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I Used to Solve Problems By Blaming Others. Here’s What I Do Instead.
I’ve made some bad hires in the past.
At one point, one of these hires infected people on the team with her gossip. She spewed negativity. A select few slowly began to rot and tarnish our values, the team, and what we stood for.
I wanted to blame her for being an asshole. I wanted to blame the others for being stupid enough to follow her.
But in the end, I was the only one to blame.
So I decided to focus on the problem by asking myself a couple of questions instead.
How can I solve the problem? What can I learn from the situation? How am I reacting?
Most problems aren’t problems at all. It’s your reaction to certain situations that create a problem. Think about it. If someone starts to degrade you verbally, your response to the verbal attack creates a problem.
If you ignored the person or went on with your life, the verbal attack wouldn’t be a problem.
I started to speak with important people in my life, one being my business coach, to figure out how I could learn from my mistakes.
The answer was simple:
The focus should be on preventing it from happening again.
I needed to inspect and upgrade our hiring systems to ensure we attract and hire the right people. I needed to ensure that if people are being repeatedly toxic to our team, our leadership team must stand by our core values and remove the person from the team.
Yes, my example is about some crappy hiring and team accountability decisions, but this serves as an example of nearly every problem you face in your life.
It’s easy to blame others for our mistakes because then you don’t have to work on improving yourself. It’s our human tendency to find a scapegoat and pile on.
But if you want to develop as a person, you need to take responsibility for your actions.
