I’m to blame

I played a LOT of Basketball for about six years through university and directly afterwards. When I played, the rule was that you raised your hand to acknowledge when you had committed a foul. It was part of a sense of self-responsibility in that team sport.

I also played a lot of golf in my teens growing up in the Scottish Borders. Golf is the only game where you call your own “fouls”, often taking place where nobody else would see them. Again self-responsibility.

I then picked up golf again in my 30s in Cayman, only to find that this sense of honesty was not present anywhere near consistently among people who took up golf later in life.

In fact, I nearly fell out with a dear friend at one point as an employee in his firm (where I was a board director) tried to argue his way around a clear rule infraction in a golf match I played in. it was a real affront to my sense of integrity, it really shook me.

I do believe you can learn a lot about someone by playing golf with them. What I learned was that I would not trust the integrity of that individual in any space, as “how you do anything is how you do everything“, so I wanted my fellow director to, at the very least, discuss this with the employee, yet they thought it was “no big deal”. Hmm.

These memories and thoughts were spurred from a blog recently from my dear friend Jeff Raker, published below, in which he encourages us all to take ownership for our mistakes.

I do write around this topic often, of accountability, self-responsibility, accepting fault, apologising.

Take a moment to introspect and ask yourself how you treat such moments, as well as what it says about you as a leader.

Engaging in a conversation with my travelling companion on a flight (a few months ago), we introduced ourselves and, of course, asked: “What do you do?” I enjoy saying different things, all true, when asked this question so this time I said: “I coach leaders and their teams about leadership and things like personal accountability.”

And what do you do: “I’m a personal liability lawyer.”

Almost sounds like the beginning of a joke.

In today’s litigious culture, personal accountability seems to not be highly valued. There has to be someone else to blame.

But like the basketball player who raises his arm after a whistle, indicating “I’m to blame,” this is the best way for a leader. Accept the blame rather than deflecting. Own what is yours. Be accountable.

Get in front of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible and simply say: “I’m sorry. It was my fault.” No excuses.

And then make it right. Taking ownership of mistakes and failures is another way to keep your word. Your word is your bond with your people. Keep it at all cost.

by Jeff Raker, August 23rd, 2020. To sign up to Jeff’s blogs visit his site