The Construct Audit: When You Are Right and It Is Still Costing You

This one is for the leader who knows exactly who the problem is. You have the evidence. You are probably right. And you have been carrying it for 6 months. It comes from The Part That Doesn’t Fit, the work I do with leaders whose wiring runs a little different, and it is a tool called the Construct Audit.

Here is the idea underneath it. Some wiring comes with a finely tuned detector for unfairness. People not playing by the rules they claim to hold. Standards that apply to some and not others. The detector is usually accurate, which is what makes this so hard to look at.

But over time, something grows around what it found. A story. One person becomes the explanation for everything that is not working. If a decision went sideways, they were in it. If a relationship got strained, they were nearby. The book calls that a construct, and it is doing a job for you, whether you meant it to or not.

So the tool. It is 3 columns about one story you built about what happened. First, what has it cost you? The energy, the relationships, the reputation, the nights. Second, what does it still cost you, right now, this week? Third, the harder one: what does it protect? There is always something. Clarity, when the situation is a mess. An identity as the person who sees clearly and will not pretend. The people who see it the way you do. If you cannot name a gain, look for what would feel lost if the story disappeared overnight. That is where it is hiding.

What comes back is the trade, in your own words. Not whether you are right. You may well be. Whether the way you are carrying it is taking more from you than the original unfairness ever did.

Then the move. Name the thing you are actually trying to protect, the value underneath the story. Then find one thing you can actually move. Not the system. Not the person. One close, specific thing you have real agency over, so the energy the story has been holding has somewhere real to go.

Your read may be right. The question is whether the story you built around it is still working for you.

The Part That Doesn’t Fit. Working with your wiring, not against it. thepartthatdoesntfit.com/the-book