What is the difference between blame and accountability in leadership?

Often these two things are either used interchangeably or confused altogether. We know that we are all responsible for what we do, and that we can trace results or lack of them to what we do when we work together.

But people react differently depending on how a leader describes and handles behavior and performance, and your team or business reflects that in productivity, profitability and employee engagement.

Mike, Shaun and David discuss three different perspectives on the difference between blame and accountability and how a leader can differentiate between the two with his or her team.

Positions

Mike: Both are similar on paper, but how they are delivered and the motive behind them is what makes the difference - is it moving you to successful outcomes or away from them?

Shaun: Solution based cultures look at the problem and not the person.

David: Blame is expensive, and accountability is profitable.

Quotable

MM: “You can only hold someone accountable to a standard that they are aware of.”

MM: “The whole aim of accountability is to keep people and processes in line to achieve a certain outcome.”

SP: “A lot of times blame is emotional and reactive. It’s a coping mechanism for insecurity.”

SP: “It’s easier to blame because it’s an easier conversation. It’s emotional and downhill.”

DF: “Imagine that the default is when you or someone else makes a mistake, everyone gets together and says, let’s put our heads together and figure this out.”

DF: “If you’re in a leadership position, really examine the language that you use, that you allow, and that you discourage, because that affects how your team operates.”

What can a leader do about being isolated?

When you’re a leader, you get fewer inputs from the people around you because “you’re the boss,” and fewer of those inputs you do get are honest, so fewer are actually that useful.

There isn’t the shared suffering and connection that there is in the less isolated ranks, and to be blunt, work gets a little lonely.

When you get lonely, your perspective shifts, and that can affect the decisions that you make, especially if you are not getting the complete story from employees who are not fully inclined to be completely honest with you. (We can call this - in the end of 2022 - the “Putin Effect.”)

There’s two effects of isolation on a leader: emotional, which is difficult personally, and then there’s the practical, that your choices may not be as good as they could be if you were fully informed.

Our positions:

Mike: Connecting work to charitable and getting off social media can help, although isolation is inevitable.

Shaun: Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

David: Isolation can be mitigated by intentionally maintaining and creating relationships with those around you who are good for you.

Quotable:

MM: “In some ways it’s unavoidable, you’re never going to spend 10 years as a CEO and say you never felt alone. That’s never going to happen.”

MM: “You find something that is good for you to do, but you also find something that is good for the team to do, it’s both.”

MM: “A lot of isolation is fueled by a lack of trust.”

SP: “When you take a position of leadership, you almost always take your significant other with you into that position, because you can’t have all the significant discussions you need to have inside the building.”

SP: “Your introspection as a leader needs to be off the charts.”

SP: “You have a great employee when they are honest with you, not just tell you what you want to hear.”

DF: “Employees often default to answering ‘great’ or ‘fine’ to almost every question a boss will ask and real human connection is based on something based in truth.”

DF: “You have to go out of your way and demonstrate that you’re honest and demonstrate that you value someone’s feedback, even when the feedback isn’t in the end valuable. It’s truly the connection that is valuable.”

What is the role of forgiveness in leadership?

We know that forgiveness is supposed to be a good thing for us personally, we learn “forgive and forget” when we are young, and maybe some of us have been through that.

But what about when you are a leader in business - how does forgiveness affect your leadership and your business results?

In this episode, we each comment on this question, touching on missed opportunities, the power of example and modeling, the cost of not forgiving others and yourself, and how forgiveness looks to others.

As with previous shows, each of us describes our position and the other two field questions and comments.

Our Opening Positions:

Mike: “Forgiveness is a necessary part of being happy.”

Shaun: “The challenge that trips leaders up is that forgiveness is weakness, its not - forgiveness is strength.”

David: “Leaders need to focus on forgiving themselves as much as forgiving others.”

Quotable:

MM: “That’s what we are talking about - isolating incidents, being able to forgive and not let them bleed into everything else.”

MM: “My grandmother’s voicemail message says that forgiveness is the key to happiness.”

MM: “There are all these things in life that can weigh you down and slow you down, if you are focused on how people have wronged you, you miss so many opportunities.”

SP: “Forgiving people is forgiving people who put their best foot forward. It’s not realistic to think that every single one of our employees is going to throw a no-hitter every single day.

SP: “Forgiveness is what enables people to keep showing up and making their best effort.”

SP: “Forgiveness fosters risk-taking.”

DF: “With more forgiveness, people have more creativity, more running room and they come up with better answers, and that just increases productivity.”

DF: “We’ve talked about all the ways that things can go sideways when you don’t forgive other people, but when you don’t forgive yourself, all those things still happen, they just all happen inside you.”

DF: “Leaders don’t think that it’s right to forgive themselves, they say things like ‘I should have known better’ but the people who work with you can tell that you don’t forgive, and that affects them and they imitate you.”

DF: “Whatever cognitive power you’re using to obsess about past failures, that’s power that you can’t use to figure out what you’re doing, to come up with new ideas and solutions.”