Does your organisation suffer from a culture of blame? If so you will no doubt be aware of the negative effects that it can have, not only on the morale of your people but on your business as a whole. One of the things that leaders who work in organisations often ask is “how do we address the issue of a blame culture?” Here are the top 20 things that leaders can do start to turn a culture of blame into a culture of responsibility…
- Promote and model openness, honesty and truth
- Promote and model taking responsibility and being held accountable
- Promote and demonstrate respect for people which includes acceptance that we all make mistakes
- Promote and encourage partnership, collaboration and co-operation between people
- Work towards reducing panic and fear in the organisation
- Begin to focus on “How to fix …” rather than “who broke …”
- Avoid using punishment when people make mistakes
- Recognise people for their achievements
- Encourage and expect feedback
- Give feedback on your observations not your judgements
- Focus on solution finding rather than problem finding
- Ask for multiple solutions to every problem found
- Focus on continuous improvement
- Reframe peoples understanding of mistakes and failure i.e. no such thing as failure only feedback and we can learn from our mistakes
- Help people to understand that all behaviour has positive intention
- Educate people on the mindset that promotes blame
- Reinforce the behaviour you want by thanking people for bringing and revealing problems early and finding solutions to those problems
- Balance Responsibility
- Help people to understand the consequences of their actions
- Make responsibility an attractive proposition
Can you think of some more? I’d love to hear your experience of how you turned around a blame culture in your organisation.
