March 10, 2009Poison Phrase ~ Blame your assistant
Anna forgot what the due date was for a client project. She lost her client notes, so her friend suggested:
- Call the client and blame your assistant. Tell her your assistant misplaced your notes.
The assistants at the IAAP meeting I spoke at last night knew right away why that is a Poison Phrase. Too often, assistants are considered fair game for blame. It’s as if their professionalism doesn’t matter.
Besides being unfair to the assistant, that claim is simply a lie. Anna admitted to her error and the client had no problem with it.
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The ‘blame your assistant” ploy reminds me of a joke I heard from a Belgium executive.
A new executive taking a new position found three envelopes on his desk, left for him by his predecessor. “Whenever you make a major mistake,” a cover letter advised him, “open one of these envelopes and do what it says.”
Things went well at first but soon the new executive found his organization involved in a real mess due to an error on their part. He opened the first envelope. “Blame your predecessor,” it said. He did. And weathered the first storm.
Some months later, though, there was another slip and all eyes were on the new exec. He opened the second envelope. “Blame your staff,” it said. He did. And things returned to normal.
However, before too much longer there was another crisis for which his office was clearly responsible. Desperately he opened the last envelope. “Write out three envelopes,” it said.
Comment by Peg McMahon — March 11, 2009 @ 8:34 pm