It's not excusing what he did, but understanding what he did.
Robert Oswald (brother of Lee Harvey Oswald)

I was watching a program on the History Channel about the assassination of President Kennedy. They were interviewing Robert Oswald, and he was telling them about Lee Harvey and his various troubles when he made the above statement. It's an interesting distinction.

We can sometimes be very quick to hear one person's explanation of events as an excuse (and sometimes it is). However, if we listen carefully, could we also gain an understanding of what happened and why? It is only through such understanding that we can, perhaps, get a different outcome in the future.

I am taking a course on effective teamwork, and part of the work is to do a team project. There are five people on my team. Our first week was rough. We are supposed to communicate via an online discussion board. We had made an agreement that we would all check in and contribute to the discussion at least twice per week. There were two people who did absolutely nothing. When we met at class the next week, they started explaining to the rest of us why they had been unable to contribute. I could feel myself thinking, "I don't want to hear your excuses," when this quote came back to me. I started to really listen to what they were saying. I asked questions. Once everything had been discussed, I asked, "So, how do we proceed as a team to make sure this doesn't happen again?" From there, we discussed how we could have better communication. This happened several weeks ago, and, while I still don’t know if they were simply making excuses or not, we have never had a reoccurrence of that problem.

My professor overheard our discussion, and later she told me that she was really impressed by a couple of the things that I did (and she helped me understand why it's effective). First, I didn't argue with their excuses. Second, I helped them express themselves, and by doing so I helped them to feel understood. People simply will not budge in a conversation until they feel understood. Third, I asked a future-oriented question that did two things: 1) it set the expectation that we couldn't have the same problem occur in the future; and, 2) it moved the discussion to resolution.

Instead of merely dismissing someone's excuses how can you use it as a basis for resolution?

To Your Success,

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