How frequently do you shift blame for mistakes you’ve made?

Our reader poll today asks: How frequently do you shift blame for mistakes you’ve made?

• Never. I always own my mistakes: 66%
• Sometimes. It just kind of happens, and I don’t realize I’m doing it: 32%
• Often. Usually, someone else caused the problem to start: 1%
• Always. I have a hard time taking responsibility for mistakes: 1%

Mess up, fess up. While most of you actively admit to and own mistakes, there’s a large group of you who admit to blame-shifting. It’s easy to do. None of us likes to make mistakes let alone claim responsibility for them. When you do find yourself in that situation, it might be easier to split the mistake into components and own the portions of it that are your responsibility. Many mistakes have multiple parties contributing. No one wants to take the blame for someone else’s mistake so we find ourselves attributing the entire mistake to someone else’s actions. Find and own the parts of it that are yours. Leave it to others to take responsibility for their portion. The interesting thing is once you publicly claim your part of the issue, others will tend to claim theirs too since they’re no longer on the hook for the entire issue.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.