> some people I see DMs from and go "well there goes my morning hand-holding them through something they should already both know and have internalized".
Pre-emptively, I'm not saying anything below applies in your case :-).
A mismatch in the threshold of "they should already both know and have internalized" is where much of the friction in high-stress organisations comes from.
I see a lot of people expecting, as the parent post put it, "a clear set of steps that can be burned down [to get to a good result]", but entirely oblivious to the fact that the people they expect it from:
1. Don't have the organisational authority to organise it -- they can do "their part" but they can't tell people on whose work they depend what to do.
2. Don't have access to the same task-specific information as the person who expects it of them, and don't know who to ask because teams are heavily compartmentalised and/or hierarchical.
3. Don't have access to the same kind of organisational information as the person who expects it of them.
Much like responsibility, deflecting blame comes from above. In my experience, what the parent poster says is true: people who are bad at what they do and try to make it someone else's problem is probably the most common source of stress. But it is also my experience that the middle leadership layers of companies where this is a chronic problem is almost entirely populated by managers who try to make everything other people's problem, and whose teams end up having to deflect everything by proxy whether they want it or not.
I think this is part of the nuance that's lacking in the parent post. It's very hard for someone to work significantly above their organisation's level.
Agree - initiative is not innate, it is trained and built with experience (of rewards for taking initiative), just as waiting for direction is trained and built with experience (of micromanagement and threats to safety).
The worst of the worst in my experience is the person who ignores the existance of 1, 2, and 3, assumes their coworkers who have been conditioned to not stick their neck out are incompetent and are trying to "get one over" on everyone else, and uses that as moral justification to backstab people who would be happy to work with them. The sad part is that the result will only reinforce their belief system.
You will always be surrounded by people, and how you regard them will inform your experience of them. If you allow yourself to force a false dichotomy on others, it will eventually be forced back on you.
Pre-emptively, I'm not saying anything below applies in your case :-).
A mismatch in the threshold of "they should already both know and have internalized" is where much of the friction in high-stress organisations comes from.
I see a lot of people expecting, as the parent post put it, "a clear set of steps that can be burned down [to get to a good result]", but entirely oblivious to the fact that the people they expect it from:
1. Don't have the organisational authority to organise it -- they can do "their part" but they can't tell people on whose work they depend what to do.
2. Don't have access to the same task-specific information as the person who expects it of them, and don't know who to ask because teams are heavily compartmentalised and/or hierarchical.
3. Don't have access to the same kind of organisational information as the person who expects it of them.
Much like responsibility, deflecting blame comes from above. In my experience, what the parent poster says is true: people who are bad at what they do and try to make it someone else's problem is probably the most common source of stress. But it is also my experience that the middle leadership layers of companies where this is a chronic problem is almost entirely populated by managers who try to make everything other people's problem, and whose teams end up having to deflect everything by proxy whether they want it or not.
I think this is part of the nuance that's lacking in the parent post. It's very hard for someone to work significantly above their organisation's level.