Episode 9 – From Blame to Ownership—and the Power of Praying for Leaders

Recently, my good friend Krystal Parker, who is the president of the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce, wrote an article about the human propensity to cast blame when things go wrong—or even when they just don’t go quite as we’d like.

She pointed out that this has been a pattern since the beginning. In Genesis, when God asked Adam if he had eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam said,

“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12, NIV)

Adam was quite generous with blame—he not only blamed Eve, he blamed God for creating her.

Thousands of years later, we still have trouble accepting responsibility for our mistakes. “I was wrong” seems to be one of the hardest things for humans to say. Too many of us would rather deny responsibility or make an excuse or somehow make whatever happened someone else’s fault.

In her article, Krystal drilled down to a specific aspect of this issue that goes far beyond personal relationships and hurt feelings, and that’s poor communication in the workplace.

According to research conducted by Eschbach [ESH-bahk], a leading software development company, the cost of poor communication in U.S. companies alone could be as high as $1.2 trillion every year.

There are direct costs, which include unplanned downtime,

production delays,

quality issues and recalls,

safety issues,

and regulatory non-compliance.

Indirect costs, which are harder to measure, include lost business opportunities,

lower employee engagement and morale,

turnover,

and waste caused by duplicate efforts, errors, and poor resource allocation.

Twenty-eight percent of employees blame missed deadlines on poor communication. On average, knowledge employees—that is, employees whose work depends on thinking, information, and communication rather than manual labor—lose nearly one full day of productivity each week due to communication failures.

According to the leadership development firm Fierce, 86% of employees and executives say the primary cause of workplace failures is a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication.

The global corporate training market for communication skills reached $7.8 billion in 2024. Obviously, companies know they need to invest in this issue.

I want to share a point that Krystal made. It’s something simple that you can do in your business, no matter what size it is, and even at home, that won’t cost you a dime—but it will save you significantly in those poor communication costs and make a priceless contribution to the quality of your relationships.

Here it is:

When communication breaks down, instead of blaming someone else, we should ask:

How could I have made that clearer?

By doing this, we’re taking responsibility for how clearly our message is understood. We’re taking ownership of the situation and what it’s going to take to correct the problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

A key part of figuring out how you could have made your message clearer is to not assume the other person knows what you do. Just as casting blame is a part of human nature, so is not wanting to appear uninformed or ignorant, so we’re not always comfortable asking for clarification or more information.

And that’s the beginning of a communication breakdown.

Way back, in the early days of my career when I was trying to find my place and when companies did far more things manually than they do now, I spent some time working at the local telephone company, and then for the Orlando Sentinel. At the phone company, we used an acronym, CWC, which meant “customer will call.” When there was an unresolved situation, but we needed something from the customer to handle it, we would note the file and mark it CWC, meaning that the situation was pending and we were waiting for the customer to call us with information or whatever.

At the Sentinel, I worked in the advertising department, where the acronym CWC was also used—but it meant “cash with copy,” meaning that the ad had been paid for when it was submitted. Unfortunately, no one explained that to me. I was young, relatively inexperienced, and I just assumed acronyms would carry from one company to another.

So I was marking ads with CWC meaning that the advertiser was going to be calling about something, and they were being processed as though the advertiser had paid cash when they turned in the ad, so the billing department wasn’t sending out an invoice. That went on for a while before someone figured out what was happening.

I have no idea how many free ads I was responsible for.

As I said earlier, there’s a huge market for communication skills training, and it may be a good investment for your organization.

But when there’s a miscommunication—whether the other person got confused or made a mistake or deliberately did something contrary to what was expected—don’t make your first reaction one of casting blame. Instead, respond from a place of humility and responsibility.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 6:4 (NIV):

Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,

Placing blame is easier than accepting responsibility.

If you’re always looking outward, you never turn inward,

you aren’t shining a light so you can see who you really are and become who God made you to be.

Turn that light on. Not a spotlight of attention, but a bright light of self-examination.

And ask yourself:

How could YOU have made that clearer?

And to go a step further, what could YOU have done to prevent the problem? Even when the fault rests with someone else.

At work, do this whether you’re the boss or the first line employee. Outside of work, do this no matter what the relationship is, whether it’s with family members, friends, or casual acquaintances.

Our world is chaotic and our culture is as divided as it’s ever been. When we refuse to cast blame, when we’re willing to take ownership of a situation gone wrong, we model what it means to follow Christ in real life.

And we make our corner of the world a better place.

I’ll be back in a moment.