Blame May Feel Good. But It’s Not Good For You.

There is an old quote that goes while success has many parents, failure is an orphan. However, what the quote doesn’t acknowledge is when there is failure, we go looking for the parents to find out who is going to take responsibility for the child. In short, when things go wrong, we look for someone to blame.  

But what do we really want from something going wrong? Usually, it’s two things. To fix whatever the problem is, and to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Does blame help with this? Not really. Potentially, the prospect of blame might mean that someone is less likely to do something wrong, as there are unpleasant consequences. What is more likely is that they will hide the error, or offload responsibility onto someone else. Blame does nothing to fix the problem and may hinder us learning from it. 

So, why do we blame people? In my view, the answer is straightforward and unexpected. It’s fun, pleasurable, and enjoyable. And there are three main reasons for this: safety, control, and ego.  

Imagine you’re in a meeting where one of your colleagues, Nour, has messed up. From a personal safety point of view, there are some good reasons to blame Nour. If Nour’s mistake is taking up time and energy, then the focus isn’t on you, and you won’t be in the firing line. You’re safe, even if Nour is imperiled.  

Blaming Nour also gives a sense of control. Now that we know who’s responsible, we know that we won’t make a mistake like that next time. What was once a chaotic series of events now has a shape and a storyline, with Nour as the villain.  

The principal reason we like blaming people, however, is because it feeds our egos in two different ways. Firstly, it enables us to bond with others. Nothing unites coworkers, friends, or strangers quite like a shared scapegoat. It’s tribal. It’s cathartic. We gather around the campfire of “not my fault” and warm ourselves with collective indignation. 

Secondly, it reassures us of our competence. Most of the time we don’t really know how we’re doing at work. But now, we do. We’re above Nour. This, then, helps reassure us that we’re competent. 

This explains why we do it, but what of the consequences? For Nour, they’re pretty clear. Being chastised in a meeting is not much fun; so, any sensible person will seek to avoid it. They’ll either hide the mistake or try to offload responsibility onto someone else. Others in the meeting will see what happened to Nour and reach the same conclusion. Consequently, mistakes will go unreported, and huge amounts of time and effort will be spent trying to shift responsibility elsewhere when eventually they are discovered.  

To fix a problem and learn from it, we need to get a full view of the problem. Not just what happened, but why it happened. A great model here is aviation safety. A landing overrun (where the plane doesn’t stop soon enough) might be down to mechanical causes like brake failure—but it could also be down to pilot error.  

However, blaming the pilot won’t help improve safety. What will help is understanding why they made the error. To do that, we need to look at workload and scheduling rosters, at interpersonal dynamics in the cockpit, and so forth. Only by understanding these can we prevent the problem occurring in future.  

If we want to reduce errors and improve performance, we need to drive out fear, and stop being self-indulgent and reveling in blaming someone else. The mistake has occurred. What we now need to do is to make sure we get as much juice from this particular lemon as we can.  

There are a few useful pointers as to how to do this. The first is to frame any kind of failure as an opportunity to learn, rather than a cause for blame. True failure is failing to drag anything useful out of the wreckage of our mistake. The second, if you’re a manager, is to underreact to things. Don’t say the first thing that comes into your head as that’s usually emotional and defensive. Wait for the second thing which will be more deliberative and helpful. Try to create an environment of psychological safety where people can talk about mistakes and concerns and ask questions. As Anna Mohl of Nestlé puts it, get them to “put the stinky fish on the table,” so that we can have a look at it and work out what to do with it.  

Avoiding blame is not about indulging mistakes or tolerating sloppy work. It’s about seeking to understand why mistakes happen. Blame is one of life’s great pleasures, but like many of life’s great pleasures, it’s not terribly good for you.  

About The Author  

Ben Hardy is a Clinical Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Academic Director of Leadership Programs at London Business School. 

Pictured in the lead image is Ben Hardy, a Clinical Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Academic Director of Leadership Programs at London Business School.