This week I have been responding on my blog to a talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/.  Before I move on, I want to highlight and explore just one more comment from her talk:  when she suggests that the definition in the research of blame is “a way to discharge pain and discomfort”.

I confess I think of the early morning news team on Radio 4.  Do they ever report an unhappy event without asking “who’s to blame?”?  I often wonder who this serves and how.  Nor are the newscasters on Radio 4 alone.  Families blame their fellow family members for the every-day inconveniences they mete out on each other or they blame others outside the family for events – sometimes tragic events – that befall them.  Societies blame other societies (or even vague concepts, such as “terrorism”) for actions they do not enjoy.  People blame politicians.  Politicians blame each other.

I ponder the use of blame in the organisations I work with, for here, too, blame is used liberally.  Managers blame their staff for various actions and outcomes that do not meet their needs.  And because they hold the power of position they do this, at times, directly and openly and even as part of a formal process such as appraisal.  One team blames another (sales blames customer service who in turn blame accounts…).  Sometimes such blame is expressed openly and directly.  Oftentimes it is a low, ongoing grumble in the background of our interactions with each other.

Without question, our choice to blame has a positive intention – we do it for a reason.  If Brown and her colleagues in the world of scientific research are right, we do it to discharge pain and discomfort.  This raises a number of questions for me:  how effective is blame as a way to discharge pain and discomfort?  What are the side-effects?  And what are the alternatives?

Perhaps it would help to define blame in some way.  At the time of writing, Wikipedia offers the following definition of blame:  Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone’s good dress sense, and blame the weather for a crop failure.

How effective is blame as a way of discharging pain and discomfort?  It seems to me that it must be effective to some degree, otherwise we would not do it.  To take one of the more extreme examples we can imagine, the relative or friend of someone who has been murdered may well find it easier to feel the anger that comes with blaming the person who has committed the murder than they do to be present to the intense feelings of grief connected with the loss of a loved one.  To give a more mundane – but nonetheless pertinent – example, the manager in the workplace may well find it easier to blame his (or her) staff for their failings than to recognise the shortcomings in the instructions he gave or to acknowledge his role in recruiting staff who lacked the necessary skills for the job.

What are the side-effects of blame?  It’s easy to see that blame has consequences that are undesirable.  If we choose to blame others, for example, we live with the ongoing feelings (of anger, resentment and so on) that go with blame.  And we do this whilst never being entirely free of the feelings we are seeking to hold at bay.  These include the grief of the mourner or the fears of the manager, and so on.  At the same time, there are consequences that go way beyond our immediate emotions.  Blame creates the culture we live in, for example, so that even when we are dealing with people who do not think in ways which produce blame we may fear blame from others because it is what we do ourselves.  In organisations, blame is often associated with a failure to get to the root cause of a problem or issue such that the problem continues.  Both the problem itself and the blame associated with it consume energy in ways which are unproductive.

So what are the alternatives?  I am going to offer two of many:

• If the aim of blame is to discharge pain and discomfort, perhaps a key area to look for alternatives is in the area of handling our emotions.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, invites people to transform difficult emotions by understanding the needs that underpin them.  This means connecting with our unmet needs and the feelings that go with them.  This may well help us with the second of the options I offer here;
• If our aim is to address a problem or issue, then it helps to focus on the outcomes we want and to explore what it would take to get to our desired outcomes.  Thinking about how we or others are contributing to a problem is no longer a matter of blame but rather becomes, in this scenario, a matter of identifying barriers to progress so that we can find ways to make progress towards our desired outcomes.

Whilst we may continue to consider who is responsible, both options involve letting go of attaching blame in order to get the best outcome.  I wonder, are you ready to let go of blame?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using links in this posting.