Who's to blame?

We had the underwear bomber try to attack us in America on Christmas Day. It shouldn't have happened. There were lots of signs now that the picture has been put together. Information was available in bits and pieces, but nothing was clear at the time.

No person or group in our government is taking responsibility for our failures because doing so means career or "reputational" (is that a word?) suicide. So, we blame.

Have you ever seen an obviously guilty person try to blame another so the attention will be moved away from him or her? One might argue that this is what we, as a government, are doing now.

Hold on a minute. This is NOT "government-bashing". This problem of blame seems to be, unfortunately, culturally driven. We have a problem with this culture in America, in the whole world, and in humanity, itself.

It's easier to look at the mistakes others make than to look at the ones we make ourselves. It always has been and, sadly, probably always will be...unless we make a concerted effort to change. We've got to move away from blame and move toward learning. Blame is NOT a tool for learning. Blame only helps people be afraid to stand up and say what didn't go right and what could go better. Blame helps us feel better because, like I said above, when we point the finger at others, we're hoping no one is looking at us.

The healthy and smart thing to do is ask ourselves (and I when I say "ourselves" it can mean the government, it can mean people in business, it can mean charity organizations, and it can mean us, in our personal lives) what role WE had to play in what didn't go right. We all have to stand up and be counted and we shouldn't be allowed to blame anyone else.

I'm happy that our president is pulling all the heads of the intelligence organizations together to try to get to the bottom of our problems fighting terror organizations. Instead of inter-service rivalries, the leaders need to see what role their teams had to play or could have played to ensure our country's safety. These leaders need to get over themselves and think about the people they serve.

I don't really expect much. I'd like to say I'm cautiously optimistic, but that might be a stretch.

OK, so instead of just railing against territorial agencies and their leaders in our government, what can we do to help change the human culture, to change our culture here in the US? We can start by trying to live, work, and play in a NO-BLAME ZONE. When we encounter an outcome that we don't like or we know is bad, we can look inside ourselves and ask what role we had to play. We can ask ourselves what we could have done, directly or indirectly, to keep the bad from happening and to make the good materialize.

It's up to each of us. Yes, it's hard. It's a life's work. It can be done.

Lonely at the top

Here's another well-known, but very true saying: It's lonely at the top.

While this is a very familiar expression to most of us, it still seems to come as a surprise to many new managers when they move into a supervisory role. What the phrase means to me is that when an unpopular decision has to be made or when the outcome of a project or an activity isn't as good as hoped, the accountability lies with the boss...and no one else.

Like I've mentioned in the past, bosses can pass on responsibility to their team members, but they cannot pass on accountability. It stays with the boss (to read more on accountability v. responsibility click here).

So how do bosses often handle it when they start feeling all alone or singled out or blamed when things don't go right?

1. They tough it out and try to stand tall and straight...all alone. This is lonely, for sure, and a quick way to get burned out. This is not healthy.
2. Bosses sometimes try to share their problems with those in their chain of command, the people they supervise. This is not healthy, either, and can often give the picture of a leader who cannot handle the stress (whether accurate or not).
3. They sometimes try to blame others. While blame is not useful at any time, errant and desperate leaders can try to deflect the heat from themselves onto others. Not only is this unfair, but it is a sign of very immature leadership. This is a quick way for those leaders to get escorted off of the "credibility bus".
4. Smart bosses find a confidant or mentor to share their frustrations with. This person could be a colleague or someone who has no connection the the boss's work at all. A confidant/mentor can help the boss have a safe place to vent and then provide support as the boss figures out how to move forward positively.

What other ways do you know of that bosses use to keep from feeling all alone?

Our Circumstances...We Own Them

There's always a temptation, when things aren't going right, to blame someone else for our problems. If we have trouble with the boss, it must be that there's something wrong with our supervisor. If we have money problems, then it's because our taxes are too high or our pay is too low. If we lose our jobs, someone has it in for us or it's because the poor economy made it happen. We can even blame God. Why is God letting bad thing happen to us? We're good people.

I'm not really interested in playing the blame game. It doesn't necessarily matter whether any of our bad circumstances are our fault or the fault of God or other people. We may be totally innocent of anything negative that happens to us (although unlikely).

Regardless of all that, the circumstances are ours and, like it or not, we own them. We own our own circumstances. No one else is going to fix them for us. As soon as we get that idea into our heads, we can start to do something about our lives.

We can choose to do nothing about our predicaments or we can become people of action. We can take our problems and fix them. If they're not fixable (like illness, maybe), we can choose to focus on things we can affect, ever moving forward.

Bottom line: Whatever circumstances we are experiencing, they are ours and we own them.