Just because you weren’t the cause doesn’t mean it isn’t something you need to worry about/fix. I learned this one from my high school English teacher when a student was late and tried to get out of it by blaming traffic lol. The traffic was not their fault, but it ended up being their problem.
There’s a variation of this that I like better: “It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility.”
Framing it this way shifts the tone from passive to active; you have a problem, but you take responsibility. It also helps the responsible party set themself up for correcting the behavior in the future. Saying you’re late because of traffic and accepting the consequences is fine, but recognizing that you need to leave earlier to accommodate traffic is better.
I had a teacher who would ask for an explanation, not an excuse. If the explanation started to place blame on someone or something else, he’d just shake his head and say “no excuses.”
“It’s not your fault, but it is your problem.”
I honestly love and repeat this line way too much
Just because you weren’t the cause doesn’t mean it isn’t something you need to worry about/fix. I learned this one from my high school English teacher when a student was late and tried to get out of it by blaming traffic lol. The traffic was not their fault, but it ended up being their problem.
There’s a variation of this that I like better: “It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility.”
Framing it this way shifts the tone from passive to active; you have a problem, but you take responsibility. It also helps the responsible party set themself up for correcting the behavior in the future. Saying you’re late because of traffic and accepting the consequences is fine, but recognizing that you need to leave earlier to accommodate traffic is better.
I had a teacher who would ask for an explanation, not an excuse. If the explanation started to place blame on someone or something else, he’d just shake his head and say “no excuses.”