The Jordan Harbinger Show - 181: How to Stop Blaming Other People | Deep Dive

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) joins us for this deep dive into why the impulse for blaming other people is a phenomenon familiar to most of us, and how we can curb it in ourselves without defaulting to always taking the fall when it’s undeserved. What We Discuss with Gabriel Mizrahi: Why the externalization of blaming other people when you're at fault robs you of being truly in control of your own life. Why the internalization of blaming yourself when you're not at fault is just as toxic as externalization. How you can use the Accountability Spectrum to find an appropriate balance between externalization and internalization. What true accountability requires of you and what it gives you in return. The best antidote to blaming. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! The Art of Manliness Podcast is a podcast that aims to help men become better men; host Brett McKay explores how to live a life of both contemplation and action while having some fun along the way. Do yourself a favor and check out The Art of Manliness Podcast here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. When life gets hard, our minds so quickly point a finger elsewhere that we often don't even realize we're doing it. If you're quick to blame others, join the club. I think if we're really honest with ourselves, a lot of us are guilty of this, either in our personal relationships at the office or both. In fact, pundits galore are calling blame an epidemic in our society, although they usually name it something else. The truth is, the instinct to blame is a toxic pattern and one that deprives us of our agency, weakens our relationships, creates dysfunction and inertia in our lives, and stops us from growing and moving forward. I probably don't need to keep selling you on the idea that blame is one of the worst habits to have

and should be at the top of your list of habits to break. Today, Gabriel Mizrahi and I explore why the impulse to blame is uniquely human and outline what we call the accountability spectrum so that we not only stop blaming others, but we also do not simply absorb blame ourselves, which is equally harmful. Of course, once we can spot blame and identify when we're doing it, we'll also give you some tools to break the habit and show you how to replace it with a process that's functional, keeps us happy and productive,

and makes the right kind of accountability a habit that we can take to the bank. As many of you know, I have a huge personal and professional network, and the way that I built that was through systems and tiny habits and consistency. I'm teaching you how to do this for free in my course six-minute network, working over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. It's free. It takes six minutes a day, hence the name, jordanharbinger.com slash course. All right, here's Gabriel Mizrahi and I on blame. I'm excited for this one today, Gabe, because this topic, first of all, it came from a listener, and at first I wasn't sure if it was going to be relevant. And then I thought, wait a minute,

blame is something that I'd spent years in a culture that does a lot of blame. And my family isn't really like that, but a lot of my friends were growing up. And the last business that I was in, we had a blame culture. It's actually, there's a term for this in business, and it's called a zero defect culture. And it's where the instance somebody makes any sort of mistake or perceived mistake, that person gets blamed. And so everyone's afraid to take risk. And you never solve problems because it's always,

is someone else's fault. And the blame can get ridiculous and yet people are still kind of eating it up. You know, you'll go, oh, well, we couldn't do any video today or all the video we did today is useless. And it's not our fault for hiring a schmucky video guy that was $4 an hour. It's the assistant who showed up late with the coffee so we got started late. So the video guys were flustered and uncaffeinated. And so then we didn't get started until noon. And then all the shots were out of focus, but if that coffee guy had just been there on time, then none of this would have happened. And for like 20 minutes, you feel better because you've blamed someone else. And then the next day you have literally the exact same set of problems because you never solve anything

and you spend three hours in the car whining about it, but never actually finding a strategy. And I found towards the end of me working with this business that I found that this was actually the case because I'd go, great, yeah, that's good. How do we solve the problem for next time? And a lot of the blame, the sort of blamers would be like completely uninterested in that line of thought. And that's how I started to highlight that this was a nonproductive line of thought. But it's insidious. It's sneaky. And I think it's a great way to waste a lot of time in your life and in your business.

So I'd love to attack this in a deep dive here. Yeah. It's funny. When life gets hard or when business gets hard or relationships get tough, the human mind is so good at pointing a finger elsewhere that we don't even realize we're doing it. it sometimes. And when you see it in someone else, it's a lot clearer. Yes. It's a lot harder to see it in yourself, but it's a very human tendency because when things get hard or when a problem arises, and if the stakes are high enough, a problem will create a real anxiety in you, right? Or an anger or

frustration or whatever the feeling might be. And the more intense the situation, the more intense the feeling. Who wants to live with that feeling? Like, it makes sense that you would want to discharge it onto someone or something else. That's the best kind of blame. I mean, best in quotes, right? When you see like someone blaming it on some inanimate object or some vague situation, that's even harder to see because there's nobody on the other side of that equation who can be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.

I didn't do that. That wasn't all me. But, you know, you could easily blame a door for not closing correctly if it'll get you out of a problem. Yeah. Or traffic. Traffic is a great one, right? Traffic is the classic one in L.A.

It's a perfect one because, yeah, that's probably a very L. example, but like it's made up of individual people who are contributing to the problem, but it's an abstract concept that really can't fight back or speak up for itself and point out, like, yeah, traffic, me, traffic sucks, but isn't it the case that like you should have left 15 minutes earlier? Isn't that the problem? You know what I mean? Sure.

So there are all these clever ways that we can blame. And when we do, as you point out, like, especially in workplaces, it can deprive us of our agency. It can weaken our relationships. It causes massive dysfunction, massive and deep. dysfunction that can take months or years to unwind in some cases. And it creates inertia. And that's probably the worst part about it, is that this thing that is designed to get us out of the problem that we don't want to deal with only gets us in deeper and then makes it harder for us to act in a way that's actually productive. So I'm glad we're talking about it. I think it's a really timely topic.

And also it's something that's taking shape in our society at large. Like the more, the more complex and problematic the world gets, I think the more insidious the tendency to blame becomes. Yeah. And people disagree about this, but I think in many cases, people are rewarded for blaming. They are. They're encouraged to do it. Sure. Blame the Democrats. Blame the president. Blame the snowflakes. Blame the alt, right? There's all kinds of, I mean, you can literally just take a group and put blame the in front of it and you end up with like a whole subgroup or other group that exists solely to really just do that blame. And it becomes a lens on everything. And, you know, It's the filter with which you see everything.

And instead of becoming a choice that we can control, it's the way that you navigate the whole world, which is really a great way to become powerless immediately. Totally. So what is blame really? I mean, I think we all know what it is intuitively, but it's worth exploring a little bit. So the impulse to blame is deeply human, right?

Like when people hurt us, when mistakes get made or relationships reach a conflict point, like our minds will do anything to avoid the discomfort that those situations create. In most cases, the easiest way to avoid that pain is to externalize it. So that just means to project the discomfort or the anger or the anxiety or that pain onto another person or situation so that we ourselves don't have to sit with it any longer than seems necessary.

Right, right. It's harder to admit that you made a mistake or that something else has happened or that this is avoidable and take ownership, which we'll get to in a second, then it is to go, well, you know, if you had gotten ready earlier, we would have had more time to solve this problem as it cropped up. And then it's like, well, how was I supposed to, no rational counterarguments, please. I just want to not be the person whose fault this is right now. Yeah, because I don't want to be the person who has to live with the discomfort of it. Right. Now, the opposite of blame is internalization. So that just means taking on responsibility fully for any pain and its source

ourselves. So when we completely internalize something, what we're really doing is bearing the burden of the negative experience in its entirety. So we're believing that we're ultimately responsible for what happens to us, around us, because of us, how we feel, what to do about it, all of that. But here's the thing. Internalization can be just as toxic as externalization. So when you blame, when you externalize, you project that anxiety and anger onto other people. When you internalize, you hang on to those feelings and you attribute them entirely to yourself. That is not any better than blaming other people. It's a different way of dealing with things, which is just as toxic and sometimes just as dysfunctional,

even though we don't always recognize it as problematic. So this spectrum of internalization and externalization kind of represent the two poles of how to deal with problems in this world, both of which create their own issues that we need to unpack. It's funny you should mention this, because I know that when I was working with this blame, in this blame culture, the zero defect culture, I actually started, it started off by other blaming, but then I was like, oh, well, that's not solving the problem. So then I went to self-blaming, and I was like, look, if I take responsibility for everything, then maybe we can get these problems solved. And what that did is it just ended up turning all the blame cannons toward me all the

time, but I wasn't able to solve the problem because what I was doing was not actually to cause the problem. In fact, there was no solving the problem because everything could have gone perfectly smoothly and there still would have three weeks later, 2020 hindsight, been some sort of thing to complain or blame later on. And it's a no-win situation because blamers tend to also be black holes or I should say infinite sources of blame, whereas people who are self-blaming, blamese, even if they're doing it to themselves, will be black hole. of accepting blame. There's never like an amount of blame that you can accept. And in fact, this bears repeating, there's never an amount of blame you can accept where you are full. And the other

person says, well, I'm done blaming Angela. She has accepted responsibility. You just end up being the garbage dump of blame for yourself and everyone around you. Yeah, that's bottomless, right? Yeah, that's totally true. And it is crazy that there isn't a limit to how much we can do this, because number one, it seems like human beings can never get enough of it. And also, there will never be an end to problems. It'll just keep cropping up. The process you just described can lead, among many other things, to depression and shame and guilt, and you can carry that around. So that's not the answer either. So if both approaches get us into trouble, then the natural question is, well, what's the right approach to understanding our role when negative situations arise?

And that's when we have to start teasing out what the spectrum includes. So if we think of internalization, which is really self-blame, and externalization, which is other blaming as two ends of the spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, we take on too much ownership of those experiences, and on the other end of the spectrum, we refuse to take ownership of our negative experiences and project them outward. In the middle is a healthy synthesis of those two impulses. And that healthy synthesis is what we could call accountability. So accountability means an appropriate recognition of other people's responsibility in a situation and a healthy ownership of our own. And it's crazy that so few of us are able to do both

of those things, but that's actually a learned skill. Because most of us are taught unconsciously from a young age to either project everything outward or to take everything on. And as we get older, I think it's on us to decide, okay, let me do the work to figure out in every negative situation I encounter, how can I parse it in a way that helps me understand what I could have controlled and what I need to address and what the other party can address and what they need to control. And so that's what we're going to be talking a lot about today. This is a little bit scary for a lot of people because I think what you'll find when listening to this, and by the way, this is all detailed in, if there's so much more detail in the article that we wrote

about this, that will be linked in the show notes, also called, I think, How to Stop Blaming Other People. Yep. And so if this is a topic, we have rings a couple bells, alarm bells or otherwise. go and read the article because there's going to be a lot more in there. Yeah, some nice case studies, some good tables and some nice exercises. You're so proud of your tables. I like the tables. I'm a big fan.

Guess who made the tables? Guess who made the tables? And the crude spectrum diagram. Spectrum diagram? Yeah, that shifts when you touch it on the Google Doc. This can be scary for people to parse for themselves because you either realize that you're the blamer and you've got a lot of work to do or that you're the blame me and you've had a lot of work to do. Exactly. Right? Yep. So it's, nobody wants to do this, especially people

that are sloughing off accountability. Because right now there's somebody who blames other people going, well, I wouldn't have to blame other people if they were more competent. I mean, uh, yeah, well, I wouldn't have to blame other people if they would just get their freaking job done. Yeah. And then, oh, wait, are you actually confronting a solution? Are you just blaming other people for not being competent enough? I mean, it's a, it can go, it can turn back in on itself so quickly. Yeah. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Gabriel Mizrahi. We'll be right right back.

Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Gabriel Mizrahi and Jordan on this deep dive. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go on over to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. And now back to our deep dive with Jordan and Gabriel. So here's what we're here to do,

Jordan. We're here to honestly understand the role that we play in the way life happens at the end of the day. That's what we're here to do. And we're here also to not take on any more or any less responsibility than we absolutely should. So recognizing how much of a relationship or a situation or an outcome we are responsible for and how much of it another person is responsible for is the game. And our job is to internalize the appropriate part of a dynamic, even when it's a dynamic, and that's worth calling out, is that I think a lot of times in life, very rarely do you find that there's a situation which is entirely one person's fault. In most cases, there's a dance going on between two people or three or more people or a situation in a person or a person

in a company, right? And in those situations, it's very tempting to blame because you know that you are not responsible 100% for what happened, but you are 100% responsible for, you. for the 50% of it that you do own or whatever that percentage is. So being self-aware and disciplined enough to not take on more of a situation than is appropriate or healthy, but also being willing to recognize what you do need to take ownership of is part of what we're going to be discussing. And as you point out, that also means not becoming the object of somebody else's blame, which is a very easy pattern to fall into because the origin of it, other people, is out

of our control. So true accountability is the end game. It's the mindset that allows us to take the best parts of each side of the spectrum. And the first step in understanding how to do this is to recognize why and when you're blaming in the first place. I think that's wise. And I think that a lot of people are going to be in denial about when they're doing this. So I think when we're going through it, when you're going through in your own head, to recognize why you're blaming, resist the urge to justify it because that's how this starts.

Well, I'm blaming, but, you know, this person, in this particular instance, they were really late. Well, look, like, it seems kind of obvious to be like, hey, just be a little more self-aware, try to notice when you're blaming. Yeah. But the thing is that blaming is a very clever coping mechanism for psychological pain. Yes. So if you're anxious or you're frustrated or angry, it's not irrational to not want to deal with that.

It makes sense that you wouldn't want to. But blaming can take a number of different forms that actually fulfill other functions that we're usually not even aware of. Like in a single day, right, you could wake up and you can, blame the city for traffic on the way to work. You can blame your colleagues for not making the next pot of coffee when they finish it. You can blame your boss for making you stay past seven. You can blame your friends for making you feel silly over drinks that night. That's right. You can blame, this is getting a little personal, but you can blame your cat

for knocking over a glass of water, you know, on the bedside table, even though he's done it like nine other times this week. It's like clearly telling you that it's time to stop putting the glass of water on the bedside table. Get a heavier glass. Just get a heavier glass. don't put, you know, like, there are so many situations that seem to call for blame. Like, there's no end of problems in life, right? You can easily find someone to blame for pretty much anything. Anything, big or small, right? And in some of those cases, blaming might be somewhat rational.

It might even be appropriate, right? It is possible that your city's traffic is a problem, that your boss is inconsiderate, that your colleagues aren't thinking about you as much as you think. Like, those things could be true, and yet you could still fall into this pattern of externalizing all of the anger and frustration, which isn't healthy either. But if you dig a little bit deeper into those instances of blaming, you'll usually find some more complicated intentions underneath. So, for example, let's just go back to these silly everyday examples, right? When you blame the city for traffic, is it possible that you're also maybe avoiding responsibility for, like, leaving the house late or failing to set an alarm earlier? I mean, it's a very easy way to get angry at traffic as opposed to being like, yeah, that's on me for not leaving a little earlier.

Or when you blame your colleagues for not making the next pot of coffee, are you also making yourself the saint of the office? Like, I'm the one who cares about everybody. I'm the one who takes the time to make the next pot of coffee. It seems like such a small thing, but it actually represents a very big psychological shift that you're making. You're elevating yourself to this pedestal. A hundred percent. Exactly. And you're doing it by bringing other people down.

Exactly. Somebody has to bear the, there's a price to pay for that. Right. It's not just, I often make the coffee. I'm a nice person in the office. I clean up trash sometimes in the break room. And move on. It's, it's no one does this but me. I'm the only one that does this. Everyone else is lazy. I'm, this place would fall apart without me. Oh yeah, that's a great one, right? Yeah, totally. And that ends up being, when we talk about things in the future like personality archetypes, it ends up being a pretty negative. It's almost like you're bullying. people, even if you're not doing it in front of them, you're doing it in your own mind. In your mind, yeah. Yeah, to prop yourself up. And that's exactly what you're doing. Because when you blame other people, you're not just externalizing the pain of the responsibility. You're also enhancing yourself in this other more subtle way, sometimes a way that you're not even fully aware of. So when you blame, whether it's something small like the coffee or it's something huge, like you guys messed up this product, like we delivered the project late because you guys could manage your work streams properly. think about some of the deeper reasons that you might be doing that.

And one of the most common is the desire to be right by making someone else wrong or to make yourself more competent by casting other people as less competent or to be special. Even if being special, even if you get to be special by being the person who's suffering, who's frustrated, who's angry, right? Like you take on a special role because you're the person who knows enough to know that it's everybody else's fault. That's right. Yeah, you are the special victim.

And even though if it's your, even though it's your own making, essentially, you're the special victim, everybody else is doing this to you. And it's a very, we'll get to this in a second, but basically, it's a great way to hand over responsibility and control. Totally. Which is ironic because in a way, you're giving up all of your control. Right. It's a very weird thing.

It's like a strange paradox. You give yourself a sense of control over the problem at hand by attributing that control to other people. You're saying like, you guys could have made it work, but you didn't, so it's your fault. And that makes me feel better because I don't feel as out of control. That's, it's absurd. It is absurd. But it, but in a very limited mental way, it does work for maybe five minutes. Yeah. Short-term strategy. Exactly. So no wonder we tend to blame so easily. Yeah. Like, blaming seems to work. Seems to. But once you really see how blaming is designed to prop you up, it becomes a lot harder to engage in it. A lot of the tendency to blame that we see in companies,

workplaces, even families, that's another really very complicated dynamic where blaming comes up a lot. It's because the people who are involved are not aware of these subtler motivations. If they were, then it would give them pause to be like, okay, I know that I don't want to feel responsible for what's happening right now, but am I doing this because I want to be the only nice person in my family or to be seen as the only nice person? You know what I mean? Or to be seen as the person who cares enough about everybody else in the office to complain about the coffee not being made or whatever the situation is. So you can catch yourself getting mad at the city and then you realize that, well, the city didn't force you to be late. It was you who overslept.

