Kimberlee Castillo Yee

I was fortunate to work with a good presenter a few months ago on a workshop on conflict resolution. Michael brought up an interesting phrase, "blame storming". His definition was when teams get together and decide who to blame for the mistakes of the team. Now those of us who have been teaching leadership skills for many years, understand that this is not a good function of a cohesive team, but as managers and team leaders, do we foster this practice? Have we created an environment that does not allow mistakes to be made? Yes, we all know that no one is perfect, but is perfection the expectation? If we want our teams to be accountable for what they say and do, we need to give some latitude for failure. I have learned more from failure than I learned from success. Post-it Notes adhesive was designed from the failure of another product. Encourage your teams to take risks. We would much rather have "brain storming" than "blame storming".