Delta Self-Sabotage
The Delta perspective is intrinsically self-limiting
First, an informative Q&A
READER: Whats the best way to tell the difference - in your own behaviour - between avoiding accountability, and not presuming authority you don’t possess?
SIGMA: There is no difference. If you’re worried about presuming authority you don’t possess, you’re avoiding accountability.
This reader is either a Delta or a Gamma. My best guess, based on nothing more than one single sentence, is Low Delta. But regardless, if you are avoiding doing something that is directly relevant to the fulfilment of your own responsibilities because you are uncertain that you possess the necessary authority to do your own job, then you are not actually worried about overstepping yourself, you are attempting to avoid making a decision and the accountability that naturally accompanies decision-making.
It’s important to understand that you’re not fooling anyone here, except possibly yourself.
Second, here is the customary Delta excuse-making for avoiding accountability, avoiding making decisions, and, all too often, doing nothing, by an ontological appeal to the imagined future reactions of a suboptimal superior:
I try to live by “better to ask forgiveness than permission”, but then I’ve also had bosses that made it seem like a terrible offense when I did it, even with good results.
I appreciate this site and some of its insights but one shortcoming is it presumes competence in one’s managers. There are lots of terrible bosses out there, especially in large organizations infested by DEI policies.
And even among extremely competent folks, effective communication and truly good leadership are rare. I don’t know if I’ve ever had both.
I have had to answer to far too many low IQ mental defectives, who were not competent enough to detect whether or not I was even actually working, let alone to what degree of effectiveness.
This is absurd. The idea that the very individual responsible for coining the acronym MPAI has ever presumed “competence in one’s managers” is obviously incorrect. The idea that competence is a zero-sum game may be one of the most fundamentally Delta concepts possible.
I have absolutely no doubt that the Delta has had incompetent and suboptimal managers. And I also have absolutely no doubt that some of the Delta’s problems at work are the result of his own self-sabotage caused by his narcissism and attempts to avoid accountability for his own decisions and actions.
In any event, this was my actual response:
