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Leading with responsibility.

Article Excerpt
Organizations continue to face a challenge--how to get more managers to become leaders who take responsibility for the situations they help create. In some ways, organizations encourage managers to play it safe by becoming administrators, deflecting their responsibility and accountability by looking for others to blame. Organizations need trusted and respected leaders who are free to make choices that contribute to the short- and long-term good of all the organization's stakeholders--the customers, shareholders, employees, and the organization's natural environment. These changes require leaders to speak up and take personal responsibility for their decisions and refrain from diminishing their own responsibility by blaming others for failures or mistakes. Leaders need to develop the potential of leading with responsibility among their followers. Followers, who are able and willing to lead upward, enhance their leader's growth to be responsible.

A great leader seeks service to others above self and is willing to be accountable for his or her choices. Making choices for the good of the community requires the freedom that comes with personal psychological maturity.

We have heard about executives at Enron making selfish and unethical decisions and then declining responsibility for their decisions. Sherron Watkins, a middle manager and accountant with Enron at the time, took a leadership role when she informed executives that the financial numbers appeared to be cooked and warned that this would lead to problems. According to her, executives chose to make an unethical decision by not addressing the fact that the numbers stockholders relied upon were misleading. In addition, Enron employees who invested in their company's stock were told that they could not sell their stocks while executives were selling their shares and getting rich. Why would executives do this? One of the common explanations is that they were greedy; however, I believe it also had to do with their lack of psychological maturity and that a critical element of this maturity is the desire to take personal responsibility.

The definition of responsibility, as used in this article, rests on the assumption that individuals have the capacity to choose between alternatives. Taking responsibility means being accountable for one's choices, not depending on others to establish controls for one's behaviors. Responsibility can only reside in the individual and cannot be disclaimed or diminished through delegation or shared duties. Responsibility means not placing blame on others and proactively taking ownership to resolve problems in the interest of serving others above self.

The leadership link

Recent research on great business leaders demonstrates the connection between responsibility and outstanding leadership. The findings reported by Jim Collins in his book From Good to Great indicate that the most highly developed leaders inspire others by placing service to others above self interest, crediting others for their successes, and taking responsibility for mistakes or failures. Collins referred to this as level-five leadership. According to his schema, managers on the first level of leadership have technical competence; on the second level, they also have effective human relations skills; on the third level, management capabilities are boosted by conceptual operational skills; and on the fourth, strategic conceptual skills are developed. His research demonstrated that level-five leadership behaviors significantly contributed to the organization's long-term success.

Much of what Collins describes as level-five leadership appears comparable to Abraham Maslow's description of a self-actualized person, one who has a high level of psychological maturity. In terms of responsibility, this person is honest, trustworthy, reliable, and dependable. He or she spontaneously does the right thing, takes full responsibility for decisions, has a clear perception of reality, feels self-determined, and bases decisions on internal principles rather than external pressures.

A self-actualized person has high levels of self-awareness and self-confidence. This type of person is independent from yet interdependent with others. He or she is motivated by a love of growth rather than by fear and desires to give back to the world. The person communicates with others by listening actively and presenting information and opinions candidly, sincerely, and without defensiveness.

Self-actualized people are not perfect....

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