People who are scared to step into leadership are almost certainly blaming others. They’re expecting authority to be handed to them, upset that it isn’t, and blaming others for their reality. They project that same blame onto themselves — if I step into leadership, I’ll be blamed too.
“Blame is acknowledging the leadership of somebody else and giving yours away.” In a marriage, the person blaming is really saying: “You take leadership.” On a cliff with a group in poor conditions, the person who says “What are you guys thinking? These conditions are terrible!” is blaming. The person who says “This doesn’t work for me — I’m going down” is the leader.
Joe shares a powerful saying: “At the beginning of the journey you blame others, in the middle of the journey you blame yourself, at the end there is no blame.” Moving along this spectrum directly improves leadership.
There’s also the trap of feeling responsible for others, which is actually disempowering. Joe recalls being told “That’s super disempowering” when he said he felt he’d let someone down. The response: “You don’t think that I’m responsible for my own experience?” Feeling responsible for others is not the same as owning your leadership — it’s a subtle form of hubris that assumes others can’t handle their own experience.
Related Concepts
- Leadership is a universal quality, not an assigned role
- Blame is an unowned want
- Feeling helplessness creates agency
- Blame is corrosive shame-passing that never resolves anything