“We” for Wins, “I” for Losses: Leadership Accountability

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins points out that great leaders look out the window when talking about success and look in the mirror when assigning responsibility. In leadership practice, this means committing to saying “We” for wins and “I” for losses. It is one way to build unshakeable trust on your team, as a nurse manager recently pointed out during a workshop.

But in reality, this can be hard for leaders. When things go wrong on units or in departments, human nature pushes many leaders toward self-preservation. We may explain away declining performance metrics, higher-than-average turnover, budget issues, or low customer satisfaction scores. Conversely, when things are going well, many leaders default to making sure they get credit for their successes. This can create a toxic pattern of credit hoarding and blame-shedding.

When a leader uses “I” for triumphs and switches to “they” for failures, staff morale deteriorates. Staff become less engaged because they realize they will bear the downside of failure while surrendering the upside of success.

Why the “We” for Wins is Powerful

Shifting the narrative of success to “We” isn’t false modesty; it’s an accurate recognition of operational reality. Ideas and goals are great, but execution is what creates value, and execution is inherently collaborative. In healthcare, most efforts are team efforts. When leaders share success, two things happen:

1. It builds psychological safety: When staff know their contributions are recognized publicly, they become more invested in the unit’s collective outcomes.
2. It creates engagement: Teams don’t work hard to validate the leader’s ego; they work hard when the outcomes of their efforts are celebrated.
3. It creates a team-first mindset: Building strong teams is challenging today. To believe teamwork matters, you have to see it in action. Nothing demonstrates this more than a winning team.

Why the “I” in Losses Builds Commitment 

Your team wants to trust you, and trust begins with accountability. Accepting accountability for losses doesn’t mean you tolerate underperformance. It means that you recognize that what happens in a system and operational clarity starts and ends with you. If your team makes mistakes or misses an important performance metric, you look inward and ask the difficult questions such as:

• Did I establish clear priorities?
• Could I have communicated expectations more clearly?
• Did my team have the knowledge, skills, and resources they needed to accomplish the goal?
• Did I ignore warning signs because the truth was inconvenient?
• Were my expectations realistic for this team?

Putting these Principles into Practice

Self-auditing in leadership is an important skill. So how will you know if you have put these principles into practice:

1. Audit the pronouns you use in communication – Review your emails and presentations for the pronouns you are using to talk about results. When did you write “I” when it should have been “We,” and when did you use “We” when you should have stepped up and said “I”?
2. Praise in public, correct in private – Never critique an individual or your team in a public forum. Take the heat for the failure and then work in private with the team to dissect where the breakdowns occurred.
3. Conduct blameless post-mortems – When reviewing mistakes, focus on processes and communication gaps rather than personal culpability. Always ask: What flaws in our system allowed this mistake to happen?

Leadership is not a platform for personal reputation (although some leaders behave this way). It is an obligation to provide resources, clarity, and sometimes cover for your team. When leaders are willing to personally absorb the shock of failure and redirect the spotlight to successes, amazing things can happen.