In this Magic Monday, we discuss the importance of overcoming the instinct to deflect blame by fostering shared interest and reflecting on one’s own accountability to promote personal and organizational growth.
When something major goes wrong with a project, deliverable or other task you’re directly involved with, what may often be the first, though unbidden, thought that comes to mind when confronted with the failure?
“It’s not my fault.”
“It wasn’t me.”
It’s a natural response. One that may even take us back to our younger years – when we were completely dependent on everyone and accountable to no one. In a Korn Ferry article on this topic, David Dotlich, a senior leader at the organizational consulting firm, observes that “We are hard-wired early on to blame others and deflect our own faults.” He also shared that we spend the rest of our lives working to overcome that instinct.
Instead of deflecting in those moments, the company’s CEO, Gary Burnison, shares a few thoughts in the above article on how to reflect instead, shifting our focus to what we can create for others. Summarized, they are:
Moving self-interest and selfishness to shared interest and selflessness.
The first step to transforming our self-interest into shared interest is to be okay with acknowledging when it shows up rather than attempting to hide it.
Align performance with personality.
Korn Ferry measures superior organizational performance with five key factors: purpose, leadership, strategy, capability, and accountability. They believe capability and accountability make up about 50 percent of that performance. This holds true for our individual personalities as well. Accountability must always start as the foundation.
Accountability is a good look in the mirror.
Instead of considering how accountable others are to us, we must first look into the mirror to see how accountable we are to ourselves – for who we are and how we act. Responsibility is in the present. Accountability is forever.
These observations incidentally match up ideally with one of our own Centric Consulting core values: Embracing Integrity and Openness. To be open with others first means being able to be open with ourselves. It helps us pave the way to consistently creating unmatched experiences for our clients and employees.
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