During conflict, we have a tendency to point fingers and blame others, rather than take responsibility for our own mistakes or failures. Sheila Heen explains our fallen human nature from Genesis 3 to help us understand why our initial impulse, either implicitly or in our internal voice, is to blame others.

“When things go wrong we want to know whose fault it was and that’s natural. If you look at the story of the Garden of Eden, God comes back and says, ‘what happened?’ and what does Adam say? ‘She gave it to me!’ and Eve said, ‘don’t look at me, it was the snake!’

It’s almost hardwired into human beings that we want to know whose fault it is when we’re struggling. I don’t think that’s going to go away and the answer isn’t to pretend it’s not there and say, ‘Well it’s nobody’s fault, if you could not be so horrible that would be helpful.’ I think it’s instead to take that energy and shift it toward joint contribution.”

How can we learn how to shift the blame from others and understand our role in the conflict? Sheila explains what it means to make the shift from blame to joint contribution.

“Joint contribution just assumes that everybody involved did or failed to do some things that got us here. What you did might not have been something wrong; it’s just that it didn’t help.”

She shares a few helpful examples of what it looks like to take accountability for our own actions in the midst of conflict.

‘What have I contributed to the problem by doing or failing to do some things? Who are other players in this what have they contributed?’

‘If we can talk about going forward, here are some things I think that I would love to see changed, or now looking back I wish I had handled some things differently.’

“That’s an invitation to a really different conversation. It’s clearly a problem-solving conversation where we’re willing to be mutually accountable. Our job is not to blame, punish each other or accuse, but instead to actually try to fix the problem.”


Sheila Heen is a Founder of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She is author of the book  .

Accountability in relationships
Also on this edition of Neil Stavem
Ken Sande on relational wisdom