Here's how you can navigate the fine line between responsibility and self-blame as a project leader.

Recognize that, as a leader, you are accountable for the outcomes and performance of the project. Take ownership of any mistakes or shortcomings that may have occurred under your supervision. Understand the difference between taking responsibility for actions and outcomes versus assigning blame. Responsibility involves acknowledging your role and accountability, whereas blame focuses on attributing fault without constructive intent. Instead of dwelling on self-blame, shift your focus to learning from mistakes and identifying areas for improvement. View errors as opportunities for growth and development, both for yourself and the team.

To break the self-blamed cycle with positive leadership approach with a continuous feedback mechanism, which addresses the gap & short lines in the project.

It's crucial to strike a delicate balance between taking responsibility for your actions and showing yourself compassion when things don't go as planned. Responsibility is the cornerstone of effective leadership—it's about owning up to your role in the project's outcomes, whether they're positive or negative. However, it's equally important to recognize that mistakes are a natural part of the process. Instead of dwelling on them, practicing self-compassion allows you to acknowledge your humanity and treat yourself with kindness and understanding.

As a project leader, effectively managing the balance between responsibility and self-blame requires key strategies: Maintain objectivity, turn mistakes into learning opportunities, prioritize solutions, delegate tasks, seek diverse perspectives, practice self-compassion, and maintain a healthy perspective. These approaches promote a positive work environment and enhance project management effectiveness.

Mistakes happen, acknowledge your errors, learn from them. Hiding them only makes it worse. Shows your honesty and integrity. Unless you're in a organization that doesn't value that, then by all means gaslight away. 😶

Take a step back, put on your detective hat, and objectively analyze the situation. Remember, Sherlock Holmes wouldn't jump to conclusions without evidence, and neither should you. Use the facts, and without judgement.

Communication is key and communication is a dialogue! Learning can come from anywhere and it is important that the team, including you, sit together and do a post-mortem. This is NOT to apportion blame but to identify challenges and to learn to do better in the future. As Issac Newton said "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".

A project is always breaking new ground. No one has done it before you, otherwise it wouldn't be a project. Mistakes can happen. They are also important because they show you whether you are going in the right direction. For me, it is therefore always important to have good and constant communication within the team. And a sounding board to reflect on steps and experiences - to learn from them.

Expand your knowledge, develop new skills, and grow as a project leader. Once in a while wring yourself out occasionally to avoid flooding the office. We do better by knowing better.

Team work makes the dream work. Support the team, inspire them, and occasionally bring them tokens of your appreciation. Do a nice gesture, and if anything it's just a nice thing to do. Be kind.

The team is the decisive success factor. In most projects, you can't choose your team. But you can work with them to define rules on how to work together successfully. For me, this means discussing and deciding with everyone in the team which team rules apply and what role(s) everyone has. And what they need from me. Some need daily exchange and support, some only every two weeks. It's important to make individual agreements and to value them.

Guilt trip can be a lonely journey and especially painful if you are the leader who is taking onboard the total responsibility for any failure. In fact, such situations demonstrate the need to alienate yourself from the results, whether it is success or failure, it is shared responsibilities and results. Hence, by encouraging retrospective discussions with the team, we can explore aspects that may have contributed to a particular result. But, I believe most importantly such dialogs bring opportunities to build bonds within the team. I often like referring to the Tuckman's team maturity model when there is the need to address certain behaviors in a team and navigate towards effective performance and healthy adjourning.

The value of lessons learnt that are well documented is undoubtful. However, in some cases it could be useful to store more details and notes on the project as it might work as prompts for ideas in the future. It means that some thoughts, feelings and generally wider outputs of this particular project could feed into future projects for this team. In this vein, every project holds potential to contribute to the overall team's maturity.