The first A is to announce the pattern, and the rule is to announce it as widely as possible. When Joe recognized he’d been making excuses for people and doing parts of their jobs, he announced it to his entire company and even asked every person to acknowledge they’d seen the message. Width matters for two reasons.
First, announcing widely raises the emotional stakes — the fear of reputational damage, of being seen as bad, of failing publicly. These are exactly the feelings worth surfacing, because they’re usually the same feelings that have been quietly driving the pattern all along. Feeling them on purpose, before living through them, often means you won’t have to live through them.
Second, announcing shifts identity. Joe points out that who you are is held in place not only by your own self-image but by other people’s expectations of you.
“Part of my identity is held in place by who I think I am, but part of my identity is held in place by who you think I am.”
If the people around you expect Joe to take care of them rather than hold them accountable, they’ll keep treating him that way, reinforcing the old self. By announcing the change widely, he releases the social grip on the old identity — the next time the pattern shows up, everyone is watching for something different. To do this cleanly, though, he has to feel through the grief of possibly messing it up rather than announcing from bravado.
Related Concepts
- The four A’s change behavior after you’ve seen a pattern: announce, apologize, ask, act
- The method works powerfully only when you feel the emotions while doing it
- An upright apology empowers; a shame-laden one loops you back into the pattern
- The four A’s only work after a genuine recognition, not from a should
- Asking for specific help is accountability with love, not surveillance
- Shame interrupts openness and pulls you out of spaciousness