Nothing—I repeat, nothing—destroys employee morale more quickly than an innovation leader who ducks personal responsibility when things don’t work out.

On the flip side, nothing builds employee morale more effectively than when they see a leader who takes ownership of his or her decisions.

Pass the Credit and Take the Blame

There’s a saying that “true leaders pass the credit and take the blame.”

What exactly does this mean?

It means that staying ahead of the pack requires confidence, both in yourself and in your people.

Think about it: What type of leader would seek to claim credit for every success while avoiding responsibility for mistakes? It would be leader who works in a toxic environment—a dog-eat-dog organization where everyone is afraid of being stabbed in the back by a colleague. Mistakes are used to punish, while successes are given exaggerated rewards.

If you’re a middle-level employee at such an organization, you owe it to yourself to get out as soon as you can. You cannot change it: the poison is trickling down from the executive suite.

If you’re the leader of such an organization, then shame on you for not fixing it! A company’s culture starts at the top. Employees model the behavior they see at the top. If you’re the leader of a company with a toxic culture, then you need to start transforming it now.

In a culture of trust and confidence, the leader has enough confidence be magnanimous and celebrate the successes of others. In turn, he or she will earn the respect of the employees, and the organization has a much better chance at becoming, or remaining, an innovation leader.

JetBlue Steps Up

One leader who stepped up and took the blame for a company failure was David Neeleman, chairman of Jet Blue. During the chaos of a winter storm in 2006, he wrote a personal letter of apology to passengers stranded by the air carrier. A brutal ice storm had roared up the East Coast, leading to 1,000 canceled flights in five days. The problems were exacerbated by flimsy reservation and communications systems that left passengers, pilots, and flight attendants sitting in the dark.

“Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that you…experienced…This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the premise of bringing humanity back to air travel, and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver…”

A second and equally important part of the company’s apology strategy was the inclusion of the innovative JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights, which satisfied two key requirements of a sincere business apology—a tangible expression of a commitment to change and some form of compensation or restitution for the damage caused.

Neeleman said he knew he had to deliver on his promises. “I can flap my lips all I want,” he said. “Talk is cheap. Watch us.”

You might say this was a contrived strategy designed to turn a disaster into a brilliant marketing opportunity. Maybe, maybe not. What mattered was that it was real. And there was absolutely nothing wrong that because it captured the best aspects of customer-focused innovation.