#2: The Ownership Shift: How To Stop Blaming and Start Leading

Blame is easy. Ownership is transformational

 

What separates good leaders from great ones? It’s not charisma, intelligence, or even experience. It’s ownership.

In this episode of the MPWR Podcast, host Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of MPWR Coaching, is joined by Dawn Neldon, Director of Content, to explore the crucial shift from blame to responsibility—why it’s hard, how it changes everything, and what tools you need to lead with confidence under pressure.

Most people don’t naturally start with ownership. When things go wrong, the default response is to blame circumstances, systems, or people. But the best leaders break this cycle. They understand that transformation begins not with pointing fingers—but with looking in the mirror.

You’ll discover:

• Why our instinct is to avoid responsibility—and how to overcome it

• What it means to “own the gap” between intention and impact

• How personal responsibility can reshape your leadership influence

• Practical tools from the Leadership Operating System to integrate ownership into your daily leadership habits

This episode goes beyond motivation and dives into implementation. It’s packed with insight, reflection, and real-life strategies to help you become the kind of leader who inspires trust, drives change, and creates lasting impact.

 

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Are you ready to unlock your full potential and lead with purpose, clarity, and conviction?

The MPWR Podcast, hosted by Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of MPWR Coaching, is your go-to space for transformational conversations, powerful insights, and practical strategies to help you step into the next level of your leadership journey. Whether you're scaling your business, seeking greater alignment in life, or stepping into your calling—this podcast will challenge, inspire, and empower you.

Want more tools to accelerate your growth? Head over to mpwrcoaching.com where you'll find free resources, game-changing books, and programs designed to elevate your mindset, build resilience, and transform the way you lead—from the inside out.

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Episode Transcript

eric (00:00):
Welcome to the Empower Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of Empower. Coaching leadership isn't about titles or positions. It's actually about the influence and impact we have on our environments. This is where we get to learn how to operate well under pressure, lead with confidence, and drive meaningful results.

(00:01):
Great leaders don't make excuses. They take ownership, but most people don't start there. When things go wrong, the instinct is to blame circumstances or other people. The best leaders break this cycle and take full responsibility for their actions, choices, and impact. Today we're talking about how to shift from blame to ownership, and why that shift changes everything.
We all have that little, almond sized part of our brain called the amygdala. That when we are in an environment where something feels threatening, whether it should or doesn't, our amygdala fires when it registers something may be threatening. And that could be a text, an email, a conversation with somebody.
I think it's because we think it's actually giving us a sense of control to be able to scapegoat. Our environment rather than to really own that. Our being triggered or hijacked, as we're gonna talk about here in just a minute, really is our response. It's our responsibility. I. So to choose to surrender our need, to control our environment, or to wait till it accommodates us and to choose personal responsibility.
And so when. We get triggered when those lizard brain responses get triggered, we tend to default into either the victim or the villain. Talk to us a little bit about what do those look like?
And so we fall into one of these two mindsets. One, one is the victim, one is the villain. The victim mindset is the. Poor me. I'm gonna throw myself a pity party. The world isn't playing fair. Nobody's listening to me. Nobody cares what's going on with me. And so we kinda tend to withdraw from our environment and throw ourselves a pity party.
, because the whole journey toward personal responsibilities recognizing I can't really control anything in the world around me. I have control over one thing, and that is my attitudes. And my behavior. Now, what we also tell people is, gosh, we can't recover. Once we're on this kind of hijacked trajectory, we eventually find ourselves pinballing, which is exactly what it sounds like.
That medicine your mama gave you when you were a kid, right? It just taste, I don't care what it said on the cover. Great flavored orange flavored cherry flavored. It all tasted incredibly terrible. It does. But why did our mom make us take that medicine? Because they believe that medicine, once it got into our bodies, would actually help us.
I tell people, man when we're pinballing and we're just stuck in that space, it's like sitting in this internal prison. And upset at the world for not letting us out when all the wild he is in our pocket. And we get to choose when we let ourselves out. And so much of our journey with leaders is equipping them with the ability to recognize when they're triggered and hijacked, to recognize whether they're operating outta that victim reveal mindset.

dawn (00:09):
It really is the 80 20 hack of leadership of how we show up. Because for those of you who aren't familiar, the 80 20 rule says that 20% of anything in a given system is actually responsible for about 80% of the outcome.
So I'm curious because this is a nice idea. That's right. But have you seen this play out in real time for real leaders facing real triggers?
Taking the pathway, personal responsibility. What was amazing was a week or two after we get into a coaching call with the executive team, and before I could even jump in, the president's Eric, I've got something to share. I'm like, oh, what's going on? He's really excited. It's I gotta tell you this story I'm so excited.
And he said it, it took a few minutes before he recognized what was happening. They were all not just triggered but hijacked. They were all playing victim or villain mindset and he just paused through and said, everybody, hold on. We just learned a week or so ago that this is the pathway we traditionally go on when things are difficult when we run up against challenges.
Not only were they now working together rather than against each other, he said creative solutions just immediately emerged as people were sharing because they were now more interested in solving a problem together rather than scapegoating one another. Rather than protecting themselves, they were actually looking out for the best interest of one another, and that actually led to an incredible solution that cost them almost nothing.
Yeah. And the beauty of the pathway of personal responsibility. And implementing it on your team is that when everybody chooses to take their own personal responsibility, it means I don't have to, I get to not take responsibility for somebody else's role in this process.
That's right. I. I wanna leave people with a practical step that they could take. Oh gosh. Okay. What's one thing that we
But which one did I gravitate toward and how did that get expressed? Now here's another question. We're just gonna take this deeper. The next question. How can I imagine that having impacted the environment, the other party or parties that were involved in that situation, right? EE. All the way to even asking the question, like, when I came home from work today, did I bring that home with me?
It's very rare that the, our listeners, when they really reflect on that question, aren't gonna come up with some brilliant answer. We ask, simply ask ourselves, what would it look like for me to take 100% personal responsibility? What's within my control? What can I actually do about this? What would it look like for me to be an asset, not a liability?
And then you get to hack your own system. That's right. When you realize that you are being triggered. You feel that tightness in the chest or for me, my teeth get cold. What? I've never heard that before. That's how I describe it. But like the back of my teeth, like start to hurt. When I start to, when I get triggered and I start to feel anxiety and as soon as I feel that, that is the indicator for me of, oh, okay, I need to pause.
'cause we all have blind spots. And so just by becoming more aware, this you said hack. This is part of the way we upgrade our operating system. We realize, gosh, I've been running this old program in the past where I get angry and I lose my my, my cool, and I yell at people, or I become really aggressive, or I become passive aggressive and I turn to sarcasm and biting comments and, inappropriate joking, or I become passive and I just withdraw from any situations.
And I asked my coach one day, why don't we do all these sprints? Why don't we just run while we're playing? I played soccer and I thought, why don't we just get our running in while we're, do
So it takes us less time to recover from difficult triggers so that we can get back to playing our best
A leadership superpower. Love it. Can't wait. So we'll see you guys next time.