The Art of Project Management

11.3. Take responsibility

Taking responsibility for something doesn't make it your fault: it means that you will deal with the consequences and be accountable for resolving the situation. Many people fear taking responsibility because they don't want to be held accountable and put at risk for ridicule or reprimand. A good manager should have the opposite disposition: in matters involving his team or his project, he should seek out responsibility and use it to help the team and the project succeed. If relieving an engineer or tester of fear of blame will get me a better solution, or the same solution faster, I'd gladly take the trade. If my own manager is any good, taking responsibility for a problem might earn me praise. By lending real responsibility to the problem, I instantly make the problem less dangerous to the project (see the later section "Roles and clear authority").

This idea of taking responsibility can extend not just to blame or failure, but to all relations with other people. As Larry Constantine wrote in Beyond Chaos: The Expert Edge in Managing Software Development (Addison Wesley, 2001):

Instead of wondering why some person is so difficult, I find it more useful to ask myself why I am having difficultly with that person. It is, of course, usually far easier to spot the mote in a colleague's eye than to see the macaroni in your own, but every frustrating encounter with a difficult person is an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Over the long term, you may ...