Or you find yourself yelling at your colleagues in your head and you realize that, yeah, they might have forgotten to refill the coffee. But that doesn't make them bad people. And it won't, more importantly, it won't make you a good one. Right. It just makes you the person who either does or doesn't refill the coffee. Exactly. So the first key to stop blaming is self-aware. And that means bringing more consciousness to your thoughts and your feelings and catching yourself in the moment, hopefully.

But even if it happens after the fact, that's a really, that's an important process to go through. It doesn't matter when it happens. Yeah, 2020 hindsight is better than no hindsight at all, I suppose. Totally. It's great if you can catch yourself in the moment and then just not do it. Yeah. And I think that's where you can end up if you do this practice enough. But just to be able to parse something after the fact is huge.

And to notice when you're externalizing those thoughts and to understand why. And if you can get a handle on the underlying reasons that you're blaming, beyond just shifting responsibility, which is very clear, then you'll give yourself two huge advantages, huge advantages, and this is worth repeating. The first is that you'll find it a lot harder to justify your blaming in situations that are not being helped by it. And the second is you'll gain some critical insight into yourself, because there's something very useful about studying your own blame. it reveals the things that you might not know about yourself that are very important to know, especially if you're a manager, if you're managing other people, if you want to be in a relationship, if you want to be a good friend, you want to be a productive colleague. The things that we tend to blame in other people are usually reflections of something that we need to own in ourselves.

So whether that's better time management or knowing how to give feedback to people or understanding how to be kinder or whatever the situation happens to call for, if you study your blame and you figure out those intentions, you'll usually learn something really important about yourself. That's interesting. And yeah, that makes total sense. Because whenever we do, whenever we have these sort of bad habits or negative patterns, whenever we dig down to the bottom, there's usually something that we're either trying to hide, make up for, overcompensate, compensate for whatever. So it's like the control thing. We don't have control, so we blame other people, hand over control to them, thereby gaining what we think is control.

Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. And then you ask yourself, well, why do I want that control so badly? Okay, I do want control. Of course I want control. I don't want to feel out of control my career. But if I want that control, is this the way to go about it? Right. And to what end? Am I trying to be a manager? Or am I just trying to feel less chaotic? You know what I mean? You can you can unpack that and discover, as you point out, these insecurities or these vulnerabilities or even this, like, hopes and expectations that sometimes are operating without our full consciousness. When you go to a therapist and do it, they're often like, tell me about another time in your life when you didn't have control.

And then you're like, oh, my parents got divorced and then my mom left and then blah, blah, blah. Like you find these weird things. That's not a real example for my life, by the way. My parents are still together very cool. Yes, they are. And they look adorable sitting across from a breakfast table. That's right. Yeah.

That's right. But your point is great. Like you start drawing those connections. Right. among data points that you didn't even know were there. Right. You find these weird connections where you're like, oh, I've never had to control in my life. I've always felt like life was done to me. Oh, my grandmother and aunt raised me and they were too doting. And so I never really had control over my path. And now, da-da-da-da,

blame other people. Yep. And isn't it interesting? Because you usually don't think about blaming as this portal into like self-discovery. But what you're talking about is really important. Like, I guess that's always the case, though, when you, it's interesting. Like, this is a little bit off the beaten path of what we're talking about, but you know, you take this problem like blame, and if you really dig into it, you end up with this window into yourself. But that's the beauty of good self-help, I think, is that you can, if you really unpack a problem, you can get something more than just the solution to that problem. You can come to a better understanding of yourself and other people. And because blame involves two parties, it's a really good one to do that,

because if you can work on this blame problem at work, like in a professional setting, you're can become a better manager and help everyone else become a better employee. Or if you do it in your family, you can understand the roots of all of your neuroses and issues or just values or whatever, and you can become a better family member. So it's actually really useful. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Gabriel Mizrahi. We'll be back right after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com

slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our deep dive with Jordan and Gabriel. So let's get a little more tactical now. The next step in this process is to replace the impulse to blame with the decision to understand. Because when the impulse to blame arises, it happens so quickly, our minds are already blaming other people or situations before we even choose whether we want to or not. That's where the self-awareness comes in. That's where checking in with yourself can slow things down for a moment. And you can decide, there becomes a moment where you can decide, okay, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm concerned, I feel out of control. I can either follow this mental impulse to project it onto someone else, or I can say, hang on a second, let me really understand

what's happening in this situation. When we blame another person in any given situation, we usually are attributing responsibility unfairly. So there's a version of events that supports our desire to blame. so when we blame someone else, we're usually attributing responsibility, more responsibility to them than they actually have. Or when we internalize, we attribute more responsibility to ourselves than we actually should. But when we correctly dole out responsibility among everybody and every situation that was involved, then we achieve true accountability. Right, because you can't solve the problem if you are taking on responsibility that you don't have because you don't have the ability to solve that problem. And if you're

sloughing off all the responsibility that you would have normally had onto the guy who got ran and got your coffee that morning. Now you can't solve the problem either because there's nothing for you to solve. It's all someone else's fault. Exactly. Yeah. Accountability, like true accountability, it actually requires honesty and self-awareness and maybe most importantly a willingness to bear the discomfort that comes with honestly owning your piece of it. I think that's the key because there's a lot of people who don't want to own it because they they take ownership and responsibility, accountability as something that means something negative

about their personality or them as a human. Right. You know, they've been raised or something in such a way where if you've done something wrong, worthy of an apology or some sort of change in behavior, you are a defective person that doesn't deserve love or whatever. Yep. And there are feelings around that feeling. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, like in my family and in my current home, if you do something, and you make a mistake, it's okay. The other person's not going to leave you. You're not going to be abandoned by your wife or, you know, parents for doing that. But I know that other people probably live pretty consistently with that fear. And I truly think that some of the stuff we were dealing with in the old company does stem from. There was one person whose mother had abandoned them as a child. And I think a lot of his behavior came from the fear of abandonment. So it was like everything he did had to be perfect, even if he had to beat it into you, that it wasn't his fault. And so it always, by then, by definition, it had to be someone else's fault. It couldn't

be his fault. So if there was a problem and it wasn't his fault, well, shoot, you're the only one else in the other person in the room. It's got to be you then. And that's toxic. It's toxic for them because they can't fix the problem. And it's toxic for you because then you, you're going, like, I guess I'm a bad person. Right. We learn this stuff from a young, young age. And most of us have to learn later on how to deal with it the right way. It's sad, but I guess it makes sense, because if we were taught accountability without being punished for it from a young age, then there wouldn't be so much of this dysfunction in the world, but there is. So that's why we're talking about this. So, yeah, we have to like get a handle on all of the variables

that are at play in a situation before we can decide whether someone is really worth blaming, whether it's fair to blame them, and how much of ourselves we should blame. for the situation. So specifically, there are a few questions you can use to get a handle on all of that data. So let's just talk about a few of them. So, I mean, one of them is, you know, what specifically is the negative situation taking place right now? Like, how is it showing up in this moment? How did we arrive at the situation? So what events, which decisions, which factors led to this moment? Now, that sounds obvious. But think about when a problem arises at work. How much time do people really spend unpacking the variables that got them to that moment.

I mean, a good company will do that, but everyone's knee-jerk reaction is, whose freaking fault is this? Exactly. The problem is just taken at face value. It's treated as this big, monolithic issue. And then the next step is, let's figure out who is responsible. Right. They're fired.

Or they're getting written up for this. But what about all these other questions? Like, okay, who else is involved in this situation? What are their roles in responsibilities? you know also which external factors came into play. Factors that were not under anybody's direct control, like weather or office policy or tangential conflicts or somebody's rough mourning that literally had nothing to do with you but ended up playing a role in the situation.

By the way, this has a really strong connection to a cognitive bias that you and I have talked about a lot, which is the fundamental attribution. Ah, yes. So this is a really interesting little subplot, but like there's a cognitive bias that makes us want to attribute people's decisions to who they are, like, to their deepest character. Right, their DNA. Their DNA.

Like, if somebody cuts you off in traffic, it's because they are a terrible person, not because they were late to work because of some unrelated issue that if we were in the same situation, we would be responding in the same way to, like, we don't take into account environmental or situational factors or matters of circumstance when we judge other people. We tend to judge them based on who they fundamentally are. That's the fundamental attribution error. We're attributing fundamentally something to their character that we shouldn't. That's the error.

And it has a connection to blaming, because blaming depends a lot. In a lot of cases, blaming depends on the fundamental attribution error. Like our willingness to blame a situation on somebody's core character, their choices, what they value as opposed to, well, let's take into account like all these other things around the situation that contributed to the problem. that'd be great if we could do that. That's sort of perfect world scenario, right? Like, oh, okay, let me pause, take a deep breath, figure this out.

And you can kind of picture a wise CEO doing that and going, hmm, let's unpack this before we jump to conclusions. But then that's the kind of thing that maybe happens in movies. And then in real life, it's like, nah, let's just blame Gabriel. Yeah. He's here and had something to do with it. Sure, probably. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's, this is...

It's just easier to blame. It's easier to blame, but it's not easier in the long term. It's short term, easy. It's the path of least resistance. Long term, it doesn't solve anything. By the way, I mean, most people you talk to who work in major companies are unhappy. I mean, they're frustrated. There's office politics. Office politics depends on what am I responsible for. What are you responsible for? How much power do I have? How much power do they have? How do I get more power? I mean, no wonder people are so miserable in a lot of their jobs. they're dealing with cultures that depend on and reinforce the impulse to blame. So what we're talking about is how to short circuit that impulse. And the way to short circuit is to take. And by the way, it wouldn't take all day to do this exercise. What we're talking about is could be five minutes.

Yeah, it's just it doesn't let you open that emotional steam valve and go, screw that guy. What an idiot. That's, and I'm so guilty of that too. I love just being able to open the valve and vent. And I think a lot of people will do that. The problem is it, like we've been saying over and over, it doesn't actually, when we cave to that impulse to blame other people and open that steam valve,

we deprive ourselves of the chance to actually properly appreciate the problem. Yeah, exactly. Like, we're so eager to avoid the pain that we miss the opportunity to actually understand. And that ability to understand is what differentiates great managers from bad managers. Good leaders. Or parents. Or parents. exactly. So the thing about this, though, and what's so interesting is why, why do these two things

blaming and understanding have this relationship? It's because if you really understood all of the factors at play in a situation, you wouldn't be able to blame. Right. Not credibly. Yeah. That is why people don't take the time to understand because they want to enjoy the privilege of being able to point the finger at somebody else. It's a lot harder to say, well, hang on, let me understand the situation. If not fully, as fully as I can in this moment, so that I can, identify the factors that we actually have to work on, some of which might be mine. It's very difficult to understand and blame at the same time. Exactly.

It's kind of like, it's an oil and water situation. Totally, which is why the best antidote to blaming is really empathy. I mean, empathy, of course, we've talked about this so much, but it's, you know, it's the ability basically to understand and share the experience of another person. But more broadly, it's the willingness to step outside of ourselves, you know, to stop taking things personally or entirely personally and appreciate a situation. from all perspectives, multiple perspectives, because when you apply empathy to all of the questions we just talked about,

you end up looking at a situation from not just a number of different perspectives, but almost like from nobody's perspective, just truly objectively or as objective as you can manage, yours, the other party's perspective, the world's perspective, and you understand the root causes of the problem instead of just being like, going to point the finger that way because that guy should have brought the coffee. So you choose curiosity over certainty.

You choose patience over gratification. So that's really the name of the game. And when you study situations in that way, you inevitably discover. And this is what's so interesting, promising, and also frustrating about this whole process is that when you study a situation in that way, you usually end up discovering that the math of responsibility, like how the responsibility shuffles out, is never as clean as you'd like it to be. Right, yeah. It's never like, oh, this was 100% Gent's fault.

Exactly. Good, I was right. My gut instinct to just be a difference. It was totally right. Right, never. With the exception of a few outlier cases, I would say there's really never a situation where one party is entirely at fault. And the other party is completely blameless. Like, in almost every case, there's usually a complicated dance that's going on among multiple parties that creates the negative situation.

