When Leaders Won’t Own Their Decisions: The Erosion of Trust, Culture, and Morale

In a previous post, I explored how communication and trust form the bedrock of effective leadership. But what happens when leaders undermine that foundation by refusing to accept responsibility for their own decisions? And more troublingly, what does it reveal about their leadership when they attempt to shift blame onto those with less power, namely their direct reports, frontline staff, or mid-level managers?

The answer is uncomfortable but clear: leaders who deflect accountability demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of what leadership actually requires. Worse still, they set in motion a cascade of damage that affects not just trust, but the entire culture and morale of the organization.

The Anatomy of Blame-Shifting

We’ve all witnessed it. A difficult decision gets made. These could be budget cuts, service reductions, strategic pivots that affect people’s work and livelihoods. When the community pushes back or asks hard questions, the leader’s response shifts responsibility downward. “My team recommended this approach.” “Staff analysis suggested we had no choice.” “The committee felt this was the best option given the circumstances.”

Notice the pattern? The decision becomes everyone’s responsibility except the person who actually had the authority to make it. This deflection isn’t just poor form, it’s a betrayal of the leadership role itself. Leaders are compensated, positioned, and entrusted with authority precisely because they are expected to make difficult calls and stand behind them. When they use that authority to make decisions but refuse the accountability that comes with it, they’re taking the benefits of leadership while dodging its burdens.

What Blame-Shifting Reveals About Leadership

When a leader consistently avoids owning their decisions, several troubling truths emerge. They don’t understand the power differential. Subordinate staff cannot freely contradict or distance themselves from a leader’s narrative without risking their positions, their reputations, or their relationships. When leaders blame downward, they exploit this imbalance, putting staff in an impossible position where they must either accept undeserved blame or risk appearing insubordinate by correcting the record.

They prioritize self-protection over organizational health. Leadership requires a willingness to absorb criticism, even unfair criticism, to protect the institution and its people. Leaders who deflect blame show they value their own reputation more than their team’s morale, the organization’s culture, or the community’s trust.

They erode the very trust they need to lead. As I noted in my earlier post on communication and trust, “Trust isn’t built through perfection, it’s built through honesty, consistency, and follow-through.” Nothing destroys trust faster than watching a leader claim credit when things go well but shift blame when they don’t.

They create a culture of fear rather than candor. When staff see their leader throw others under the bus, they learn to protect themselves first. They stop offering honest input. They document everything. They say what the leader wants to hear rather than what the leader needs to know. The organization becomes dysfunctional from the inside out.

The Ripple Effects: Culture and Morale in Free-fall

The damage from blame-shifting leadership extends far beyond broken trust between a leader and their staff. It fundamentally transforms the culture of the organization in ways that can take years to repair.

Psychological safety disappears. Google’s Project Aristotle research identified psychological safety as the single most important factor in high-performing teams: the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. When a leader publicly blames staff for their own decisions, they obliterate psychological safety. People learn that honesty is punished and self-protection is rewarded.

Initiative and innovation die. Why would anyone propose a bold new idea when they’ve watched colleagues get blamed for the outcomes of decisions they didn’t actually make? Organizations led by blame-shifters become risk-averse, bureaucratic, and stagnant. People do the minimum required to avoid becoming targets. The entrepreneurial spirit that drives organizational evolution simply evaporates.

Cynicism becomes the dominant culture. When staff repeatedly watch their leader avoid accountability, cynicism replaces engagement. People stop believing in the mission. They stop investing emotionally in their work. They show up, do what’s required, and save their passion and creativity for outside pursuits. The organization may continue to function, but it has lost its soul.

Collaboration breaks down. If the leader won’t protect their people, those people will protect themselves, often at each other’s expense. Departments become silos. Information gets hoarded rather than shared. Turf battles replace teamwork. Everyone is looking over their shoulder, wondering who will be the next scapegoat.

The best people leave. Talented, principled staff members have options. When they see a leader who won’t own their decisions, they recognize a toxic environment in the making. They leave, quietly at first, then in waves. What remains is an organization increasingly populated by those who either can’t leave or have learned to navigate dysfunction as a survival skill.

