Takes credit, deflects blame
In the board update the win is 'my team's initiative'; the miss is the supply chain, or marketing not delivering leads.
Rule out first
Mild self-serving attribution is near universal. An organisation that punishes failure. Whether the credit and blame are in fact accurate.
What could explain it
Self-serving bias: Mild, in line with peers, and corrects when you ask directly: 'what part of the miss was ours?'
Psychological safety: The whole team does it, not just this person, and it eases when a senior leader owns a mistake in the open first.
Contingent self-worth: They need the win to feel acceptable. You see anxiety rather than calculation, and private overwork to prevent the next failure.
Machiavellianism: Deliberate and selective: the story differs by audience, and blame is pre-positioned before outcomes are known.
Grandiose narcissism: Credit is about stature. They're visibly stung or angry when someone else is praised for shared work.
A next move
Ask in private for their own share of a failure, and separately listen to how they describe it to others. Same story in both places points to bias or anxiety; different stories to strategy.
If it’s you
If I had to name one thing I did that contributed to the miss, what would it be, and why is it hard to say?