Fixing the Leadership Blame Game

It’s easy to blame a leader. They’re visible. They’re the face of decisions. They’re the ones we point to when work feels confusing, frustrating, or overwhelming.

But what if the problem isn’t just the leader—what if it’s the system that shaped them?

In this mini-episode of Relationships at Work, host Russel Lolacher breaks down the real reason so many leaders struggle: they were never given the clarity, tools, or support to lead well in the first place. Drawing from the R@W Note newsletter, Russel explores how organizations unintentionally set leaders up to fail—and what we can do instead.

You’ll learn:

• Why blaming individual leaders keeps us stuck
• The missing definitions that derail leadership expectations
• The danger of promoting high performers without preparation
• How real feedback loops help leaders actually grow
• What it takes to build leadership ecosystems that support everyone

If you want better leaders, better culture, and fewer leadership blind spots, this episode gives you a new lens—and practical steps—to start fixing the blame game for good.

🎧 Listen now to rethink how leadership is built, supported, and sustained.

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Transcript

Welcome back to Relationships At Work – A leadership podcast helping you build workplace connection, improve culture, and avoid blind spots. I’m your host Russel Lolacher

I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better.   

This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.

Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…

Time for Leaders to Fix the Leadership Blame Game

Let’s be honest—it’s easy to blame a leader.

They’re front and center. They are the face of decisions... or lack of decisions. We can draw a very easy line from our frustrations to them in some way.
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So when we’re confused, overwhelmed, disengaged, or just flat-out frustrated at work… our instinct is to point at them.

“They don’t know what they’re doing.”
“They never give us any direction.”
“They expect us to read their minds.”
“They’re the problem.”

And sometimes? That’s true.
There are poor leaders. There are toxic ones. But more often than not, it's something else, and it's the thing we as leaders don’t talk about enough:

A lot of leaders were never actually given the tools, clarity, or support to lead well in the first place.

Think about that for a second.

We promote high performers into leadership with little to no training.
We assume title equals capability.
We reward task execution and then expect people management.
We tell people to lead… but rarely tell them what that actually means inside our organization.

So while we’re blaming them for not setting expectations, maybe no one ever set expectations for them.
While we’re blaming them for not giving us direction, maybe no one ever gave them a map.

It’s not about excusing bad leadership—it’s about understanding where it starts and what perpetuates it.
And if we want better leaders for ourselves, our teams and our organizations, we need to stop assuming the role itself is self-explanatory.

The Question: What can we do to stop blaming individual leaders and start building systems that help them?

The Action(s):

1.  Clarify what leadership actuallymeans in your organization.

You know I love definitions and we can’t improve what we haven’t defined.
“Leadership” isn’t universal—it’s contextual. It has to be tied to your organization’s values, culture, and expectations.

Don’t just hand someone a job description that lists "manage projects and people" but rather spell out what good leadership looks like. Answer this:

• How do leaders communicate here?
• How do they build trust?
• What does “setting direction” actually mean?
• How are team dynamics and relationships supported?

If we want consistency and accountability, we need shared definitions. Otherwise, you're just handing out compasses with no North Star.

1.  Stop promoting and hoping—start preparing and supporting.

Promoting someone into leadership without preparation is like giving someone the keys to a plane and expecting them to fly because they were a good passenger. Leadership is a completely different skill set.
Not everyone who’s good at their job is good at leading people doing that job. We need to:

• Identify potential leaders early—and start training them before they’re promoted.
• Offer mentorship, shadowing, and coaching—not just performance evaluations.
• Normalize the discomfort of transition and provide a soft landing with real-time support.

If we're relying on instincts or personality alone, you're setting people up to fail.

1.  Build feedback loops, not silos.

One of the most damaging myths in organizations is that leadership feedback should only go one way: top-down. Hate that. What if their leaders are also not properly trained?

If we want our leaders to grow, they need consistent, safe, structured feedback from peers, direct reports, and mentors—not just their boss once a year... or longer.

That feedback shouldn’t be weaponized or stored up for a performance review—it should be built into the culture:

• Skip-level check-ins
• Regular 360-feedback
• Real-time feedback on communication and behaviour
• Team reflections or retrospectives after major projects or conflicts

And all these need to be done with kind honesty in a psychologically safe environment. Our leaders need mirrors, not blindfolds, and consistent feedback can help them become more aware and adapt into how to improve.
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Let’s be clear: If a leader is failing, the organization has already failed somewhere along the way.

Leadership is a role, not a personality. And roles require clarity, support, and accountability. That’s how you build cultures that thrive—by fixing the system, not just finding someone to blame.

Because if your only solution to bad leadership is “hope the next one is better”… You haven’t, and you never will, fixed anything.

We as leaders need leaders, and it only works if we work on the ecosystem, not blame the results of it.