Taking blame and taking responsibility are different, as are failure and things not working out how we wanted or expected.

Taking blame is really playing to one’s inner critic, that voice in our head that reminds us how inadequate we are. Taking responsibility is acknowledging one’s contribution to an outcome. Similarly, failure is associated with judgment, whereas acknowledging an undesirable outcome and recognizing the lessons from that outcome reflects an entirely different mindset.

I learned this as an instructor for a course on innovation, in which the curriculum emphasized failure as a positive thing. However, no one bought into that, and so I modified the message to reflect a more positive, success oriented mindset.