What do you do when you are held responsible for something you didn’t know was yours to begin with? It happens all the time when professionals talk about things that should be done without any clarity about the next step or who should do something. It’s especially frustrating when you get blamed for dropping the baton.

If this happens too much, you run the risk of developing a reputation of dropping batons. Not a good place to be and even harder to get over.

Prevent dropped batons by practicing these disciplines.

1.   Never leave anything to ambiguity. Even if the next step is fairly nebulous, take responsibility to nail it down. When someone says, “We should contact the client when the time is right and go over this information with them,” you are leaving yourself open to being accused of not following through.

2.   If at all possible, determine who will do what by when. Without these three bits of information, you set yourself up for being held responsible for something that wasn’t yours in the first place.

3.   If there is no way to determine what the next step should be, say, “It is my understanding that… Is that right?” By you stating where the discussion was left, you create a memorable trigger that is easily retrieved when a future discussion occurs and there is confusion about what should have happened.

4.   Communicate immediately. In our fast paced world, time gets by us quicker than we like. If you were to follow through on something on Wednesday but fail to communicate until two days later, you give the other party the impression that you didn’t follow through.

By you managing the situations that occur in these ways, you avoid all the stuff you are being accused of not doing. After all, you have enough difficulty being responsible for what you know is yours without adding what you don’t know is yours to the list.