Those who stay become demoralized. For staff who remain, whether by choice, necessity, or loyalty to the mission, morale plummets. They feel abandoned by leadership, disconnected from purpose, and trapped in a culture that rewards covering your tracks over doing your best work. The emotional and psychological toll is real: burnout, disengagement, and a pervasive sense of futility about organizational change.

A Different Path: Leadership Without Blame

So how should a leader handle difficult decisions that affect the broader organizational community? How do you have honest conversations about constraints, trade-offs, and unpopular choices without deflecting responsibility, and how do you do so in a way that preserves culture and sustains morale even in difficult times?

Own the decision, completely. Even if the decision emerged from collaborative input, staff analysis, or external mandates, the leader who had the authority to make the call must own it publicly. “I made this decision” is far more powerful than “we decided” or “the situation required.” It’s honest. It’s clear. And it models the accountability you want to see throughout the organization. More importantly, it protects your staff from becoming collateral damage in the inevitable criticism that follows difficult decisions.

Explain context without making excuses. You can acknowledge the constraints you faced, the information you considered, and the alternatives you weighed without suggesting you had no choice. “Given our budget reality, I chose to prioritize X over Y because…” is different from “We had no option but to…” The former treats your community as intelligent adults who can understand complexity. The latter sounds like buck-passing. This transparency helps maintain morale because people can better accept difficult news when they understand the reasoning and know they’re being told the truth.

Separate input from decision-making. It’s entirely appropriate to acknowledge that you sought staff input, consulted with colleagues, or relied on expert analysis. But make clear that you valued their expertise while retaining the ultimate responsibility. “My team provided excellent analysis of our options, and based on that analysis and my assessment of our strategic priorities, I decided to move forward with this approach.” This honors your staff’s contributions without making them accountable for the final call, a crucial distinction that protects both their reputations and their morale.

Accept criticism as part of the job. When community members push back, don’t deflect it onto your staff or your decision-making process. Instead, acknowledge their concerns directly. “I understand this decision creates real challenges for you, and I take full responsibility for making a call that has these consequences.” When staff see you absorbing the heat they might otherwise take, you make a powerful statement about what kind of leader and what kind of culture you want to create.

Acknowledge the human impact. Difficult decisions affect real people, their work, their sense of purpose, sometimes their livelihoods. Don’t minimize or sanitize that impact with corporate speak. Acknowledge it directly. “I know this creates real hardship and disruption to work you care deeply about. I don’t take that lightly.” This doesn’t mean dwelling in misery or apologizing for decisions you believe were necessary, but it does mean honoring the dignity of those affected and recognizing that morale doesn’t improve by pretending difficult things aren’t difficult.

Maintain transparency about what comes next. Uncertainty is one of the great destroyers of morale. When you can, provide clarity about next steps, timelines, and processes. When you can’t provide certainty, say so and explain why. “I don’t yet have answers about X, but I commit to sharing information as soon as I have it” is far better for morale than silence or vague reassurances that ring hollow.

Rebuilding Trust, Culture, and Morale When They’ve Been Damaged

If you’re a leader reading this and recognizing that you’ve eroded trust through blame-shifting or accountability avoidance, and recognizing the cultural damage and demoralization that has followed, what can you do?

The path back is neither quick nor easy, but it is possible:

Acknowledge the pattern. You don’t need to provide a confessional inventory of every instance, but you can signal awareness. “I recognize that in the past I haven’t always been as clear as I should have been about my own role in difficult decisions, and I know that has affected how people experience this organization. That changes starting now.” This kind of acknowledgment can be surprisingly powerful in beginning to shift culture. It signals that you see the problem and that change is possible.

Change your behavior consistently. Trust isn’t rebuilt through a single grand gesture. It isrebuilt through sustained, visible change. Culture doesn’t shift from one speech, it shifts when people observe new patterns over time. Every time you own a decision without deflection, you make a small deposit in the trust account and signal that a different culture is emerging. Do it consistently, and people will notice. Do it inconsistently, and cynicism will deepen.

