The habit of explaining and repositioning our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people will excuse us for it.
So, for examples, “Sorry I am late but my other meeting ran over.” Or, “This didn’t get done because we have a lot going on right now.”
Now, we are all human and we all make mistakes. And most of us will provide an explanation as to what triggered our mistake. But a mistake is not a behavior. A mistake is an exception to the normal behavior.
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Too many leaders have fallen into the habit of constantly making excuses to justify their habitual bad behavior. Excuses are hardly an effective leadership style and will foster a culture of low-performance or non-performance.
If you find that you have been doing this, drop the excuses and start modeling accountability.