Blame Busting Part 1: There Is No Blame in the Breakthrough Hall of Fame! By Brian Biro

To become an extraordinary parent, leader, coach, and catalyst you must move beyond blame. Blame is the most venomous and insidious destroyer of teams, families, and organizations. It eats at you, sucking your energy and infecting your attitude.

            When you think about blame in the context of time, it becomes apparent why blame serves no constructive purpose. Is blame about the past, the present, or the future? From this timeline perspective it becomes immediately obvious that blame is always about the past. Yet you can’t undo the past; you can only learn from it. As long as you remain stuck in the emotional quicksand of blame, you stay in the past. Solutions, opportunities, and recovery are available only in the present, creating promise for the future.

            
Moving beyond the past does not mean you pretend nothing ever goes wrong. It simply means that you acknowledge mistakes, take responsibility for your ineffective decisions even if they were well-intended, and then swiftly direct your focus to what you will learn and what you will do next. If you decide it is necessary to discipline your children or the people in your charge in your organization, remember your goal, which is to correct and improve. Implement the disciplinary action fairly and calmly. When the consequences have been paid, move forward with a fresh start.

            In your interactions with your family, work associates, and friends, if your communication is not generating a positive, productive response, make the decision to become a blame-buster by changing your approach rather than becoming angry and frustrated with them.

            Whenever we feel pushed emotionally, we automatically push back. Thus, when blamed, our knee-jerk response is to become defensive. The problem is that we all speak a different language when speaking in defense.

            As a blame-buster who accepts the responsibility to change and improve yourself when things are not going well, you have an enormous positive impact on your teammates. You create an example that inspires top performances and builds great loyalty. The legendary football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant of Alabama explained the impact of blame-busting in his down-home country style when he said, “I’m just a country plowhand, but I’ve learned to get a team beating with one heart: If anything goes great, they did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real bad, I did it.” When you live by Bryant’s sage advice, you’ll inspire loyalty rather than back-stabbing, teamwork instead of selfishness.