Trapper: Listen, how did you come up with a
name like Tuttle anyway?
Hawkeye: He was my imaginary childhood
friend.
Trapper: You had an imaginary friend?
Hawkeye: Yea, if anybody said, “Who knocked
over the garbage?” I said “Tuttle”. If
they said, “Who broke that window?” “Tuttle.”
Who wet the bed?”
Trapper: Tuttle.
In an attempt to
help out Sister Theresa from the local orphanage with money and medical supplies,
Hawkeye invented Captain Tuttle as a fictional scapegoat to credit the blame
for the unauthorised philanthropy.
There seems to be a
default setting within human beings that automatically passes blame onto
someone or something else when things go wrong.
Maybe the childhood rhyme “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?”
planted a seed for what has grown into a significant ‘denial and blame’
epidemic in adulthood. Leaders understand
the challenge of discerning responsibility when those we lead play the denial
and blame game. However, for a leader to
blame others for their own actions is to abdicate responsibility and risk the
credibility of their leadership. Author Reggie McNeal acknowledges that, "All of us make mistakes and exercise poor
judgement occasionally. The key is to get in front of critics by owning
mistakes quickly." I find
it refreshing when a leader steps up and accepts responsibility for their
actions by saying, “I messed up” or “I got it wrong.”
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