The Blame Game

Written by Freya Sykes
on September 26th, 2007 / 2 Comments / Print this

We’ve all done it…you know we’ve made that almighty bodge up of something and it’s had a knock on effect and you can’t quite cover up the mess you’ve made, and well… you really don’t want to admit to it being because you didn’t understand how to use the technology/didn’t know how the systems ran. So what did you do…

…you blamed someone or something else of course!

I mean why own up to your own failings when something or someone can take the fall for you?

Ooh no! There it is…the blame game. The single most useless office politics that can be played and one that for my money should be nipped in the bud from the word go.

So how do you do that and why even? I mean surely it’s just easier to blame someone else and get on with the day to day business in hand. Umm well no. I’ve seen it before and in fairness it generally stems from a lack of understanding of a subject as well as from a general culture of blame within a company rather than a culture of growth and nuturing.

Ok, so I’m not gonna go all sappy and uber liberal on you…although I am I will admit wearing sandals whilst I write this article I’m not however munching on beansprouts or chanting! No way Jose - I’m as hard nosed business/profit focused as the next capitalist, however this is an area that needs handling with kidd gloves…after all the root of the problem is likely to be their embarrasement in having a knowledge gap in some aspect of their day to day working life. So for you as their manager or director it’s highly important to find out what that gap is as quickly as possible and plug it. Train them, retrain them if needs be, but never ever make them feel like a failure.

They’re not…they’re only human!

Just like you and me, no one knows everything…it’d be a fantastic world if we all did. But it’s not like that. The whole of life is like a learning process and I say thank God for the T’interweb and Wikipedia! I’ll readily hold my hand up and say, although I run a number of companies, I don’t know everything and frankly it’s gonna be a cold day in Hell when I do! I don’t want to know everything - how boring would that be? But I do know enough to be competent in my role as Director and I’m also savvy enough to know when to outsource or research for something when I don’t know the answers. But that’s the point…I’ll hold my hands up and say - I have no idea but I know how I can find out…then I’ll go away and do just that.

Some folk just don’t have that confidence and as their manager/director one of the key things you need to be on the look out for is the indidcators that flag this up as being a problem - then you need to steer them in the right direction. Away from the blame culture and into the “can do” culture.

Never ever stand there and accept the blame game…the “it wasn’t me…it was the XXXXX” or ” I told so and so to do this and then nothing came of it” Always make sure everyone knows that you won’t stand for the blame game, but that you’ll instead be supportive of anyone who does have a gap in knowledge and look for ways to fix it. Make sure your staff members see you encouraging others to learn and grow and in their roles - it’ll only act as possitive encouragement for them to speak up about what could otherwise be viewed as embarrasing knowledge gaps. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing everything, but there should be a serious no no when it comes to blaming others for your own short comings, afterall everyone has a tongue in their heads and they should be encouraged to use them to ask questions and be proactive, knowing that if they ask they will get an answer and not a heavy hearted *sigh* and look of disappointment!