We are increasingly afraid or unwilling to take responsibility for our actions.
In my previous job, we had a lot of quality standards we had to meet.
At first it was hard to understand what I was doing wrong and how to consistently meet these standards.
But, after a few months of learning and improving, everything clicked into place, and for want of a better description, I was smashing it.
However, some of the people I started with were still lagging behind.
Instead of admitting they needed help and take responsibility for their errors, they would always find a convenient scapegoat and blame others for their failures.
“The Quality checking department have got it in for me!”
“Nobody’s got my back!”
“You told me to do that, so why didn’t it pass?”
These were all comments I heard on a regular basis.
As you can see there is a common thread running among all of them.
None of these comments show the person accepting responsibility for their failures. It was always the fault of someone else.
I see this over and over again in a variety of places.
