What constitutes "throwing someone under the bus"?

Diplomacy / office politics plays a major role in how others view you. If people in influential positions don't view you favorably then they have that bias when it comes time for you to possibly advance.

Your coworkers could also view you unfavorably, which could be even worse considering there are more of them than there are supervisors typically. Coworkers could easily sabotage your advancement as well by airing concerns about you to management.

In short, you need to learn to play the game in a lot of offices. Some positions that are highly technical and are more results based are influenced less by petty office politics. If you are in a sales/management/marketing role, good luck.

What's about to happen to Terry McAuliffe sure will...

I'd see it as outing a single person when that individual is not fully responsible. Even if he or she is fully responsible, that person is still getting thrown under if there is a substantial penalty or backlash and the person is otherwise competent yet made one mistake. Others make mistakes that they get away with, so when someone is outed who is not prone to mistakes, it's seen as unlucky or unfair.

Throwing someone under the bus : Placing all the blame on someone who was previously considered to be your friend or ally in order to avoid taking blame yourself.

Throwing someone under the bus means to sacrifice someone else to save yourself, make yourself look better or for other selfish reasons. There is a difference between calling someone out to accept responsibility for their actions, and doing it for your own selfish reasons. Simply put, you are trying to make yourself look better at someone else's expense.

Honest Co-worker wrote:

Not trying to prop myself up, but I hold myself accountable for all my work. If I screw up and someone calls me on it, then I sack up and take the blame like a man. Likewise, I have no problem identifying someone else if they've made a crucial mistake. It's not "throwing them under the bus," it's simply identifying the root cause of a problem so it can be corrected and avoided going forward.

It does sound like you are propping yourself up and it does sound like you threw someone under the bus.

Are you a manager or a plebe?

We would run as a group back in college and I remember once a bus was headed towards us.

So we threw the slowest guy under the bus so the bus wouldn't hit us.

See Women's Basketball at UNC:Documented 20+ year history of fake classes and academic fraud for athletes at UNC. First 54 athletes "enrolled" in fake classes were from the men's basketball team. During the investigation, the University finds a Powerpoint Presentation where the Academic Support team for Athletics gives to football coaches where they spell out that it is going to now be more difficult to get athletes in these fake classes, and that in other classes football players may need to actually attend and/or stay awake.Yet, somehow the University insists that the scheme was set up all for the benefit of women's basketball, not men's basketball or football.

Star wrote:

We would run as a group back in college and I remember once a bus was headed towards us.

So we threw the slowest guy under the bus so the bus wouldn't hit us.

Funny thing is, you were that poor fella the next day. The third day we changed the route as there were no more expendables.

dddddddddd wrote: It does sound like you are propping yourself up and it does sound like you threw someone under the bus.

Are you a manager or a plebe?

I was not propping myself up. It was a simple statement of fact that I always hold myself accountable for my mistakes.

I have not thrown anyone under the bus...yet. However, because I always hold myself accountable for my own mistakes, I will not stand for being blamed if I had no role in the mistake. So, if someone makes the general accusation that a process in which I'm involved has failed, I will accept responsibility ONLY if I made a mistake that contributed to the failure. If someone else was at fault, I feel that blame should be properly placed.

Example: "Process X failed today. Jane completed her part of the process in a timely and accurate manner. John made a data entry error that caused a breakdown and a delay. John is at fault for the failure of Process X and Jane's role had no negative bearing on the failure."

So, Jane did her job. John screwed up. It should be stated as such rather than simply saying only that the "process" failed and unfairly putting Jane under fire. Does calling out John constitute throwing him under the bus, or is it simply a fair statement of fact?

This is different than throwing someone under the grizzly.

Star wrote:

We would run as a group back in college and I remember once a bus was headed towards us.

So we threw the slowest guy under the bus so the bus wouldn't hit us.