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| No | 23% | 31 votes | Total: 134 votes | |
| Yes | 77% | 103 votes |
No
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Add to FavoritesI do not believe that the leader should take the blame for staff errors. What one staff member did on his own does not reflect the intention of the boss who is the so called leader. However, with this said, I do believe the leader must take responsibility for the error, which I believe to be different from blame.
More often than not, the leader had the best intentions when teaching the staff, and ensured that the protocol was drilled into the employee. However, just because one employee makes an error by not following the protocol that was clearly delivered by the leader is no reason to put blame on the leader.
It can be argued that the leader should be closely monitoring the work of his employees, ensuring that they do a proper job. However, when the leader is managing people, he can't possibly watch what everybody is doing all the time. The business leader is just heading up a team, and when a member of the team makes a mistake, the leadership shouldn't be the sole reason for the mistake.
For example, in hockey, the coach can be looked upon as the leader, guiding to the team to success. When the team wins, some of the credit must be given to the coach for his leadership, but not all the responsibility for the win is his. It is also the player's talents that have brought victory to the team. Alternatively, when a player, "gives up" a goal, you can't just go and blame the coach. The blame doesn't go straight to the leader.
The same applies to the business world which is also a team. Of course, proper leadership is important, but putting all blame onto the leader for mistakes will ultimately undermine is authority and lower his self esteem. This is not a recipe for a healthy company. The employee that made the mistake must be reprimanded by the leader to ensure that the mistake does not happen again.
Sure, you can come up with a hypothetical situation with a really incompetent leader to demonstrate the side where that leader should have taken the blame. However, the leaders I am referring to are competent ones, with at least some knowledge and skill base otherwise they would not have been put in that position in the first place. They are not trying to cause their staff to make errors, but to ensure a high quality of work to be completed. This is the leader that I am talking about. I do not believe that when a good leader like this has one of his staff members make an error that the leader should be blamed.
Learn more about this author, Kelly Austrone.
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Yes
When one assumes a leadership position, he or she assumes all the responsibility that goes along with it. One of the responsibilities of leadership is to prevent errors from happening in the first place. If errors occur, it is not only the leader's responsibility but her obligation to step up to the plate and take ownership of any problems or issues created by the error.
Part of the role of an effective leader is to train her staff to avoid making errors. While errors are inevitable, proper training of staff should serve to reduce their numbers, therefore preventing the leader from finding herself in the position to need to take the blame. Therefore, the first question an effective leader should ask herself when faced with an error is why the staff member didn't know better in the first place. Nine times out of ten, the answer will be that they were simply not properly trained. A well-trained staff is not only one that will produce fewer errors, but will also be more productive overall. The wise leader constantly monitors the training needs of her staff and finds a way to provide any additional training that is necessary to help her staff function at it's best.
Effective leaders also empower their staff members to resolve errors as they arise. If she provides her staff with the proper training and then allows them the flexibility to handle and resolve errors, many of them can be corrected before ever becoming problems or issues that have to land on the leader's desk. Empowerment gives staff members a sense of ownership of what they are doing and will lead to an overall more productive and content staff as well. If the staff doesn't feel they have to ask permission for every move they make, they will be able to more effectively deal with minor problems which in turn will give the leader more time to focus on her big-picture responsibilities.
Another function of the effective leader is to maintain proper communication with her staff. Through proper and consistent communication between staff members and the leader, many errors can be avoided or addressed before they become major problems. No leader should ever be blind-sided by an error or problem if they have maintained good communication with their staff. If a leader is faced with an error or problem that seems to arise out of the blue, she should ask herself why she didn't know about it sooner. Odds are the answer will be ineffective communication. If ineffective communication is found to be the case, the leader should examine the current channels of communication available to the staff. Does communication flow both ways? Do staff members feel comfortable communicating upward? Do they have many different ways to communicate with each other and with the leader? If the answer to any of those questions is "no" then there is a major communication problem which needs to be addressed and resolved.
By assuming responsibility for all aspects of training, empowering and communicating with her staff, the effective leader will find herself in a position of having to explain away errors much less often. She will instead find herself with a smoothly flowing operation with competent, confident staff members who can either prevent or effectively handle any errors which may arise. At the very least she will be aware of them before receiving a surprise call from her irate boss demanding an explanation. Sometimes being able to say, "Yes, I am aware of the issue and these are the steps I am taking to resolve it," is a good way to avoid the issue of blame altogether.
Learn more about this author, Bruce W. Coffman.
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