Blame Culture: Part 2

I've been thinking about the idea of a "blame culture" a lot since it's been put on my radar by leaders in the company I work for. In the last blog on this subject, I said that, "my leader is at fault for even blaming himself, as in this way, he's encouraging the blame culture. Even if it is by blaming himself, he's still using blame culture to try to eradicate blame culture."

However there was a flaw in my argument. And I knew it. Now I was blaming the leader in my company for using blame culture when he shouldn't have done. I was falling into the same pit as the man I was condemning. The flaw had been nagging at the back of my mind for the last two weeks. It seems like every way we turn, we can't avoid blame. So what's the solution?

Let's look at what happens when we're trying to assess machines on the manufacturing line. When we see problems in the manufacturing line, we try to assess the symptoms. From there, we try to associate a cause with those symptoms. The cause is usually an out-of-control piece of equipment. From there, we can blame the piece of equipment, treat the problem with the equipment, and solve the problem.

If any one person is incompetent, just like a piece of out-of-control equipment, it can cause serious issues with the whole process. Just like how we should blame a piece of equipment for a failure if we find out the equipment is malfunctioning, we should blame a person if they're incompetent at the job we give them.

Blame IS important, as it helps us to realise our weak links and points of failure. Without blame, we can't move forward and start to fix the process. But if we can't get rid of blame, what can we do?

We can change our perspective of what failure/incompetence/blame allocated onto people means. No-one comes to work wanting to do a bad jobs, some jobs are harder than others, and sometimes we're not given the correct training. Sometimes we're given tasks that are greater than our bandwidth. These things are all okay - we can't all be amazing at everything and it doesn't make us lesser human beings if we fail in a certain area - but we need to address them so that we can move forward.

It's the way in which we blame people that's important, not blame itself. So how do we go about giving blame? It all comes back to emotional intelligence.

Bad:

• Giving "fixed mindset" blame: blaming the person irregardless of the task or failing to show a temporary, time-dependence to the failure. We all fail some times. That doesn't make us inherent failures. Example of bad inherent blame: "You're a failure"
• Emotionally negative connotations: "You fucked up"

Good:

• Giving "growth mindset" blame: saying the task is hard, rather than person being intrinsically incapable. As well as this, focusing on people's skill set: they're not incapable, they just may not have the correct skill set at the moment. This implies it can be learnt later. Again. Not intrinsic, only temporary. Example: "How can we make sure you can keep on top of things? Do you need more training? More help at the moment?"
• Emotionally neutral/positive connotations: "We're should address how we can keep on top of this problem" / "It's good that we've addressed this problem as now we can look to solve it"

There is something I was right about in the last blog post, though. In the last few paragraphs here, I touched upon how the person who had failed should perceive blame, but the last blog post did a good job at addressing how others should perceive blame in the person who has failed.

The last blog touched upon the fact that the person who failed doesn't make them any worse than us. We all fail. It's just that - on this occasion - someone else was the weak link. We all need to address the failure together, work to solve it, and move on. We need to be careful to maintain respect for others, maintain collaborative effort. Because a lot of the time, we're better together.