“Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation, every possession, a duty.” – John D. Rockefeller
Becoming a leader is like being a driver, instead of being a passenger. Passengers are more free to do a lot of things the driver can’t do. A driver must put his focus on the road and not on the distractions. When you accept the responsibility to be a leader or to be in charge to lead someone else, you lose the right to “mess around” – e.g. you cannot join employee ‘pity parties’ and talk about upper management. Transitioning from a mere manager to a leader requires you make different decisions. A successful leader must accept all responsibilities – you are the person responsible for everything happens in your department and in your own company. You even lose the right to some of your own time because you are responsible for other people’s time as well as your own.
The opposite of accepting responsibility is to find someone or something to blame for the issue that you are facing. A real leader spends his time fixing the problem instead of finding someone to blame. Placing the blame means you focus on the past. When you accept responsibility, you focus on this time forward – i.e. the future. Until you accept total responsibility – no matter what – you won’t be able to put plans in place to accomplish your goal. You have control over how you react to situations, so choose to eliminate blame – get it out of your vocabulary - then you can make some positive changes. As Antonine de Saint put it, “A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says, ‘I was beaten,’ he does not say, ‘My men were beaten.’”
As an entrepreneur of your own business, there is no one to pick up the slack. You’re on your own, and that’s the scary part. You can’t point to someone else and say, “That was Joe’s idea.” You are the ultimate decision-maker and the business is a reflection of you. A good article by Dr. Paul E Adams on “Common Sense Leadership” had some excellent advices and it includes a quote from Gary Feldmar who said, “A business is a reflection of the leader. A fish doesn’t stink just from the tail, and a company doesn’t succeed or fail from the bottom.” There is also a famous saying in the Yukon, “The speed of the leader determines the speed of the pack.”
Responsibility is different than responsible leadership. A young person may be twenty, brilliant and the owner gives him the keys to the store when he is on vacation. That does not automatically translate to leadership. It’s only a start for the young man, but the ultimate responsibility is still the owner’s. To demonstrate true leadership, the young man has to want to lead and willing to be in charge to make responsible decisions and be accountable for the consequences. Most of the time, we do not need other people to tell us what is the right thing to do. It is surprisingly easy deep down that we already know what really the right thing to do is; and, as a responsible leader, we simply need to follow through our inner voice and let it guide our actions.
In the book “Business Lessons for Entrepreneurs: 35 Things I Learned Before the Age of Thirty”,
author Mark Csordos identify several traits for good leadership that I think can apply to develop responsible leadership.
- Maintain good communications – A responsible leader keeps everyone in the organization on the same page. Winston Churchill is a good example of a leader that communicates effectively. He once said, “Never give in. Never, never, never, never! Never yield in any way great or small, except to convictions of honor and good sense?” People knew where he stood and what the goal was. You may not be Mr. Churchill, but you need to believe in your company’s goals and visions and speak it, write, it repeat it, live it.
- Maintain good focus – Winston Churchill leads another great example. In 1940, speaking of Britain’s mission, he said, “Our whole people and empire have vowed themselves to the single task of cleansing Europe of the Nazi pestilence and saving the world from the new dark ages. We seek to beat the life and soul out of Hitler and Hitlerism. That alone. That all the time. That to the end.” This is an example of his ability to focus on himself and everyone else around him to achieve some common goal together.
- Be decisive - You must be willing to make decisions and stick with them. This does not mean that if you make a mistake you have to ride it all the way to the end. You have to be flexible and adjust your course along the way, but not constantly wavering or flip-flopping to confuse your people. Dwight D. Eisenhower nearly blew D-Day because he could not make up his mind on the best moment for the attack. Finally, he said, “No matter what the weather looks like, we have to go ahead. Waiting any longer could be even more dangerous. So let’s move on.” Everyone has made bad decisions, but not decision means you do nothing and that’s typically how organizations and companies stagnate. The other mistake is that you gather and go over information for too long. In today’s information overflowed society, there is always another piece of information out there to analyze. No one can possibly analyze every piece of information.
- Honesty. - A responsible leader lives by his words and keeps his or her promises. There is really no quicker way to make people lose faith in their leader than dishonesty. Employees will very quickly lose respect for a leader or manager that they feel is lying to them. Like Abraham Lincoln said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
- Accountability – A responsible leader knows that it is lonely at the top. There is no one else to make the right decisions for you. When you make a bad decision, you have to take the blame. People will not follow you or believe in you if you only take credit for the good decisions. Maybe a middle manager can get away with placing blame on someone else, but an entrepreneur will lose all credibility to his people and ultimately his business. Arnold H. Glasgow said, “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”
- Integrity - To me, this is the most important aspect of developing the responsible leadership within you. Everything else is really secondary. The courage to tell oneself the truth is the ultimate form of being a responsible leader. I have previously written a blog on Integrity.
Not all manager and bosses are responsible leaders. Like Russell H. Ewing put it, “A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery. A leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.”
The following 2 quotes summarize the ultimate form of responsible leadership.
- “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching!” – Thomas Jefferson
- “To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.” - Confucius
Only with high personal integrity and the personal commitment to do the right thing will true responsible leadership be developed!
