Finger Pointing

Despite the great effort you and your team put in this proposal, you didn’t win the business. A little later you hear comments like: ‘Peter should have done the summary better’ and ‘Why hasn’t Sarah gathered more info from the customer’. This kind of finger pointing is toxic ! Instead, teams learn from their defeats in a structured post mortem review. Their members use ‘I’ statements and don’t blame their colleagues. ‘I felt unclear about my contributions. I’d prefer to define our roles clearer next time’. Great teams share responsibility for success and failure !