...But, It's Not My Fault!

How many times have you ever heard or said this phrase “It is not my fault”?

Please, take a moment to think before you respond.

I chose to talk about this topic after the outrage that I have noticed on the Arab social media. Many #Egyptians and #Arabs blamed the Egyptians’ celebrities who joined the #Egyptian_football_league for their World Cup Loss.

#Really?!!

I wish if we stop finding excuses or blaming ‘Others’ for our failures, instead we should figure out solutions to avoid repeating such mistakes in future.

Researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong acknowledged two approaches as responses to mistakes or failures that team players ‘People’ usually lean toward:

(a) The first approach is the ‘Blaming Approach’.

To me, it is the losers approach.You will hear people who adopt this approach using phrases or sentences such as ‘I will leave you, I will punish you, I will fire you, that happened because of you...etc, and in the worst scenarios they completely DENY that they are part of the problem, or that there is a problem'.

This type of people need to know that if they let such attitudes dominate their thoughts, behaviors, and interactions with other, they are unlikely to grow or learn effectively from their mistakes. Unfortunately, there is a big chance that they will repeat the same mistakes in future if they did not reflect upon themselves, and find effective solutions to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

I hope that we hold accountable for our mistakes and stop blaming others for causing them!

(b) The second approach is the ‘Problem Solving Approach’.

To me, it is the winners approach. The problem-solving approach is a positive approach to learning and handling mistakes. You will hear people who adopt this approach declaring responsibility for matters that turn wrong. They declare ownership of theirs or their teams’ failure even if they are partially involved. Such people inspire those around them to take a similar approach. This is the only true approach to learning.

In their study, the researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong cited few evidences regarding the importance of the ‘Problem Solving Approach’ to learning; I chose to share one of them with you. They cited an outcome of a study conducted by Edmondson in 1996 who found that when health care groups felt psychologically safe to discuss medical errors, the same team was able to identify the causes of their medical errors and develop practical innovations to avoid repeating those errors in future. And I am sure that readers understand what does this mean!

What I want say is that mostly everyone of us see herself/himself as a leader, right? This is the case whether you are the father, the wife, the elder sibling, the team player, the boss, the teacher, the director, the colleague, the store manager, the monitor, the CEO…etc. To be successful human or leader, each is responsible in providing competent coaching to create safe living/working environment, stimulate trustworthiness, and support excellent relationships among any team members you are coaching, monitoring, or supporting. We need to learn to stop blaming others for our failures, and mistakes. We need to hold accountable for whatever decision we make, and for whatever result might come. And make sure to we learn from our mistakes so we can avoid repeating them in future, for sure not hopefully.

Successful leaders are known for taking ownership. Let’s all be successful ones, and take ownership of our own failures and mistakes, and LEARN not to repeat them. 

Hard luck to the #Egyptian_league and the other #World_Cup_Leagues … Stay accountable for your own mistakes, and come more prepared for your next #football #Match!

Dear LinkedIn People, Which approach is your 'to take' approach?

Reference:

Edmondson, A. (1996). ‘Learning from mistakes is easier said than done: group and organizational influences on the detection and correction of human error’. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 32, 1, 5–28.

Tjosvold, D., Yu, Z. Y., & Hui, C. (2004). Team learning from mistakes: the contribution of cooperative goals and problem‐solving. Journal of Management Studies, 41(7), 1223-1245.