This is how to avoid blame at work

—Links—

Career Coaching: https://www.mrjonathanoffice.com/career-coaching 

Job Search Coaching: https://www.mrjonathanoffice.com/job-search-coaching 

Read my letters: https://mrjonathanoffice.substack.com/ 

—Socials—

Xiaohongshu: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/5fc40fdf000000000100a66b

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanrhyzli/ 

—Like and Review—

If you enjoyed this episode, the greatest compliment you could give me is to like and review this podcast. Let’s support free career podcasts for Chinese professionals on the internet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Day Day Up, the weekly podcast for Chinese professionals navigating the Western workplace. I'm Jonathan. Let's get into it. The harder I work, the more blame I get. Kim said this to me last week. She's an AI engineer in a client-facing role. Like many high performers I work with, Kim suffers from a condition. It keeps her up at 2 a.m. wondering if her teammate is hitting their deadlines, wondering if the client will call tomorrow asking where the deliverable is, wondering if they've caught every bug. There's a name for this condition, ownership. Ownership can be a beautiful thing. When things go well, the applause goes to you, and so do the rewards. That's why so many of us Chinese work weekends and late nights for it while our Western coworkers clock out at five. But when things go wrong, suddenly it's all on you. If you're like him and you want all the upside of ownership with none of the blame, keep these three principles in mind. One, assume responsibility, not liability. Growing up in Canada, I hated group projects. Basically, these just meant hardworking Chinese kid John will do the whole project while everyone else plays. So at the age of seven, I already learned that responsibility and liability are not the same thing. Responsibility is owning your piece and doing it well. Liability is taking the blame for the whole thing. And when you assume an outcome that was never yours, you set yourself up to fail. So next time if the project is bottlenecked by others, don't say workstream B is behind schedule, so I'll make sure it all gets done. Do say I've made sure workstream A is done and on track. I want to flag that workstream B is behind schedule. I think we should align on how we can support it to get back on track. G2, document before dive. And when you see a teammate drowning, the instinct is to dive straight in and start helping. But undocumented help is invisible help. If the project fails, all anyone sees is your fingerprints on a failed deliverable. So document it in two quick moves. First, clear it with that person so you're not forcing help they never asked for. Part A is done and I have some time. I noticed part B is tough. Want me to take a pass? Your call. Then tell your manager. So everyone knows where your responsibility starts and ends. Quick update. Part A is done. Teammate, okay, my help on part B. So I'm stepping into support. Let me know if you have concerns. The best part is if your help ends up making a difference, you get the credit you deserve. Sometimes visibility is as simple as raising your hand before you solve the problem. Three, acknowledge, don't apologize. When something breaks, the reflex is to apologize, like, sorry, I should have caught this. But in a high stakes moment, every sorry is a quiet confession. It tells the room the mistake was yours. And it's utterly unfair to put a project mistake onto one person. You see, apologizing accepts the blame, but acknowledging just accepts the situation. Saying, I know this is frustrating shows you hear them without making it your fault. So when you answer for a poor outcome, remind your boss, you're on the same team with the same goal. You want to figure out together what to do going forward. Don't say, I'm so sorry. Unfortunately, the client terminated our deal. I should have flagged this earlier. Do say the client went another way, and I'm just as frustrated as you are. In our sync last week, we discussed how Part B was behind, and despite our efforts to step in and support, it wasn't enough. Here's what I think we can do going forward. Take the applause, take the credit. Just don't take the fall for a mistake that was never yours alone to own. Alright, that's your growth tip for this week. Now let's take a melon break. Christopher Nolan's Trojan Horse for months. Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey, was the internet's favorite thing to hate. A few reasons, whether you agree or not, he cast Lupita Nyongo, a black actress, as Helen of Troy. He was rumored to cast Elliot Page, formerly Ellen Page, a trans man as Achilles. He gave ancient Greek warriors American accents and modern English dialogue. Armor in the movie, according to historical purists, was not historically accurate. It was a $250 million bet on a 2,700 year old poem three hours long, rated R, filmed entirely on IMAX cameras for the first time in history. Everyone had already decided it was going to be a disaster, even before they had seen a single frame. Nolan's response? He shrugged. These conversations that happen before people see the film, they're always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet. Then just a few days ago, the movie came out. And it came out in a big way. The Odyssey opened to $263.7 million globally, the biggest opening weekend of Nolan's entire career. At the time of writing, it has amassed a 94% rating from critics and a 97% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics are calling it his best work, and whispers of best picture are spreading. The loudest people in the room from a few months ago are now suddenly very, very quiet. I applaud my favorite director for his inspirational vision yet again. When I see it in theaters, I doubt the Odyssey will replace Interstellar or the prestige in their special place in my heart. But this movie's story outside of the theater has been a hero's journey of its own. Here's how you can use this topic in Small Talk next week. With coworkers, did you end up seeing the Odyssey? Everyone was roasting it online for months, and then it broke Nolan's own box office record. Kind of hilarious how fast the internet changed its mind once people actually watched it. With your boss. The Odyssey rollout was a good reminder about pre-launch noise. There was months of backlash before anyone saw the film, and now it's breaking records. Makes me think about how much energy teams spend reacting to opinions before a thing even ships versus just letting the work land. Daity Up is written, produced, and hosted with love by me, Jonathan Lee. To learn more, check out my free weekly newsletter for communicating in the Western Workplace, read by over 2,000 Chinese professionals. Just search Daily Up Jonathan and you will find me. That's all for today. See you next Sunday with the Chisang Sho Banco.