And the parties involved, they only realize that something is wrong when the problem comes to a head. They don't realize it in the moment of making all of those decisions. So we need to stop and tease those factors apart so you can clearly see who's responsible. for what? How much are they responsible? What are other people responsible for? What is nobody responsible for? That's a huge one. Force major. Exactly. Force major, exactly. Like acts of God

or just circumstantial factors. Like it rained, you should have been prepared. Cool. I was, but I didn't bring seven umbrellas, one for each of you. Exactly. Okay, fair. So that's exactly right. So then, if you do that, then you're in a position to get into the next step, which is really what we're here to talk about, which is to take ownership, to take appropriate. to take appropriate ownership.

Once you get a handle on all of the variables that play in a situation, then it's your job to identify and own your piece of it. So that means parsing the scenario for the aspects that you do control so that you can do your part in remedying the situation. But that process really starts

with something very concrete. And that is replacing the language of blame with the language of understanding. So replacing the impulse to blame with the choice to understand comes down to language. Yeah, really, right? I mean, yes.

Whether it's in your head or spoken out less. Yes, exactly right. And that, you know, that is a conscious choice to reframe the language that you're using. So that means asking questions rather than making statements. Right. It means leading with empathy rather than judgment. And these questions are decidedly less satisfying, I guess, in the moment? Because instead of saying, I can't believe he did that, what an idiot.

You have to say, okay, help me understand why they made or why you made this decision. Yep. That doesn't feel as good as just choke slamming somebody verbally, right? Exactly. No, because you don't get the steam valve. Right. The steam valve. This is all their fault.

Or, hmm, I feel like in this situation, he or she could have acted differently here. Or is there something missing about my role in this situation? Yes, exactly. This isn't my problem. It's your problem. All right. Is this a problem? How much of this is my problem?

How much of this is within my control? Yep. Oh, here's another fun one, right? Like, this is why you're wrong. Oh, yeah. Right. this is why I'm right. That's the language of blame. But how much, how differently would that conversation go if you said, okay, here's how I see things? How do you see things? Or I noticed that you

did or said or you felt XYZ in this conversation. Why? Can you explain to me why you felt that way? Or what did I do to create those actions or feelings in you? Did I do something? Can you help me see something that I'm missing in myself? Or what should each of us have done to make the situation as productive as possible. That is less immediately satisfying, but in the long term, so much more useful, because you're foregoing the impulse to be like, ah, yes, I'm correct. Everyone else is wrong, and now I can just walk into the other room and this problem will no longer be mine. And you're saying, okay, let's slow this down for a second. Let me take myself from this limited position of wanting to be the person who's correct and say, let me be a forensic scientist with this other person

and figure out what's actually going on. And that really does come down to our language. It comes down to the words we use and the questions that we ask. Yeah, the shift is conscious, requires that conscious choice. Often in my own head, it starts off as the language of blame. And then I go, okay, let me take that again, which is actually kind of a nice way, because you get that frustrating part out. You open the steam valve, and then you go, well, that wasn't really accurate.

So let me take that again. It works when it's in your own head. It doesn't work as well when you let somebody have it in your office. and then you come back 20 minutes later and you go, so it turns out that I was just being a complete dick. So you kind of have to, if you're doing this in your own head, make that conscious choice and shift whatever, you know, get it out of your system and then make the conscious choice.

If you're doing this out loud, it is very helpful if you catch yourself beforehand. It is, but you know what? Like let's put that under the microscope for a moment because there is a transitional phase in this work where you might not be able to go from, you know, blaming entirely to understanding perfect. Like, that is a big shift.

It could take, it takes good leaders years to make that kind of shift. Is it so bad if you find yourself in two weeks from now with a little bit of this knowledge floating around your head in a problem at work? And you say, I'm so angry right now. Like, I know that this guy messed up the coffee or whatever, you know, whatever the situation is. I really, really want to point my finger at this person and part of me really thinks that he's responsible. But you know what?

before I do that, can we talk about this? I'm angry. I just want everyone to know that I really want to blame somebody. Yeah. But am I missing something? And then you kind of straddle both. And that's a really healthy transitional phase. There's nothing wrong with that. I actually think that's a great transition because then you're saying, okay, I might still be indulging in the old pattern, but at least I have the self-awareness to be like, okay, here's what I want to do. But let me enlist everybody else to help me do something that might be better than that. Yeah, I like that. I think this is a, like you said, transitional process. Most of us aren't going to go, all right, from now on, I'm not blaming anybody else. We're going to have that knee-jerk gut reaction and then we're

going to realize, oh, this is this non-productive thing that I've been doing for 35 years. Yeah, but I also don't know if you really have to make that shift entirely for this work to work. You know, it's not, this process doesn't depend on you becoming Buddha tomorrow. Yeah, good. You know, you don't have to be like, oh, done with blaming. I don't want to shave my head, so good. Yeah. You also got to skip the haircut. But like, yeah, you don't need to be perfect.

You don't have to be this perfect, non-blaming creature to be more productive. You just have to have a little bit of self-awareness and space to be like, let me see if there's another way. Because at the end of the day, you might discover that the other person does deserve to be blamed and I deserve a little bit of responsibility. Right. And that alone is important. And sometimes that is the whole point. And then after that, of course, we take ownership of our part in the situation. We kind of touched on that as well.

You know, we want to be in a position where we appreciate all the factors at play, take our piece for what it is, don't then turn that into self-blame entirely. Like, oh, I had this 10% piece of it, so I'm a loser and a horrible person, and I don't deserve to work here, whatever, like, everyone hates me. Skip that part, you know, get past it. And so, yeah, that resisting of self-punishment actually might deserve a little bit of a highlight because I think it is tempting to take, take on my 20%, my 30%, my 50% responsibility, my 90% responsibility, and then just turn that into, I'm a horrible manager, I'm a horrible

person. Yeah, this is tricky because the more self-aware you become in this department, the more you discover the power of accountability, the more tempting it can be to take on more and more responsibility in your life. Yes. And this actually happens a lot to top performers. It does. Like the people listening to this are going, oh, God, that's me. Yeah, they're growing, It's me, or they're saying, I want to become more of the kind of person who can take responsibility cut to six months later, and they are the person who's carrying the burden for the entire company. What starts off as healthy accountability can subtly slip into internalization, toxic internalization. And that's a pitfall that you have to consciously avoid by constantly checking in with yourself

in just the same way that we've been talking about this whole time, except instead of doing it with your desire to blame other people, you do it with your desire to blame yourself. The reason high performance fall victim to this a lot and just people who I guess want to become better in general is that they're willing to take ownership for problems more than most people are. And then their managers, their companies reward them for that. So if you're the person in the office who says, okay, this work stream got messed up over here because of somebody else, but I'm not going to blame that person. I'm going to step in.

