I’d guess he was an older gentleman in his mid-80s, with his arm in a sling and a hunch to his back. He looked like a nice old grandpa.
He sat in seat 1A on my flight to Seattle this week. I was two rows behind him, so we didn’t get the opportunity to chat, but he was chatty with the flight attendant and seatmate and seemed friendly and outgoing. When the plane landed, like everyone else, he jumped out of his seat to be ready to deplane. When he jumped out of his seat, he forgot about the overhead bins and cracked his head on the bin so hard that we all heard it and did a collective ouch.
I’m sure he hurt his head, and I can guarantee he was embarrassed. His response was to get angry at the airline.
“I’m used to flying Continental 767s, and this United 737 is a piece of crap. Why can’t they put proper planes in the air!”
Continental merged with United ten years ago, and the 737 we were flying on was brand new and extremely nice. He obviously hasn’t flown Continental in a while.
But this gentleman decided that banging his head on the overhead bins was someone else’s fault.
How many people refuse to accept responsibility and accountability for their actions? How many people are in the habit of blaming others for their actions? Are you guilty?
Accountability is the ownership of an event. This gentleman didn’t take responsibility or accountability and instead instantly blamed it on the airline.
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Do you acknowledge and learn from your mistakes? I have made the exact same mistake he has on an airplane, and I have banged my head (albeit not as hard as he did) many times. Each time I do it (and I know I’m not alone), I am embarrassed and remind myself it is not the first time. But I jokingly say aloud (to anyone listening), “I cannot believe I did that again. Will I never learn?” <insert laugh> You can be sure someone always shows empathy and shares they do it too.
When you do something wrong at work, acknowledge your mistake and learn from it. Like everyone, I occasionally send an email without the attachment or a meeting invite without double-checking the date and time. Sometimes I realize instantly, and sometimes, I don’t.
What I don’t do is blame Microsoft for it. If I have forgotten the attachment and didn’t notice, I apologize to whoever responded to my email, letting me know the attachment wasn’t there. What I don’t do is say, “Why can’t Microsoft send me a warning letting me know there is no attachment?” It is not their fault, and I need to acknowledge that I did make a mistake. While it would be nice if Microsoft had a warning, it isn’t their fault that I forgot to attach it.
We need to learn from our mistakes too. Today, I rarely send wrong meeting invites, and I used to do it routinely. But I’ve learned I need to slow down and pay attention to the details.
Accountability is also the awareness of when you cannot take on more. For you, this might mean boundaries on what you will agree to do (and not do) so that you don’t overcommit yourself and set yourself up for failure. You need to know when you’ve got too much on your plate.
When you do overcommit, that is your fault. You thought you could do something and couldn’t. You can’t blame others. You can only admit that you overcommitted and cannot deliver what you thought you could.
Sometimes we do need to say no. When we don’t, we need to take responsibility for the misjudgment of our abilities.
Accountability can be a hard pill to swallow. We must stop blaming others, look in the mirror, own our own mistakes, admit them, and learn from them.
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I’m willing to bet that in his moment of embarrassment, the gentleman on the plane didn’t want to admit that banging his head was his fault. When we all heard the big bang, empathy flooded the cabin. When he blamed the airline, he lost it all in a nano-second as we all looked at each other in shock.
