LEADERS DO NOT SHIFT BLAME.

One of the best ways to exhibit social grace and decorum is to accept responsibility for our actions and every decision we make. Nobody else should be held responsible for our mistakes, even if we did not directly make them.
But human beings naturally tend to blame somebody else for their misfortunes. To err is human and shifting blame for errors is a natural human attitude. When somebody does something that hardly suits his status, he becomes defensive and points accusing fingers at other people. We live in a society where putting the blame on someone else appears to be the norm. But blaming other people when things go wrong does not really make problems go away. Instead, it transfers responsibility for the problems to someone else and delays the process of finding a solution.
Yet being accountable is not always easy. When the result, situation or circumstance is different from our expectations, we usually want others to take the blame and not us.
Although we may feel that shifting blame to someone else makes us look better, it is at best a short-term solution. Finding a solution to problem requires learning to control our reactions.
In the beginning, the first man and woman were involved in this undignified blame shifting game. Adam blamed Eve for his disobedience to God. In turn, Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her.
Once, a scene in a TV play-let showed two little children pointing accusing fingers at each other. They were both playing and in the process, they ruined some toys. When their mother asked who destroyed the toys, both of them simultaneously pointed at one another and said, "He did."
Blame-shifting is a vicious and an unending cycle that leads us to nowhere. So if everybody keeps pointing accusing fingers at the other person, then we are very far from making any significant progress as individuals, as a nation.
To own up to or faults and to accept responsibility for our action is a very humbling and great way to make progress in life. People want to be built up and not torn down. So they naturally gravitate away from those who constantly shift blame on them and make them look bad. Blame-shifting also has a tendency to make others reluctant to work with us.
The key to truly winning the blame game is to stay focused on the wider purpose. If we allow ourselves to get caught shifting blames, who wins becomes more important than the thing we want to create or fix.
But if we keep our reactions aimed at the real problem (not who said or did what), we can be successful; not only in a particular situation, but in every aspect of our lives.