Caution: Tendency To Blame Others

Relationships are integral to your success and the success of any team in any arena. When you recognize that relationships are paramount, you will prioritize building strong relationships with everyone around you to be victorious.   You do this by trusting others, listening to them, showing them respect, allowing yourself to be influenced by them, and demonstrating that you care about them.  

We want to be able to influence others. Whether at work, home or in our community, we often think we know best and want others to GO WITH OUR PLAN.  Let's learn how...

We want others to respect us. Whether at work, at home, or in our community, we want others to recognize our experience, perspective, and contributions. But how do you get others to respect you?

Human Beings Are Half-Duplex Machines  Like a half-duplex radio, you cannot receive transmissions from anyone else whenever you are in transmit mode. You can’t hear what anyone else is saying as long as you are speaking. You can’t listen to them.  

The first step in taking ownership is to acknowledge a mistake or failure. But when you do this, be careful to watch your language.

As human beings, we all tend to blame others. Something in our nature drives our immediate default response to blame anyone or anything other than ourselves. The level of frustration or stress we are under only exacerbates this tendency. But knowing this, you can contingency plan to counter your default response and reprogram yourself to take ownership. But even then, you will likely still occasionally stray from the path of ownership and blame others. When you do, recognize it, take ownership of it, and fix it.Leif Babin is a former Navy SEAL officer, co-author of the New York Times best-sellers, “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win” and “The Dichotomy of Leadership.” He is President/Co-founder of Echelon Front, a premier leadership training and education firm. www.echelonfront.com

PRE-EMPTIVE OWNERSHIPWhen a leader accepts total responsibility for everything that impacts their mission, Extreme Ownership becomes not just retroactive but pre-emptive to prevent problems from happening in the first place.  

In the introduction to the book, Extreme Ownership, Jocko and I wrote: The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.  It doesn’t matter that you are working hard. Are you accomplishing the goal? It doesn’t matter that you explained the “why” to your team. Do they understand, and are they executing? It doesn’t matter that you feel you have a good relationship with your boss. Does the boss listen to you and implement your recommendations? Does the boss give you the support and resources you need to be successful? 

At Echelon Front, we work with client companies and organizations in just about every industry. And we consistently hear the same or very similar things from different leaders: people think their problems are unique. Most leadership problems are common. Everyone must tackle these same or similar problems in order to be successful. Leadership is the solution.  www.echelonfront.com

We all fall short of the mark at times. So you don’t have to pretend. People know you aren’t perfect because no one is perfect. There is no such thing as a flawless performance. People know you don’t have it all figured out because no one has it all figured out. No one has all the answers. All that is required is to recognize your mistakes and failures and accept total responsibility for them.