So the Olympics have got off to a positive start with an incredible opening ceremony and gold medals in the pool and the cycling for Team GB. But not all athletes have been as successful as we saw in the case of the 14 year old Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge, who came 8th out of 8 in the final of the 10M synchronised diving event on Monday.
However, it wasn’t until afterwards that the bullets started to fly as Aldridge (almost twice the age of Daley) told the press that he blamed his partner for their failure. He said:
“Unfortunately it’s a partnership; you both have to be on the top of your game. I wasn’t on top of my game but Tom was nowhere near the top of his.”
These kinds of comments are dangerous in what is essentially a team event and there are parallels with the world of work here, where blame cultures never, ever deliver good results. When blaming others for failures and looking for scapegoats becomes the norm in organisations it becomes toxic for those involved and for the business as a whole. Trust and responsibility breaks down, people resent those who should have taken responsibility and take this behaviour as a message or role model that gives them permission to do the same.
People often find it easier to blame ‘the system’ or the organisation and, by extension, its leaders as a group of people. However, this is no better than employees blaming each other and is just another substitute for taking responsibility and working together to solve the problems that arise as part of working life.
I hope the swimming coaches in Team GB have taken the time to sit Aldridge and Daley down and explain the value of sticking together to solve their problems, rather than trying to do so in the media. They should also be taking steps to ensure that this is not the start of a blame culture developing in Team GB, where individual athletes value their own success over that of the team. The Olympic silver medalist Leon Taylor, who acts as mentor to Tom Daley, had it right when he said,
“Synchronised diving is a partnership and the last thing you need to be doing is apportioning blame.”
He could have substituted the words ‘Synchronised diving’ for ‘Work’
