QBQ (The Question Behind the Question) addresses the attitude behind these kind of statements. They represent a victim mentality. They shift the responsibility and the blame to others. There is no sense of personal accountability.
“It’s not my job”
Are you part of the team? Then it’s part of your job. Each person on the team is responsible for the output of the team – not just themselves. If you are content to only doing “your job,” then you are either selfish (just looking to “stand out”), lazy, or both. Especially in many workplaces, if you take the time to help others outside of “your job,” you will stand out because you would be doing something that is not normal.
Even if you’re not part of a team, or part of “that team,” your character, integrity, and image (how others see you) will become better.
“It’s not my fault”
“I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.” This is a common attitude of many people. When something goes wrong, you’re first reaction should not be to blame someone else. You don’t necessarily have to blame yourself directly (at least not at first). Try to look at the situation objectively:
- What is it that actually went wrong?
- What are all the possible reasons that it went wrong?
After assessing the situation, then ask what you did wrong and how you could have done better. Then, you can look at what role others may have had in this situation. You may be surprised, though, to find that there’s not much to blame after you really look at the situation and your own involvement.
“It can wait until later”
I mean, why should we do now, what we can do later?
We tend to think that we have more time that we really do. Time is a limited commodity. Once you use it up, you can’t recycle it and use it again. They say that time flies when you’re having fun. It also flies when you put things off. Well, it doesn’t really – you just lose focus of the time, and it moves on without you.
We also tend to think that we can do a better job if we do it later. We’ll be more experienced later (just think about how much you can learn in a couple hours!). There may be a sliver of truth to this, but it’s very doubtful. If you wait too long, you’ll have to rush through the job, and you won’t have the quality of work that you should.
Question: What are you doing to take responsibility instead of blaming others?
Great post Josh!!! These topics should be required reading in Preschool!! We need to turn things around and stop entitlement and irresponsibility. Great reminders!!!
Why wait till preschool? One of a kid’s first words is “mine”, let’s just use that to teach them to take responsibility! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Love the blog look BTW!!!
Thanks. I’m still working on tweaking some things as time allows.
Great post – I love that book, and the challenge of trying to take personal accountability seriously. Had a former direct report who threw blame everywhere, and it was so difficult to rein her in and explain we aren’t placing blame, we just need to find a solution. Challenging to remember that in the heat of the moment. Great post and great new look!
Thanks, Carol. I’ve worked many people like that. They always take things personally and can’t get past that – and can’t find solutions as a result. I try not to get defensive or take things personally (in fact, I usually turn it into a joke – may not be the best alternative :).
Sometimes the blame does fall on someone, but it still needs to be acknowledged so a solution can be found. We should be careful about blaming others, even if it’s their fault (of course, discussions and feedback should come if there is a pattern that develops). I don’t use it as much as I would like to, but I like the terms “learning opportunity” or “learning gap” or “understanding gap”. They show that the person needs to change, but it doesn’t have the negativity as blaming gives.