The best team isn’t made up of amazing individual contributors, it is made up of team players. On a team, when one person makes a mistake, all blame isn’t on that person. The team made a mistake. If you are working as part of a team and you make a bad decision, it’s not all on you. While you must choose 1 Leader, and As a Manager, it is YOUR Fault – you are still part of a team and the person who made a bad decision, or did something amazing doesn’t get full blame of full credit.
Please, by all means take credit when you do something good. Take full blame when something went wrong. When you are a team, though, it doesn’t matter who made the mistake. Let me give you an example. I work with Bob, and last week Bob made a major mistake that caused us to deliver late on a project. Today, the client calls.
“Hi Client, how can I help you today?” I answer the phone.
“I’m not happy!” says the client. ”You said that you would be done last week. I need my project now! What’s going on?”
“We’re working hard on this.” I respond. “Last week, as I told you, we lost a day’s worth of work. As a result, Friday was impossible. I’ll call you by end of day today with an update.”
“Ok… thanks. I’ll look for your call.” says the client as she hangs up.
While on the phone call with the client, I didn’t mention Bob’s name at all. The client will never know that Bob was the one responsible for this problem. If the client pries and wants to know, I’ll avoid stating who made the mistake. It doesn’t matter who made the mistake, we’re working on this project together. If the client knows it is Bob, they may request that someone else does work for them next time even though Bob is the best that I have.
Whether you are leading a team, or a team member – act like you’re on a team. We’re in it together, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter who did what wrong. Finding out who is to blame may take more time than accomplishing what we set out to do. We’re humans, we make mistakes. It will happen. There is one mistake that you should avoid at all costs. Never forget who is on your team.
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