Garage Entrepreneurs

by Natalie Tags: Entrepreneur, Failure, leading a team, mentor, mentors, taking responsibility, taking the blame, team member

Oct. 30^th 2008

Today I met with a very respectable entrepreneur. We talked about what it takes to run a business and she shared with me what she considered to be the biggest lesson she has learned from one of her mentors. That lesson is that everything is always your fault. She told me about a situation from when she was working for her mentor’s company and she was responsible for leading a team. One member of that team was not putting 100% into their work and it resulted in a very disgruntled client. She was mad at the team member who did not complete their share of the work and she expressed her frustration to her mentor who told her that the whole situation was her fault. Shocked, she asked how it could possibly be her fault, to which the mentor replied, “It’s your fault because you were leading the team. You must not have made the resources available to your team.” Then the mentor told her to get on the phone with the client and tell them it was all her fault and then work the whole weekend for free to fix the situation. In the end, the team member found out she had taken the blame, apologized, and started working twice as hard. She said that taking the blame was hard but it was the right thing to do and it taught her the most important lesson she has learned so far.

Taking responsibility and doing what you can to make the situation right is the most professional thing you can do. It’s always easy to place blame on someone else. It isn’t easy to accept blame though- especially when what you’re accepting blame for isn’t entirely your fault. After you’ve taken the fall, pick yourself back up and don’t miss the chance to learn an important lesson. Remember, “a man may fall many times but he won’t be a failure until he says someone pushed him.”