Coaching practices for My Team Dropped the Ball Again and My First Instinct is to Point at Them or at Circumstances but I'm Realizing That the Second I Locate the Cause Out There I've Quietly Handed Away Any Power to Fix it and I Keep Doing Exactly That and Then Wondering Why Nothing Changes

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For My Team Dropped the Ball Again and My First Instinct is to Point at Them or at Circumstances but I'm Realizing That the Second I Locate the Cause Out There I've Quietly Handed Away Any Power to Fix it and I Keep Doing Exactly That and Then Wondering Why Nothing Changes, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My team dropped the ball again and my first instinct is to point at them or at circumstances
• I keep blaming myself and vowing to just try harder, yet the same failure happens again and again no matter how much willpower I throw at it
• When something goes wrong my first move is to find who dropped the ball, and when it goes well I quietly feel it was mostly me
• When something goes wrong my first explanation is always bad luck or that the deck was stacked against me, and I notice that story leaves me with nothing to do differently next time
• Every time this conflict flares my mind races to how they’re at fault, and I keep noticing I never once turn the question around to my own expectations and reactions

Practices that may help

1. Take extreme ownership
   When the team fails, the leader looks first at what the leader did or failed to do.
   Extreme Ownership, Made Practical
2. Distinguish system causes from individual causes in the analysis
   Most failures have system causes and individual causes; fixing only the individual leaves the system to produce the same result again.
   After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
3. Look out the window for credit, in the mirror for blame
   When things go well, credit others; when things go wrong, look at yourself first.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
4. Reframe outcomes toward effort and strategy
   After a result, attribute it to actions you took (or can change) rather than to fixed luck or fate.
   Locus of Control: Building a Sense of Agency
5. Drive all blames into one
   When conflict arises, examine how self-grasping is the root, rather than blaming the other person.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
6. Give the work back without abandoning people
   Resist taking ownership of problems that belong to the people facing the adaptive challenge.
   Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
7. Create a culture of peer-to-peer accountability
   Teams that only hold each other accountable through the manager haven’t built real accountability at all.
   The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
8. Break the advice-dependency loop
   When people come to you for every decision, it signals advice-giving is making them less capable, not more.
   The Leader as Coach: A New Management Paradigm
9. Bring a proposed solution when you bring a problem
   Describe the problem and your recommended path before asking for a decision.
   Managing Up: Practical Skills for Working with Your Boss
10. Personalization and self-blame
    Take excessive personal responsibility for negative events that were partly or wholly outside your control.
    Cognitive Distortions: The Thinking Errors Behind Anxiety and Depression

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