We’ve been discussing blame and accountability as a team and with our partners. Blayne wrote a powerful piece about blame that must be read. Continuing the conversation, I’d like to draw a line in the sand now–blame is useless.
Blame focuses attention on the person, not the problem, and people are not problems to be solved. People are people. Problems are problems. If we want to solve problems, let’s jettison blame and get to the business of accountability because accountability is generative; blame is not. We confuse blame and accountability too often.
Accountability includes finding fault to address it; blame is finding who is at fault to address them.
I failed to recognize this as a young Ranger leader. I would receive new Rangers, assign them a role with duties and responsibilities, train them minimally, and wait for them to screw up. When they did, I would nail them to the wall to fix them. And if they didn’t get it right in short order, I would kick them out, assuming they were the problem. As I grew, I realized I was the problem. I was to blame for failing to teach and develop these young Rangers I was empowered to lead. I eventually owned this and took accountability for my failures.
Accountability is the critical reverse side of empowerment, two sides of the same coin that cannot be decoupled in effective team dynamics and includes three key factors: 1) measurement, 2) evaluation, and 3) recognition or refinement.
We can measure a lot in life and leadership. We look at leading indicators, lagging indicators, number of calls, accounts, dollars, and more. The list of data points is nearly inexhaustible, but the data does not indicate performance. Data is wholly irrelevant without evaluation. When we evaluate, we consider the perspectives and activities involved at all levels of the situation and in the context by which they occurred and analyze them for understanding. The objective is to gather actionable insights that guide our next steps. We recognize what is achieving the intended aim and refine that which is off course. We also recognize who is achieving performance objectives and who is not.
Not so we can shame them into compliance but to lead them to excellence.
I learned to lead Rangers to excellence the hard way and through many failures. I learned that blaming wasn’t helping much and that I was the one leader in my platoon sending more guys down the road than to Ranger school. Sure, I may have been shit hot on target, but I was a shit leader for my boys. When my leadership brought this to my attention and coached and mentored me to improve, they held me accountable. They measured my performance, evaluated the issues, and refined my approach. Blame was not a part of the process. How lucky for me.
Measurement, evaluation, and either recognition or refinement help identify the next steps while leading teammates–whether they are on or off course–to achieve. Add some blame in there, and you get shame and guilt. While there are appropriate times in life for those, they don’t belong in our team dynamics. There is no fourth blame leg of an already sturdy three-legged accountability stool. Placing a teammate on that four-legged stool by adding blame places them on trial. And while that can be a form of leadership, it’s certainly not effective. It is, in fact, coercion.
Bertram Raven defined coercive power as an agent that “brings about change by threatening the target with negative, undesirable consequences (demotion, termination, undesirable work assignments. . .), if the target does not comply.” The problem is inherently embedded in the definition–the person is perceived as the “target.” I spent the formative years of my career with a gun in my hands, aiming at targets, and can’t say that I was trying to influence them to achieve. I was trying to eliminate them, anything they stood for, and anyone they stood with. It was a violent affair; coercion always is, and so is blame, which is why it doesn’t belong in our teams.
It also doesn’t belong in our leadership toolkits for another critical reason–it likely already exists within the teammate, especially when they care. I didn’t need my leadership to blame me for my failure to develop young Rangers back then because I already blamed myself for my failure. I already felt ashamed of the way I failed them, and no additional help was needed to exacerbate my guilt. I needed help and I was fortunate to get it. Odds are you have someone on your team or in your sphere of influence who needs help too. I hope you take the step to give it. The results are far greater than the negative consequences of blame.
Accountability is the way.
Accountability engenders trust and cohesion.
Blame creates doubt and disengagement.
Accountability belongs.
Blame does not.
When we commit to accountability, we fix the problems and help the people. We need more of that today. In a world replete with name-calling, finger-pointing, and gaslighting, we don't need any more manipulation or coercion. We need compassion and honesty, difficult conversations and ownership, and empowerment and accountability.