Protect your people publicly. Make it clear through your actions that you will not allow blame to flow downward. When someone tries to criticize your staff for a decision that was yours, correct the record immediately and publicly. This is one of the fastest ways to begin rebuilding morale. When staff see you taking heat that could have landed on them, they recognize that the culture is changing.

Invite honest feedback and act on it. Create mechanisms for staff to share concerns about leadership behavior and organizational culture without fear of retaliation. Anonymous surveys, small group discussions, skip-level meetings are some examples. Use whatever tools make sense for your context. And when people do share feedback about broken trust or damaged morale, resist every urge to defend yourself. Listen. Thank them. Consider it seriously. Then demonstrate through action that you heard them. Nothing rebuilds morale faster than people seeing their concerns taken seriously and acted upon.

Demonstrate vulnerability. Share when you’ve made a mistake. Talk about what you learned from it. Model the kind of accountability you want to see. As I wrote previously, “vulnerability in leadership isn’t weakness, it’s a prerequisite for authentic connection.” It’s also essential for cultural change. When people see their leader admit fault and learn from it, they begin to believe that the culture might actually support learning rather than just punishing mistakes.

Celebrate and reinforce positive cultural moments. When someone takes initiative, admits a mistake, offers honest feedback, or collaborates across boundaries, acknowledge it publicly. Make it clear what behaviors you value and want to see more of. Culture changes not just by eliminating negative patterns but by actively reinforcing positive ones. Morale improves when people see evidence that good work and healthy behaviors are noticed and valued.

Invest in your people’s growth. Few things say “I don’t value you” more clearly than a leader who blames staff but won’t invest in their development. Show your staff you believe in their potential through professional development opportunities, mentorship, resources for learning, and pathways for advancement. Morale improves dramatically when people feel their leader is invested in their success, not just using them as shields.

Be patient but persistent. Damaged culture and demoralized staff don’t recover overnight. People will test whether the change is real. They’ll wait for you to revert to old patterns under pressure. The work of rebuilding requires sustained commitment over months and years, not days or weeks. But the alternative, accepting a permanently broken culture, is far worse.

The Standard We Set

Leadership is not about having all the answers or never making mistakes. It’s about having the courage to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and the integrity to stand behind those decisions even when they’re unpopular.

When we accept leadership roles, we accept this responsibility. We cannot claim the authority to decide while disclaiming the accountability for consequences. We cannot ask our staff to trust us if we’re unwilling to trust them with the truth about who makes the calls. We cannot build healthy organizational cultures while modeling blame-shifting and self-protection.

The culture of our organizations, whether characterized by trust or suspicion, candor or fear, initiative or self-preservation, flows directly from how we as leaders handle accountability. The morale of our teams rises or falls based on whether they believe we’ll stand with them or throw them under the bus when things get hard.

The question every leader must ask themselves is simple: Am I willing to accept the same level of accountability I expect from others? Am I willing to build the kind of culture I claim to want? Am I willing to do the hard work of sustaining morale even when I have to make decisions people won’t like?

If the answer is no, then perhaps we’re not ready for the leadership role we’ve been given. If the answer is yes, then we must prove it, not through what we say, but through what we do when the decisions get hard and the criticism gets loud.

That’s when leadership actually begins. That’s when culture is truly built. That’s when morale is tested and either broken or strengthened by how we respond.

Our organizations deserve leaders who understand the weight of these responsibilities and who carry them with integrity.

Share your Thoughts.

What has your experience been with leadership and accountability? How have you seen organizational culture and morale affected by how leaders handle difficult decisions? I welcome your thoughts in the comments.

Suggested Readings:

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. Random House.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t. HarperBusiness.

Covey, S. M. R. (2006). The speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. Free Press.

Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.

Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Jossey-Bass.

Sinek, S. (2014). Leaders eat last: Why some teams pull together and others don’t. Portfolio/Penguin.