I'm going to help them fix it. I'm going to own my piece of it. And I'm going to do the same for three other work streams. that's the kind of behavior that gets you promoted. It gets you a raise, it gets you a bonus, right? You start to climb in the company and you think, well, okay, I got here by taking on so much instead of blaming, what if I keep taking on more and more and more? And so you end up internalizing responsibility that you probably shouldn't be taking on in the first place. So this is where the desire to get better in this department can kind of backfire.

And you always have to kind of calibrate to make sure that you moving to the middle of the spectrum, moving away, from blame towards accountability doesn't keep moving to the other side of the spectrum towards toxic internalization. You always want to kind of be moving back and forth, back and forth calibrating to make sure that the stuff you're taking ownership over is fair and it's healthy and it's based on an accurate understanding of how much you can and should control and how much other people can and should control. This is great. I think making accountability a habit is sort of like it starts off as a burden and turns into a superpower. Yes. It is a little bit tough to lead by example when it comes to this, but I think that's probably a good first step. Yeah, because at the

end of the day, you know, accountability is really most powerful when it's a habit. We want to get to a point where accountability is no longer this thing that we have to stop, take 30 minutes, go through a checklist, move through it. That can be part of the transitional phase, but over time, you want to replace the lens of blame with the lens of accountability so that it becomes just as knee jerk as the desire to point the finger. Exactly. Right. It becomes just as easy to to say, okay, let me take ownership. So you can consciously cultivate it in a way that becomes second nature until the instinct to take ownership of your actions becomes just as strong, hopefully even stronger than the impulse to blame. And to your point, the best way is really

to lead by example. Leading by example means committing to accountability in your own life before you expect it from other people. Because when you can model accountability for other people, whether it's colleagues, family members, children, friends, partners, that often, them to do the same with us. And sometimes, I think a lot of us go around with this idea where it's like, yeah, I would totally be accountable if everyone else were. Right. Yeah. I'll do it as soon as other people start taking their share of responsibility. Exactly. Which is just like blame 2.0. It's blame built on blame because you're like, well, if they stop pointing the finger, then I'll stop pointing the finger. Right. But it really takes one person to break the pattern by saying, I'm going to

stop doing that in my sphere. And it's incredible to see how that compounds. Because once there's a a section of a company or a part of a family or a piece of a relationship where the blame game isn't happening any longer. The other person could still be doing it all day. But if the other person is doing true accountability, healthy accountability, then the toxicity and the dysfunction doesn't manifest as strongly as it would otherwise. Yeah, Jen. Oh, wait, I'm doing it wrong. That I love, because you can let the, I don't want to say wind out of the sales, but you can, you can almost detoxify your environment by going, look, you might not be taking accountability, but I'm going to, so I'm no longer going to allow you to all this blame you're putting on me.

I'm just going to go and filter that through my purifier of traditional legit accountability. So you can dump all the blame on me that you want, but I'm only going to accept the part that actually is mine. Yeah, that's a big part. And there's a discipline to that. And that's, what you just described is really important. And that, in some way, is harder than just shifting the language of blame. That's having a good internal compass of, you know, I could be on the receiving end of a lot of toxicity or a lot of finger pointing, but it's up to me to decide how much of that is going to mean something.

Right. Like, realistically, no, it isn't my fault that the entire project failed. Yes, I should have done a better job in screening these two vendors or whatever. But legitimately, there were three other managers. Everybody was using these vendors. nobody had a problem until the end. This is not 100% Jordan's fault. Right.

So let's get out of this meeting with a few takeaways. Number one, the next time we go through a round of vendor selection, I'm going to be a lot more diligent, and I'm going to make sure that we check these boxes before we hire somebody because that's what got us into trouble. That's on me. I'm glad I learned it. That won't happen again.

Right. But the fact that nobody said anything for six months, even though everybody seems to have been aware of the problem the whole time, that is not all on me. yeah, that's not all on me. So can we fix that? Can you guys tell me when you see problems with our vendors? I can't imagine somebody being like, no, I'm not going to tell you. Someone would be like, yeah, that's fair. I saw you take accountability for your piece. You've opened a window for me to take accountability for mine. Exactly. So that's kind of how it can go in practice. The other big

way to institutionalize accountability is to create a practice. And we've sort of been touching on it, but turning accountability into a practice means returning to the framework in this article when negative situations arise. So when an instance of blaming comes up and, you know, you haven't been able to stop it in the moment when it arises, you can always fall back on like the policy and the procedure that we've been talking about here. You can take a step back and notice the externalization taking place and you can choose to walk through the steps that we've covered and find a more productive way through the conflict. You can even, honestly, you can even make this a daily or weekly practice, which I know a lot of leaders do. You can do it in your own life and you can do it

with your team. And that could be just a 20 minute conversation where you guys get together and take stock of all of the instances of blaming that came up that week. Yeah. So a blame, a blaming inventory? Yeah, sure. Interesting. I mean, you could do that and say like, hey, remember when we were, we missed that deadline on that competition, that architecture competition? I'm not totally pulling from my friend's life right now because he works at an architecture firm where they have to submit these architectural proposals on these really tight timelines for these competitions. It's really intense. And there's so many work streams. So there's constant miscommunication and people are getting pieces in late or early or, you know, they're still

