfully guide a shamecrastinator toward the timely completion of a task, you should expect occasional relapses in the future.

You can’t overwrite decades of psychological conditioning with a single difficult conversation. Don’t give up on a shamecrastinator when they first relapse. Instead, try to reform them. Coach them as they build better habits. Encourage them to re-wire their brain circuitry. Think of these activities as investments that will pay off in the indefinite future, not chores⁴.

Remember: shamecrastinators aren’t careless people; they simply care too much about the wrong things. If you patiently guide them toward caring about the right things, they will learn to trust you. Build a grand Temple of Trust, and the golden glow from the Altar of Psychological Safety will reduce the inhibitory effect of shame ↓. Do this for long enough, and you can help your people kick the shamecrastination habit.

You’re Invited: Shamecrastinators Anonymous Meeting in the Taboo Tunnels!

Let there be light at the end of the Taboo Tunnels.

Negligence comes in several flavors, but its singular appearance misleads us into assuming that other people are stupid, lazy, forgetful, or careless. How many of them are actually shamecrastinators? How many were once shamecrastinators who were converted into careless layabouts when a boss, teacher, or lieutenant punished away the spark of motivation? This is a recurring problem in the Taboo Tunnels: a communication breakdown traps each of us inside our own heads, and the only way forward is to jump to conclusions.

We suspect that shamecrastination is the root cause of way more negligence than widely acknowledged. If our hunch is correct, it means leaders are wasting a lot of talent that could be further developed – the equivalent of throwing away diamonds in the rough to compete for sparkling jewels that have already been cut and polished. If your organization has the prestige and money to attract brilliant diamonds at all levels of the hierarchy, then more power to you. The rest of us don’t have that luxury.

But now that you have “shamecrastination” in your lexicon and you learned several ways to fight it, you have another tool for polishing your uncut gems! We hope that shining light into Taboo Tunnels and illuminating some of its unspoken contents will help you better connect with your subordinates and make you a better leader.

1. Hopefully that’s because you’re blessed with boundless motivation and overflowing with executive function, not because you’re shameless or a psychopath.

2. Disney’s “Let it Go” sang it beautifully:

It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all

3. Toxic positivists almost always reach the Career Swamp via the Desert of Good Intentions, while bossholes travel through the Straits of Conflicting Interests and (occasionally) the Plague Plateau.

4. This does NOT apply when:

• You’re running a high-stakes operation where repeated delays will cost human lives or jaw-dropping monetary losses

• Your subordinate isn’t worth keeping around even if they were cured of shamecrastination.