We had a little fun yesterday at our first swim meet of the season. I coach a high school girls team, and had a little fun with the boys assistant coach. The meet for the boys wasn't going well early on, so I jokingly started to blame the assistant for everything that was going wrong. This goes along with a little inside joke we have. And, so you know, none of the things going wrong were his fault, the head coach, from time to time, assigns blame to him for a number of different things.
The joking yesterday brought me back to an job I had in college. The general manager there was a great example of leadership he had a phrase he would say to his staff when something went wrong, and we would try to place the blame elsewhere.
"Don't Blame it away"
Pretty simple concept-own your mistake. He understood that everyone was going to make mistakes, what he was looking for was for us to take ownership of those mistakes. When we take ownership of our mistakes we gain the ability to learn from them.
Blaming someone else for problems and mistakes allows you to walk away free and clear. Although you aren't, you are convincing yourself the mistake wasn't your fault, what did you learn? What will you do differently next time? Nothing, because you weren't willing to own up to the mistake, so it will continue to happen.
Great leaders own their mistakes and even go as far as accepting blame that might not belong to them. Are you trying to enter the Narrow Gate, trying to be BDL, trying to lead others to their full potential?
Don't blame it away! Own your mistakes.
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