figuring out how to how to make it all work. And so it's a perfect environment for blame because, you know, there's so many moving pieces you could easily point your finger at one of them. Until five o'clock in the morning. Totally. Regularly. A couple times a week, I think they're doing that. So like, you know, that's a moment where you could say, okay, on Tuesday, I got really mad Jake for not turning in the work stream. But I also didn't check in with him and I just want to call out. I totally could have done that. I'm going to be better about that next time. And also, Jake, I need you to get me this on the, you know what I mean? And you guys can kind of parse the situation after the fact. And next week, when the same situation arises, you've put yourself

in a situation to make sure that that doesn't happen exactly the same way again. So that can be a really powerful practice on your own. It could be with your family or with your team at work. Because that's how you institutionalize accountability and make it a culture as opposed to just, oh yeah, I think I remember this vague checklist that I can do in my own head from time to time. It can be a way of doing business. As a final thought, what I really love is that accountability is, it tends to be anyway, infectious, because just as we can decide we're only going to accept the portion of blame that is ours when we're being accountable, other people will often follow that example.

because I think once we see one or two people doing it, we decide, or at least in my case, we decide, this is healthier, everyone's sharing the burden, it lightens the load for everyone. And even all but the most ardent blamer are going to kind of go, oh, this is actually solving the problem. So we feel crappy less often. Why don't we all adopt this strategy? So anybody but the most pathological, toxic blamer will probably follow suit. And that's kind of a big deal.

that means that you are actually in charge of this because you can decide to take accountability and other people mostly will follow you. Totally. I mean, when we blame other people, we make it much easier for them to point the finger back at us. And when we internalize too much, we also signal that we're willing to put up with that externalization, right? Like, we signal that other people should internalize their reactions too. So we model, either way, we model the behavior that is going to continue to perpetuate

in the office or in the family. So when you stop blaming and you start owning, you set a tone and a standard for how to navigate those situations. That becomes a template. And that template is an example, but it's also a way to show people how you want to interact with them. You say, I'm not going to approach you like the enemy, even if there was a mistake that you made. I'm not going to approach myself as the enemy, even when there's a mistake that I made. I want us both to just take ownership of the pieces that are ours. When you do the work of stepping up and accepting your part, you give people the safety.

And that's what it is. It's safety. They feel safer, stepping up and taking ownership of their part of it. That's why it's infectious, because there's something about this model that makes it possible for people to interact in a whole new way. There's a lot to this. It's simpler than it sounds probably because taking accountability is actually not that hard in principle. It can just be kind of a tough bump to get over or tough hurdle to get over initially. There's a lot more in the article that we created about this. Again, that's linked. in the show notes. But the ultimate impact of this is accountability breeds accountability. It just kind of takes one brave soul to kick things off at first. And when you end up in a place where the impulse to blame is gone, instead the impulse to take accountability is what's present.

You'll find your team, your business, your family is much more productive, enjoyable, frankly. And you'll also be able to quickly identify those who are the toxic blamers because they will kind of refuse to engage in this process entirely. They will just go, well, normally I would, but it's still all Jen's fault. It's still your, this one's 100% your fault. They just can't do it. They require therapy. We can't, you can, what's the expression? You can lead a horse to water, but can't force them to drink. But at least then you've identified the person who's a toxic blamer because when we have a culture of blame, everyone looks like that. And then as soon as one or two people take accountability and the rest follow suit and then there's one sort of

outlier who just won't do it, they really out themselves as the person who is the problem. Yeah, that's interesting. It's easier to see that behavior when it's, when it's rare in the workplace. When it's part of the culture, then it's impossible to see it or say everyone's doing it. So why call out one person? But you know, you're right. I didn't mean to paint such a sentimental picture of how it could be. It's like one person becomes accountable and the whole office changes. Of course not. But then if there are one or two people who don't want to take ownership of their piece of stuff while everybody else is, and they just refuse to change, then now you have some real political capital, social capital, to address the problem, because you're not saying, listen,

everyone else in this office is taking ownership of what they can, and you're not. And they're like, yeah, but you're not either. It's like, well, no, I am now. Literally everyone else. Literally everyone else. So now, like, that conversation can come from a more honest and an authoritative place because you're actually modeling the behavior that you expect in the other person. Right. So everything, I think, becomes less dysfunctional. Everything becomes more productive. You're absolutely right. And by the way, this isn't just about workplaces or families.

This is about relationships in every regard. It's like, how do you treat the person in traffic? How do you treat your best friend? How do you treat your parents? Like, all of it depends on taking ownership of the right stuff and giving them the invitation to take ownership of their stuff. That's right. Hope you're listening, Jen.

Poor Jen's over there like, yeah, I'm not the problem. Stop blaming. That's funny, Jordan. Cute. Thank you very much. This has been super informative. I think it's really useful because, again, I lived in a blame culture for a while in my old business, and it was massively toxic. People go, wow, you rebuilt the whole Jordan Harbager show in one year and, like, what's your secret?

And it's, yes, there's an element of, well, we knew all these mistakes we didn't have to make again. Yes, we had a lot of connections. A lot of it was figuring out that if you take accountability, you make a mistake once, not 400 times. and that turns out saves you a lot of time and effort. Yep, isn't I crazy? It is crazy. Yeah. Thank you very much, Gabe.

My pleasure. Great big thank you to Gabe, Ms. Rahi. As always, making me sound smarter than I am. I always appreciate that. If you want to know how I managed to keep all these amazing folks in my network, well, I've got a huge personal and professional network, and they often overlap. It's made me a very happy and successful person, and I would love for you to learn the same skills.

I'm teaching you how to do this for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. That's our course six minute networking. And don't do it later. Do it now. I know you think you're going to do it later. Dig the well before you're thirsty people. Come on. You can't leverage those relationships if you don't have them.

And the drills take just a few minutes per day. You can find all that at Jordan Harbinger. com slash course. Speaking to building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from this episode on Blame. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And there's a video of this show on our YouTube at Jordan Harbinger. dot com slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with podcast one and this episode is co-produced by

Jason Don't Blame Me to Philippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this episode is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time. is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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