Defusing the blame grenade

As regular readers of "To Be Clear..." will know, progress is of one of the four pillars of my coaching practice. One of the first conversations I have with new clients, after we've established their desired Outcome, is about the metrics we will use to measure progress towards that Outcome.

I have found that one of the biggest obstacles to progress for teams, indviduals and organisations is a focus on blame. You might think, "What's the big deal? Surely it's good to know who's responsible for something?"  Well, it depends. Understanding accountability and taking responsibility are indeed good things but an intense and undue focus on blame is an unequivocally bad thing if you are interested in gaining real clarity, making real progress and achieving sustainable success in your work or business.

In my experience, blame cultures resemble a group of people playing a grim game of pass-the-parcel with a live grenade, desparately passing around the parcel of blame and hoping it will explode while someone else is holding it. 

But don't just take my word for it, here are Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project, from their brilliant book, Difficult Conversations*: “Focussing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what’s really causing the issue and to do anything meaningful to correct it”.

The problems with blame are manifold, blame looks backward rather than forward, it's often overly simplistic, seeking to blame one person or one team for complex situations which  were likely caused by a range of people and factors; because of this, blame often targets and roots out individuals and leaves  subpar systems in place. Blame is also corrosive**, eating away at individuals and causing toxic behaviours, defensiveness and mistrust; a fear of blame discourages people from speaking up, making suggestions and taking chances and therefore stifles innovation and improvement as well as often getting in the way of increased safety. Finally, and most of all, a fixation on assigning blame is often an impractical and ineffective waste of time, it doesn't lead to learning and, as Heen, Patton and Stone point out above, a focus on blame doesn't solve the problem, rather it often exarcebates it. 

I think of one prospective client, working at a globally renowned organisation who, when we first discussed the possibility of working together, was fixated on how his colleagues were to blame for all of his challenges at work. 

I listened to his characterisation of events and then said firmly but (I hope!) gently, "If you are looking for a coach in order to vent regularly about your colleagues or your organisation, I'm not the right coach for you; first of all, I'm not coaching your colleagues or the organisation, I'm coaching you and, secondly, if we work tegether, while I absolutely want to understand your context and the systems of which you are a part, our focus will be on what you can do to make progress not on what you feel is being done to you." 

A focus on blame is also a big obstacle for teams and organisations. I can think of one client from a couple of years ago, a scaling tech business, where a culture of blame was holding back growth and preventing its owners from realising an exit. Because of the blame culture, there was friction between teams and individuals which was wasting time and resource and causing bottlenecks. Worse still, the blame culture made people reluctant to take chances or volunteer ideas, and, if you're not taking chances and nurturing ideas, the vital innovation which drives exponential growth will not happen. A culture of blame also tends to mean that things that are going off piste are not raised until it's too late.

So what should we do when things are not going according to plan at work and we're unclear as to how to proceed? Well the authors of Difficult Conversations have a highly effective solution and that is to shift from a blame frame to one of contribution. 

And it's so much better - where blame looks backward, contribution looks forward; where blame festers and divides, contribution gets key issues on the table and key people on the same page. Finally, and most importanty, where blame fails to solve the real issue, contribution is focussed on learning from the past and improving things going forward. For more on blame vs contribution, see the table below which I created to distill Heen, Patton and Stone's wisdom (click on it for a zoomable view).

So what's the difference between blame and contribution? Well, rather than trying to pin blame on one person or one team, a contribution framework acknowledges that when something has gone wrong, it's best to assume that more than one person has contributed to bring about the situation. 

Where a project has gone wrong or a relationship has been ruptured or things are just not working as they should and it feels tricky to gain clarity on the cause or to be clear on a way forward, shifting from blame ("whose fault is this?") to contribution can make all the difference. Here's the framework which Heen, Patton and Stone suggest. It's pretty straightforward but, let me tell you, it has been a gamechanger for a number of my clients.

1. Remember that not all contributions are equal; a contribution posture or culture doesn't mean that responsibility for a situation is always 50:50, it might be 80:20 or even 90:10 but the point is that one party is not 100% to blame for the situation nor 100% responsible for resolving it.

2. Contribution can look like not doing things – e.g. avoidance or being unapproachable/unavailable; some of the best conversations in this space start with someone saying, "I'm sorry that I've not brought this up until now..." or "I'm sorry if I've made it tricky to bring this up with me..."

3. Start with you. Assess your contribution and then invite the other person’s input on their contribution. Doing it this way makes a crucial difference to the other person owning their contribution because you have taken the initiative. Take time together to work out how to use the contribution system to resolve the issue going forward.

So how about you? Are you or your team stuck in a rut of constant blame, trying to assign all of the responsibility for things that haven't worked elsewhere, unclear on how to move foward? If so, why not try moving from a posture/ culture of blame to one of contribution. Maybe start by asking, “What’s my/ our contribution to this?”, follow up with “Could changing my/ our contribution change the outcome?”  and then go from there through the process laid out above. 

