[austinjp]

While I agree with this, some of the best, most likeable, and longest-surviving managers I've worked with have had a Teflon-like quality when it comes to blame. It's not that they don't take blame, yet somehow it doesn't stick to them. They attend the meetings and post-mortems when things go wrong; but they have a superficial relationship with blame somehow. They take the issues seriously, yet it feels somehow like they're not actually to blame, even when they've been involved the whole way through. Then one day you look up and notice that they're smiling and chatting with someone on a different project team, they've moved on. Everyone will think their efforts were serious, well-intentioned, appropriate, etc. And the blame is palpably absent from them, while it clings to others like a bad smell. I'm still unsure about how it's done. I suspect it's a deeper personality trait; plain-old likeability perhaps.