Owning it

With the best will in the world, you can't always get it right. I can identify a few occassions in my professional life where I have been objectively wrong.

I've never had a problem admitting liability evn though it galls me to do so sometimes. It's just how I was raised and something that I have my parents to thank.

My strangest observation is the reaction "mea culpa" receives from others. Because sticking your hand up and saying "it was my fault" is so regrettably uncommon both in business and in life, there are a few main categories of response.

Category 1 - suspicion. It's true. The human ear of 2024 is so attuned to spin and might I use the French word bullshitee? that an authentic apology or acknowledgement of responsibility can sometimes be viewed as some kind of tactic. He's just saying that for reasosn of personal glory or self-aggrandisement.

Category 2 - that's not all. Love this one. This one particularly appeals to people who are always looking to deflect responsibility themselves. How does this one work? Well, if he did that, what about all these other as yet unallocated crimes, misdemeanours and failures. It's probably him too. See what a track record he has?

Category 3 - it can't be you. Far and away the most comforting and hardest to shift response. This is where your "supporters" or people who gravitate to you and like who you are and what you do refuse to believe your owning responsibility. "It's not your fault. X made you do it or Y is behind it". Owning your mistakes, even when you're very clear in your own mind about your culpability, can be made exponentially harder when you combine it with having a fan base that won't accept it. It's like you're constantly having to go back and re-confirm your guilt, as if it wasn't hard enough the first time.

Category 4 - fake news.

There's an expression by Maya Angelou that says "if people show you who they are, believe them". It applies as much to the cheats and liars and deflectors as it does to the honest and truthful and that's the problem.

So now we are back to square one. If we just believe what everyone says because they've said it, we will fall for any old thing.

Category 1 people often come from the group who never accept responsibility and sigh with relief whenever someone else does the right thing.

Category 2 people are often the many who have done wrong, never get caught and see a way to pin their stuff on you. As we do when trying to distract small children, they might as well be saying - "OOOOOH LOOK, AN AEROPLANE!!!" and pointing at you.

Category 3 people are often people who believe in fairness and balance. They see that you have a pretty good handle on right and wrong and when you stick your hand up they instinctively think it's unfair because of all the other things that other people have done that no-one says anything about. Let's call them the cognitive dissonance crowd.

Category 4 is where Donald Trump supporters live. They are superficially similar to the Category 3 people because they won't let what's in front of their eyes guide them. But, instead of wanting to believe the best about you, they are on a different trajectory. They don't care what you've done or said because they are on "Team You" ride or die and so errors and lies and manipulations just get baked in. The truth is irrelevant.

So what's the point here? Well, we each get to choose how we relate to the behaviour and thinking of others. My suggestion is quite simple. In a one-off situation it is almost impossible to tell whether a person is being straight-up or fabricating.

History and patterns are the things to look for. If someone has a pattern of deflection or untruth, there will be a growing pile of evidence backed up behind them that doesn't add up.

If someone has a pattern of accepting responsibility, it will show. They will have a pile of evidence that they are truth-tellers.

There's one more category we haven't talked about and for the sake of keeping this uniform, let's call it...

Category 5. This is the rarest category of all and the responses drive people off the wall. I said at the start that I don't find it difficult to admit responsibility, but it goes further than that. I find often in life that there are complex situations and the stuckness that comes with everyone standing back in their corner unwilling to break the tie.

Pople who know me can attest to the fact that I will frequently find the part of the breakdown or stand-off that I can rightfully own. That's not to lie and say "I did it" when I didn't. It's just locating the behaviour of your own that may have contributed to the situation. It may only be obliquely and not be the main cause, but if the object of the exercise is to shift thinking and break unproductive deadlocks, it is valid and purposeful.

I've got a word for this behaviour. You may have heard of it. I call it Leadership. That thing that has you thinking about the good of the group before polishing your own mana. This takes courage and a strong sense of belief in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Don't be fooled. Sometimes just having a desire to do the right thing can have a horribly triggering effect on others. You may get hated and vilified for it. You may get deliberately misinterpreted and you're quite likely to be written off as weak.

Here's what I have to say to that. Leadership is a privilege and the greatest privilege of all as a leader is knowing that through your actions you have made some tiny improvement to the qualuty of someone elses life. They may not see or feel it straight away, but like a stream slowly carves a path through solid rock, over time you will make a difference.

Leadership - not always fun, but always a wonderful power to exercise and fabulous to see.