“When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”  ~ Robert Anthony

 

Is it me or have you noticed that finger-pointing and blame has taken over and is running rampant throughout the world like the spread of a new virus.

And it really doesn’t matter whether you’re watching the news, listening to politicians, or listening to a disgruntled employee, partner, spouse, or friend. A lot of folks seem to believe that the root cause of their problems is someone or something other than themselves.

A Truth: You are 100% responsible for the results in your life.

That said, if you are not taking 100% ownership for the results you are getting in your life, you are probably stuck in what I refer to as the pool of blame.

Which also means you are giving your power away to others, and certainly not achieving your maximum potential. You may also be negatively impacting your relationships, both personally and professionally, because you may be pointing your finger in the direction of others and blaming them for your issues.

The Scene of The Crimes

I was taught a long time ago that when things weren’t going my way, I needed to change my way, and usually my way was my thinking (my attitude). I was taught not to point my fingers and blame others for my mishaps or misfortunes.

For the record, that DOES NOT mean I’ve never wasted time blaming others at different points in my life, oh believe me, I have done my fair share of blaming others for my missteps.

That was until I came to the painful realization that each and every time something went wrong in my life, whether it was a blown business deal, a failed relationship, a missed opportunity, there was always one person who was always at the scene of every crime…ME!

A Pool of Victims

Whining and complaining about my woes to anyone who would listen eventually became extremely debilitating. You see, at first I thought I was getting attention and sympathy and drawing others closer to me (which is what I really wanted).

The truth was that I was actually doing the opposite, I was driving people away.

Why? Because after awhile, no one wants to listen to whining and complaining over and over again. Well that’s not totally true, because what ends up happening is you attract other blamers and complainers and that is how you end up getting caught in the pool of blame, and eventually drowning with the rest of the victims.

You see healthy people do not want to be in relationship with unhealthy folks.

Red Flag: If you find yourself in relationship with an unhealthy person or you find that you are attracting unhealthy people, you might want to look at yourself in the mirror and maybe get some help.

Leadership, Blame, & The Bottom Line  

Over the years of working with leaders, I have learned that one of the key components for a successful team is that individuals on the team take 100% ownership for their actions and their work. When this happens, the collective level of cooperation, trust, and productivity is extremely high, and everybody wins!

However, when one or more of the team members blames others for their poor performance, their unhappiness, or their deficiencies, it has a disastrous impact on the functionality of the entire team, and everybody loses!

Bottom-line: When you allow blame to poison your team, everyone gets sick and eventually the symptoms (poor performance, low morale, lower productivity) finds their way to the actual bottom-line (profitability).

Time to Switch Gears?

If you’re the leader of a team that isn’t clicking quite right, you could blame the inability of the team to perform on the fact that you inherited a lousy team, you have the wrong people, or this is just what being a leader means these days in our current work environment. OR…

You could take 100% responsibility and take the necessary actions needed to start shift gears in a new direction. The first step is to have the difficult conversation with the poor performer. While this may be a difficult conversation, it needs to happen. Not just for the team, but for the employee in question, and for yourself!

Getting rid of non-performing employees, victims, and blamers, is critically important, no matter how difficult it may seem to be. However, as a leader, you have to keep focused on what it’s truly costing you and the team and not allow the difficulty of the issue to wear you down.

If it is a personal relationship, you still have to look at the overall cost as well. Life is too short to be unhappy!

Take Action

You may procrastinate, tell yourself it’s just not the right time to address the issue, and then hope the problem will fix itself or go away. It won’t!

Allowing the problem to continue and not addressing it, is like having a watch with a broken gear, it doesn’t function properly and it is usually wrong.

There’s is an old saying that even a broken watch is correct, twice a day.

Based on that philosophy, if your okay being in the wrong 99.999% of the time, than just know that you are 100% responsible for the results that are showing up in your life!

That doesn’t make you bad…it just might make you unhappy.

Till next time!