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Leadership – Personal Responsibility
I think I’m going to file a law suit against TaylorMade® for false advertising! I bought a TaylorMade® driver several years ago and it didn’t make my golf game any better. In fact, that club made my slice even more pronounced which, in turn, caused me to lose a lot of golf balls. The way I have it figured, TaylorMade® owes me about $250,000 in damages and pain and suffering because of the unrelenting trash talk of Mark Heckart (my old golfing buddy). So, let’s figure up the damage:
The fact that I never practiced my golf game has no bearing on my performance on the course. Also, it doesn’t matter that Mark “got in my head” which caused me to want to swing at the ball even harder. It’s all because of that stupid driver. I blame TaylorMade®. Maybe, I would have played better if I had received a trophy for participating. Nonetheless, I still blame the driver.
When things go wrong, it is much easier to blame those around us than it is to take responsibility for our own actions or the actions of a team member. A true leader teaches that failure is seldom fatal and allows an individual (or team) to grow by taking a leadership role. If we do not allow those around us to grow, we will never get to retire. To allow others to grow, we need to become a coach instead of a control freak. Trust me, I’m still a control freak but I try to do more teaching/coaching than I do controlling.
I recently read a book in which the author recounts a time when he entered a convenience store in a small town to get a cup of coffee. The coffee pots were empty so he asked the store clerk when the coffee would be ready. The store clerk pointed to another employee that was standing 15 feet away and said “coffee is her department." You wouldn’t think that a small convenience store would be that departmentalized.
Where am I going with all this rambling? For several months, I have been talking about leadership and legacy. We identified that one of the characteristics of a leader is the acceptance of responsibility. In my mind, that means taking responsibility for the job/task/project, the actions of the team and ourselves. Maybe it is taking responsibility when something needs to get done (like make coffee). I know that I’m preaching to the choir. Here’s the hard part - if we want to leave a legacy of quality leadership we must coach those around us to be prepared to take responsibility with confidence.