the ole blame game

A major factor in human behavior is the judgment individuals make concerning why something happened as it did (called causality or attribution). Research has found that when a negative outcome occurs, the individual will typically blame the situation, but others will blame the person. When something positive occurs, the person (the actor) generally claims he/she is responsible for the outcome, while others (the observers) may claim he/she was fortunate (lucky). This bias may not occur when the observer has an overall favorable opinion of the actor. When the observer is the actor's manager and this the halo effect exists, the leader may transfer his/her overall favorable opinion of the employee to judge the cause of the specific outcome so that negative outcomes are judged to be the result of the situation and positive outcomes the result of the individual.

Recognizing the human tendencies that affect how leaders and employees make sense of the employee’s success and failure is critical to the quality of the interpersonal exchange. Leaders must first recognize their halo prejudices about their employer or their attribution tendencies - to blame an employee for failure or attribute success to the situation while the employee is doing the opposite.  This requires the leader to be especially open to the possibility that both the leader's and the employee's judgments about the cause of success or failure is biased and seek to objectively probe the contributors to the outcome, helping the employee do the same.

Challenging natural assumptions on causality and overcoming biases enhances listening and is an important element of building trust and loyalty.