Gauri Chhabra
2014 has proved to be a strange year- the LokSabha elections have scripted History- in the form of some new highs and wins and some steep lows and losses. With lows come blames and then the game starts… passing the buck…
Snakes and Ladders
What holds true for the nation also holds true for teams and organizations. Unfortunately, credit and blame are rarely assigned in an objective manner, and individual psychology, team dynamics, and corporate culture all influence, and are influenced by, how credit and blame are given and received. It is like a game of snakes and ladders. Too often, we get caught up in the blame game and the wrong people get blamed for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. The result can be that people are demotivated and demoralized, focus more on organizational politics than on getting the job done, and are too afraid to speak up or experiment with new approaches.
The genesis
The tendency to assign blame springs from the urge to self-preserve and an ardent desire to win. It’s obvious why we do it. If you can make someone else the source of the problem, you keep trouble from darkening your door. This does far more harm than good-to yourself, your company, your reputation, and your stress levels.
That’s because blame owes its genesis to fear, and whenever you attempt to soothe that fear by accommodating it, you create more of it. It is a like a vicious cycle. Blame not only inspires fear; it spreads it, and like a hot potato, that blame gets tossed back and forth, person to person, team to team, eradicating trust, undermining relationships, and exacerbating the stress and strain caused by whatever happened in the first place.
I call this passing the buck… and once caught in this vicious cycle you will make your life incredibly stressful, but also contribute to an unstable culture plagued by low morale. When externalizing and assigning blame is your go-to method of coping with crisis, or even minor setback, it puts you and everyone else on the defense. If, at any moment, you believe you could get stabbed in the back or thrown under the bus, you’ll be far less inclined to work creatively or collaboratively.
Does it work?
Playing the blame game never works. People who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. The same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.
In order to create collaborative, positive, and productive environments, entrepreneurs, C-level executives, and managers need to create a blame-free culture by supporting and also demonstrating what it means to be accountable. This can be tough to root out, especially in organizations where fear and blame are so deeply entrenched.
It can be changed, and you have to initiate the process.
Change your choice of words:
Believe it or not. Words make all the difference. You can bring order to chaos just by changing the set of words you use to describe the issue.
Consider this: Something goes wrong with a company initiative that you took. You can ask, “Whose fault is this?” and look for someone to throw the blame on. Or, you can ask, “Who is responsible here, and did I do the right kind of homework? How do I solve this problem? How do I make sure it never happens again? Using the term “responsible” creates a shift away from “blame,” and from a game of “not me” to one of empowerment and strategy. When you work, everything will not always go right. There would be times when you go wrong, but stewardship requires standing strong and devising a plan to move forward.
The temptation is huge to point the finger elsewhere when you make a mistake. Resist it.Hit the brakes.The moment you feel yourself start to finger blame in a moment of stress, pause. What thought is driving you to do that? What are you really afraid of? How valid are those fears?
Not only will you gain respect and loyalty from your followers, you’ll also help to prevent a culture of blame from emerging.
Overcome fear
Since fear is the cause of you not owning up, the first thing you can do is ditch fear. Blaming other people for whatever’s going wrong is like doing battle with a hydra-headed beast-cut off one problem and two more grow back in its place. It’s exhausting.
But when you own up to your role, and encourage others to do the same, you put down the sword and change the game. And in fact, it can be a relief. The practice of blaming others for everything can create a learned helplessness. The sooner you practice being responsible, the sooner you regain control.
So try to foster a chronic sense of inner security in order to reduce the chances that you’ll lash out at others.
Every experience is a learning experience
Cliched as it may sound, this has been my way of perceiving life and has kept me peaceful. Instead of blaming others for your mistakes, take stock of the situation. Look at the situation as objectively as possible. What happened, and what could have been prevented? What were the contributing factors? Think of it as understanding, not looking for scapegoats, because part of owning the problem is not blaming your tools.
Celebrate failures
Creating a culture where learning, rather than avoiding mistakes is the top priority will help to ensure that people feel free talk about and learn from their errors.
In our company, we actually encourage our employees to talk about their failures and discuss them on an open forum every month. Every failure that we discuss paves the way to future innovation. Besides, it instills confidence in our employees that it is perfectly alright to fail.
The only way to encourage this behavior is to make your organization a safe place for those willing to be responsible for or their actions and decisions. Mistakes, oversights-these things happen everywhere, all the time. You’ll be far better off when you reward those willing to learn from them, than those who are more concerned with covering their tracks.
Do not get into ego hassles
Understand your role. While you don’t fix the situation by blaming someone else entirely, you don’t address it by shouldering all the blame, either. When you can acknowledge what your role was, you can think about how to address the underlying issue focusing on what you can do, not just how you look.
You don’t have to fall on your sword, but you can and should acknowledge what role you and your team played, and offer strategies for what can be done differently. You’d be amazed at what happens when you put more energy into solving the situation than soothing your ego.
Therefore switch gears, instead of blaming others for what you are and where your life is heading, step up and own it…
After all you are the driving force of your life and the buck stops at YOU.
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