Roger Schwarz mentions some of these same issues when he discusses his Ground Rules for Effective Communication. Effective communication requires that group members:

• Share all relevant information and reasoning; the information should be independently confirmable.
• Be able to make a free and informed choice based on valid information; they should not be coerce or manipulated in the decision making process.
• Should temporarily suspend making judgment when discussing issues. They should focus on interests, not positions. They should combine and balance advocacy and inquiry. They should be willing and not afraid to discuss non-discussable issues.

When the aforesaid conditions exist and people can jointly design next steps, they usually have a sense of ownership of the decisions and an internal commitment to implement and monitor the results.

3. Not accepting individual responsibility
Christopher Avery in his “Responsibility Process Model” describes a natural mental process that plays out when things go wrong. This process, which happens unconsciously, protects our pride from our own unpalatable mistakes, keeps us from solving problems, and from making progress in addressing problems. The process is simply this: Each time something goes wrong, people do their best to avoid owning it.

According to Dr. Avery, the lack of personal responsibility is not so much a character flaw as it is a well-developed and practiced mental process.

The five ways that you (and I) avoid owning a problem are:

• Denial – “I didn’t know I was supposed to …”
• Laying blame – “It’s not my fault; she did it”
• Justifying behavior – “That’s just the way it is; there’s nothing I can do.”
• Shame – “blame me; I should have known better”
• Obligation – “I have to; or I’ll get into trouble”

Often, we assume that if someone is feeling bad for making a mistake, they are taking responsibility. But shame is not the same as taking responsibility. Shame and guilt are not resourceful states of mind – they are just the laying of blame on oneself.
Obligation is not a resourceful state of mind either. At best, it represents lukewarm compliance; at worst, passive-aggressive compliance.

Accepting responsibility implies moving through the stages of the Responsibility Process Model – from Lay Blame to Justify, to Shame, to Obligation, and then on to Responsibility. Quoting Dr. Avery:

“The trigger for the movement involves both the awareness of what you are doing (I’m laying blame) plus the intention to reject that assumption of cause and effect. So, if you are in Lay Blame (That customer is completely unreasonable!), recognize it and acknowledge that this mindset won’t solve your problem.”

Far too often, teams may be held collectively accountable by managers though team members themselves do not take on individual responsibility. It is easier to blame others, or make excuses, than to realize that you are responsible for your own problems and that only you can do something about it.

For example, at the team level, people have a habit of requesting information or asking for some work to be performed by another person by email. The initiator then passively waits for an inordinate period and fails to follow up. The usual excuse is that “I sent an Email”. Making an excuse or shifting the blame does not really address the question of “why did you not actively follow up and take responsibility for making sure that the task was done?”

At the executive level, managers are often quick to blame agile methods for their woes. But they do not realize (or conveniently ignore) that the problems are deep-rooted and have existed for a long time; the agile method has simply made them visible. Handling these entrenched problems or corporate dysfunctions is not easy and most managers simply avoid adressing them by saying “that that’s how it is (and I can’t do anything about it).”

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