However it seems at the time, ultimately no one wins the blame game so reframe blame, start working with contribution and reap the benefits. Get in touch with any questions on this or to tell me how you've been putting it into practice - you know I love to hear from "To Be Clear..." readers! 

Next up, we unpeel some exciting news when it comes to more clarity at work...

Testing, testing...

You might remember that in the last edition of "To Be Clear...", I trailed some exciting upcoming news for readers. You might even remember further back in this edition of "To Be Clear..." where I asked you for suggestions of ways to widen the impact and reach of ONION^® in order to deliver more clarity at work to more people. As a result of your suggestions and help, the ONION^® deck is currently on its second iteration and the ONION^® book has a complete first draft! 

One other thing you asked for was some sort of digital version of ONION^® beyond the ONION^®workbook. This took a bit of thought; having designed apps before, I felt pretty sure that this wouldn't be a run-of-the-mill app on your phone, and then I realised that the answer was sitting right under my nose via a few taps of my keyboard...

....You know the way for the last couple of years, everything has been AI? The chatbots on your bank app are AI, much of the content you see online is generated using AI, your job might one day be done by AI, in fact, unbeknowst to you, the fork you used to eat your supper last night is AI.*** Well, it turned out that building the first iteration of Digital ONION^® (working title) was made possible by - you guessed it - using some excellent AI-based tools.

Those tools allowed me to design and build remarkably quickly and inexpensively a baseline version of  Digital ONION^® which I could then share and test with some pilot users to see if it was any good, or indeed, any use.^

"Hold up!" you ask, "What exactly is Digital ONION^®?" 

I'm glad you asked! It's a thought partnership tool built and trained around the ONION^® framework which helps you to clarify your thinking on a key issue, opportunity or challenge where you're stuck and to work out and start working on an effective way forward. 

Digital ONION^® is not a coach but it does provide some of the benefits of coaching - namely expertly framed questions and structure which create a space for you to do your best thinking and work out and work on what's best next.  I enjoy creating new things and I've loved the process of building something which has the potential to add real value in people's lives. Ultimately, AI is just a tool, a means to an end, what's exciting is the impact and results of what it helps build for real people. Here are just some of the comments from users of the beta version of Digital ONION^® : 

"It helped me streamline my thinking..."

 

"...the conversational style helped me to get my thoughts out in a way that felt non-pressured...", 

 

"...normal AI just gives me a list of tasks, with this I experienced peace and purpose about the way forward..."

 

"...gets the ball rolling!"  

 

"Easy and straightforward to use..." 

 

"...useful in making me think about what I can change

 

"...surprisingly enjoyable..."

 

"... It means you can start making steps towards your goals before an in-person coaching session."

One of my favourite things about all the positive feedback was how enjoyable people found the process of using Digital ONION^®, even as it gave them space to do the hard work of clarifying their thinking! Savvy users even recognised my voice and something of my coaching style in there which feels impressive given the depersonalised nature of so much AI-based software.

Having had such good feedback from the first iteration, I enlisted the help of an actual technical genius with whom I had previously worked to build the next version of Digital ONION^® and this iteration (literally finished today) needs some users to hopefully get some real benefit from it and to provide their feedback to make it even better and so, once more, loyal readers of  "To Be Clear...", your newsletter needs you!

If you have something you'd like to get deeper clarity on at work and are curious to see if this could help, then here's what I'll need from you:

• A real issue with which you want to make progress
• Time to test out Digital ONION^®(there are various levels of testing which can take from c.10 minutes to nearer 45 minutes although that doesn't have to be all at once)
• Feedback on how you found it (a short questionnaire and also a brief 10 minute conversation)

If that sound appealing, then please get in touch (subject line: testing, testing...), you can join the waiting list and I can let you know more. There are even some prizes for those who get in early doors - including a couple of free 70-minute ONION^® Clarity Coaching sessions with me (worth quite a few hundred pounds) which are up for grabs along with limited edition ONION^® decks and other exclusive ONION^® merch!

Talking of ONION^® Clarity Coaching sessions, they're back by popluar demand and I have four slots available in the run-up to Easter at a special friends and family/ "To Be Clear..." reader bonus rate. They are perfect for anyone trying to make measurable progress on a work or business related challenge in just over an hour and should help you to hit Q2 running. Shout out to the client who gave an ONION^® Clarity Coaching session to her husband for Christmas! He emailed me to say it was "...the best present I have ever been given..." so there you go! 

If you are interested or know anyone who might be, get in touch to find out more.

As ever,

Ranti

* - This might be the billionth time I've mentioned this book in "To Be Clear..." but it really is that good.  

** - One beautifully expressed reference to the danger of this kind of corrosive festering is the first stanza of  William Blake's classic poem, A Poison Tree.

***- Only joking...or am I?

^ - The process of building with and training AI has been fascinating and, at times, frustrating. I might say more about it in a future edition of "To Be Clear..." but, in the meantime, if you have an interest in finding out more about this process or creating with AI tools generally (I'm by no means an expert but can recommend a coach who is), do get in touch.