Posted by Joe P in Questions for the Candidates - Entitlement Mentality

Posted by Adam W. in Questions for the Candidates - Entitlement Mentality
This is a question for any candidate.

Rob’s posts reminded me of an issue in the club that seems to keep popping up and yet does not exactly get discussed. And that is the issue of entitlement mentality that at least some of us have. People will feel entitled to be recognized for going above and beyond regardless of whether or not they go above and beyond. They express how they have been slighted for not being chosen for positions they did not even apply for. They behave in an obviously inappropriate manner and refuse to acknowledge it. I’ve personally been absolutely blasted by the weakest candidate for a position when I chose someone else. I feel like I could go on and on.

Why do we feel like we deserve things we don’t deserve, like we should be chosen when others are actually more qualified, like we shouldn’t have to be subject to accountability, like we should be able to control what someone else has authority over? In your mind, how significant of a role do these entitled approaches have in our community? And as an exec, what is your approach to people who are exhibiting these sorts of behaviors?

Adam W.

Hi Adam,

I think this “entitlement mentality” as you put it, seems larger than it actually is, but it is still very much worth talking about.

To answer your first question, I think why people behave this way is a combination of two different aspects of human nature. The first is the general tendency for human beings to be ambitious; to want to achieve more and greater things. The second one is the human desire to understand the world, and how things work, and their place in it. The ongoing struggle of any human society is to satisfy these (and other) human desires without creating a lot of harm to others from selfish or destructive behavior. When a society is working well, people have more and greater things to go achieve, and they understand what they need to do to go achieve those things, and they can do it in a non-selfish way.

I think if we view the club as a society, we’ve got the first of these things down pretty well; there’s plenty of stuff to do, there’s a big rank ladder to climb, people seem interested in climbing it, generally you don’t get to climb it unless you are doing non-selfish things, like volunteer for out-of-character work that needs doing. I think where we have broken down a bit is in the second category, in explaining how the club works and how people can advance, and why some people need to change what they’re doing if they want to advance more. Explaining that sort of stuff to people can end up being a difficult conversation, so I think it is very understandable that it doesn’t happen as often as it should.

The problem though, is that if you don’t provide people with an explanation for how things are when they need one, they will go find their own. They might find the right explanation on their own, but more likely than not they’ll pick an explanation that’s self-flattering (unless they have depression, in which case they’ll pick an explanation that’s self-harming). Hence, we have a few people who are rather convinced that they deserve what they don’t, that they should have a big rank just for posting on time like we expect Ensigns to do, and that if their big promotion hasn’t happened yet, it must be because of malice on the part of whoever is responsible for it.

How significant of a role do I think these entitled approaches have in our community? When it’s working well, not very. I think the current major problem we’re dealing with is weak or absent leadership. Because our leaders haven’t been doing much for the past 2 terms, the club’s attention has been allowed to wander elsewhere. There’s nothing that all of us are paying attention to at the same time, and nothing that we’re talking about, because Presidents just haven’t been leading anyone in an inclusive discussion toward anything in particular. So now the odd particularly entitled person here or there just seems like a much larger figure than they otherwise would.

That’s why I want to change things through realigning the membership. If we all have a shared understanding of how the club works, and what people need to do, and a place where we can talk about that naturally, then people don’t end up in this bad headspace where they explain their lack of desired status as the obvious result of a conspiracy against them, or whatever. If we still have overly-entitled individuals after that, then maybe some more direct intervention in private could be appropriate. The important thing is to not encourage bad behavior by legitimizing it, and to discourage it before it inhibits other people’s enjoyment of the club.

I didn’t expect to do this much writing on human nature and society this morning, but it was kinda fun. Does all of that answer your questions, Adam?

Joe

I guess I was more interested in hearing thoughts on the topic than having any specific question answered. You’ve done that, so I’m satisfied. Thanks.

Adam W.