The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Owning the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

One of the most liberating moments of my career came when I adjusted my attitude.

I made the conscious decision to take ownership and responsibility not just for the team, but also for the inputs and outcomes. I sat back and reflected on what managers’ responsibilities are, not just their physical tasks and outputs and took time to consider the emotional impact of this decision.

I would not always get what I wanted, feedback would be sparse, I would get things wrong and not always hear about what I got right. I would be unsure of myself, sometimes it would feel as if I had bitten off more than I could chew, etc.

One emotional impact was to take responsibility when things went wrong and praise when things went right.

At the time I was working for a manager who was very much siding with the blame culture. He would ensure anything that was not carried out to his standard would be highlighted as an enormous mistake (even though at best there were no errors, at worst it was a minor error) and the blame would then be assigned to an individual or individuals.

Initially, my response was to mirror that management style (100% task manager) and then project my unhappiness on to the team.

I learnt very quickly that working within a blame culture stifles productivity, demotivates staff and is toxic to my attitude, behaviour and those around me and I decided that I was going to turn things around and change my attitude.

One of my first acts was to take ownership and responsibility and equally to support the team through the good and the bad. With these attitudes changed, I made the conscious decision that when my manager pointed the finger at me, my response would be positive.

I would consider the best resolution to the problem rather than my initial response, which was to think whom I could blame.

I also started to change the language I used with my team and internally. Instead of making excuses and using negative words and phrases, I chose to swap into positive responses. When I was blamed for something, I would not come back with a response that could be construed as an excuse. My response would be, “Let me look into this and get to the bottom of the issue”.

Once I had carried this out (it was more often than not, a communication issue rather than an operational issue), I would look for a resolution with the help of my team. I would then feed back to my manager and let him know the resolution (where applicable) and give him a brief (high-level, not detailed) overview of the cause of the issue, always highlighting the great input from the team.

My overall hope was that whilst I couldn’t change my manager, possibly I could influence him.

However, what I knew for sure was that I could change my own attitude. The outcome for me was that I was much more positive with work and recognised my manager’s faults. As a result of my new-found attitude and follow-up behaviour, work became manageable and enjoyable.

I would highly recommend that you consciously step-up and take ownership of the good and the bad. Change any negatives into positive thoughts and actions. One of the easiest ways to carry this out is to reflect on what went wrong and learn from it.

To take this a stage further, take actions to ensure that the learnings are put into place and the mistakes and errors are not repeated. That alone will make you more confident within your role and reinforce to yourself and your team that a positive mindset is more productive and rewarding than a negative one.