Give credit, take responsibility

When communicating outside your team—to customers, clients, users, executives, and other stakeholders—two words are very important: “We” and “I”.

When giving positive updates or bragging, use “We”.

When giving bad news or identifying issues, use “I”.

There will be exceptions, but that should be your default approach to giving credit and taking responsibility.

The main reason is that, for any important project, your relationship with your team is almost certainly more important than any one project or outcome. By using “We” and “I” well, you will gain the trust of your team and of your client, customer, user, or whoever you are serving.

Your team will know who actually created those updates, shipped the new version, or completed the project. Even if it was you who did that, give credit to the team. They need to know that everything that happens in the project is a group effort.

“We have some positive updates for you.”
“We have shipped a new version.”
“We have completed the project.”

“I am looking into this issue.”
“I should have made that clearer.”
“I’ll update this slide and send out a new version.”

One of the sacrifices you make as a leader is that you will take responsibility when things don’t go optimally, at least externally. Whoever you are serving doesn’t need to know specifically who screwed up. You know that, the person who screwed up knows that.

All the customer cares about is that the thing is done and they will want to know that mistakes are being addressed.

But your team will know why things went badly and they will appreciate not being thrown under the bus. Again, your relationship with the team is paramount as the team is what ultimately executes.