The senior engineering staff was in a meeting with stakeholders. Everyone from engineering was exhausted after handling a nightmare of a week with a project that blew up. It was a project that was specifically spun off the regular work as a task force, so the VPE wasn’t in charge of it. Not his mess.

As the stakeholders asked for explanations, the VPE started speaking. He didn’t wash his hands of the problem. He started explaining where he personally dropped the ball. All the engineers’ heads, staring at the desk till a second ago, turned to him. Do you steal blame?

Moving Past The Obvious

The lousiest teams are those where credit is grabbed, and blame dodged. That’s the politician’s diagonal in the diagram above. It sucks to be part of such a team. Why? Plainly, it’s not genuinely a team.

But you, dear reader, are different. You’re taking the time to read an article about tech leadership in your spare time. Surely you know better. You give credit and share it. Wins are shared. That helps everyone grow together. It makes collaboration easier.

It’s also table stakes. The bare minimum we’d expect from a functional organization. If you want to genuinely help your team get better and create a robust culture, it’s time to steal blame.

The Hot Potato

This last quadrant on the diagram is the most counterintuitive. Yet that’s where extreme ownership ought to lead us. When something goes wrong, ask yourself what you could have done to avoid it. What signals you missed. How you’d act differently on your best day.

Creating an environment where people always try to think about their part even when things go wrong is how we create a real team, where people count on one another and know that someone’s got their back.

Also, stealing the blame buys you the truth. Teams will naturally speak up more and be more candid in such an environment. The psychological safety you’re creating will become an undeniable advantage.

We’re not talking about martyrdom and taking the bullet for something you didn’t do. But try to be honest with yourself. Instinct makes us throw away the hot potato immediately. It doesn’t have to be the same when you notice an issue. Take a few moments and try to think, really, what involvement you had (or should’ve had).

So, the next time something goes wrong:

• Were you aware of things going wrong but didn’t speak up?
• Did you speak up but not effectively?
• If you weren’t aware, how come?
• Has this sort of mistake already happened in your team, and you didn’t learn from it?
• Has it now occurred somewhere else in the organization, and you failed to share your team’s lessons?
• Was the mistake by someone in your team that you should’ve coached, mentored, or guided better?
  

Doing this also bolsters the relationship between your organization and the business part. The CEO will trust the CTO who knows how to take responsibility for the organization more than the one who keeps trying to dodge the issue and point fingers.

Anyone can take the credit. It takes a real leader to take the blame for something not even 100% their fault. If you want to become the leader your team deserves and turn your org from the company’s biggest expense to its biggest advantage, reach out for an R&D audit.