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FIRST LESSON OF LEADERSHIP: ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE!’

Guest post by: Dinnah Pladott

Article Overview: Among Leadership Proficiencies, one is paramount. 'I Take Responsibility for my actions and choices.' we focus on 'what value does leadership provide to the followers, be they individuals or organizations, in or out of business. In the 21st Century, with the speed up of change, this proficiency is pivotal. It opens the door for individual and organizational learning, growth, and development. In its absence, stagnation and paralysis rule.

FIRST LESSON OF LEADERSHIP: ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE!’

FIRST LESSON OF LEADERSHIP: ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE!’



"All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and
regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you."

� Wayne Dyer


1.LEADERSHIP and POWER


Many people ask ‘how can I become a true leader?’
Others ponder a different question: what qualities do I need to cultivate in order to become a truly powerful leader?’


Here is your answer.
.
I have come to appreciate and savor many American Folk Idioms. They are both wise and practical. They truly work in the real world.

One of them sums the simple answer to this complex double question:
THE BUCK STOPS HERE!


In plain English, to become a leader, and especially, a powerful leader, you must take full responsibility for your actions and choices. All of them.

You may well ask, why is this the #1 leadership quality ?


Unlike many thinkers who address the issue of leadership from the point of view of the individual leader, I invite you to take a different approach here.


2.WHO BENEFITS FROM A LEADER’S GREATNESS?


Let us focus not on the leader, but on those who follow, on their needs and their gains when it comes to leadership.

Let us use a business term here, and apply it to every form of leadership: leading a nation, a business, a community, township, a state, a group, and so on.

The business term is ‘create value for.’

A leader’s greatness and power cannot be measured only by the benefit to the individual leader – where so much moral and psychological discussion lands.

A leader’s greatness and power are meaningless if the value created for the people who follow is small, or in a worse case, negative.


The point is clear when we remember that the powerful influence Hitler had on his German followers lifted them up only to shatter them to bits.
How much ‘negative value’ did it inflict on them, in terms of economic and personal destruction, human loss, and pain for generations to come?

Our examination, therefore, is going to focus on the pragmatic aspect: which leadership proficiencies are required for a leader to be powerful in creating high and enduring value for the entity s/he leads.

In the background, think of two items to illustrate the point: performance, and conditions, such as economic, social, or the organization’s viability and well-being.


3. AIM FOR EXCELLENCE in PERFORMANCE + CONDITIONS


Let us go back to ‘The Buck Stops Here!’
How does that play out in actual day to day reality?


When you are a leader, that means ‘I take responsibility for my actions and choices, and for the actions and choices of those subordinate to me.’

Let us flesh out this statement a bit.
We have all been in situations where people said all kinds of ‘nice’ things. They used phrases like ‘I am sorry,’ ‘I apologize’, and even ‘I take responsibility for what happened.’


Think back. How frequently were those sweet words followed by concrete action, an action that might give the statement any validity?
Probably no more than in 3 out of 10 cases.


How often did the person expressing contrition actually start a process of emending the behavior that caused the offence?

If your experience is like mine, no more than in 2 out of 10 cases.


Isn’t that the seed that spawned that other American folk saying, ‘Talk is Cheap’ ?


As a leader, you must be among the 2 out of 10. Your words – ‘I take full responsibility…’ - must be combined with immediate action.

That is, if as a leader you aim for continuing Excellence in Performance and Conditions.

If a mistake was made, make sure that you will take the necessary steps to identify the source of the mistake, and to correct it, to avoid a repetition of the error.
And to publicly commit to doing so by a certain deadline.


If a misstep occurred, you need to quickly outline the necessary steps you will launch to discover what was the origin of the slip-up, and what actions are necessary in order to prevent a repetition of such blunder.

Again, a specific timetable needs to be publicly adopted.


Can you get a sense by now what makes ‘taking responsibility for one’s action’ so pivotal for a leader?

Unless we are willing to acknowledge a mistake, we have little ability to correct the situation or actions that have led to the mistake.

When we acknowledge the error or the wrong choice, we are immediately in the position to rectify both the end result, and the procedure or the process that may have led to it.


In the past, I would have used the terms ‘growth and development’ here.
At present, I believe ‘learning’ is a more central term to focus on.
When we try to cover up a mistaken action or a bungled decision making process, we avoid the opportunity to draw a lesson from what went wrong, and to improve something as a consequence: a skill, a method, a way of acting or reacting.

By learning from the mishap, rather than cover it up, we grow and develop.
If Excellence is our aim, we cannot avoid the need to learn, and by learning, to grow and develop.

This is true for an individual. It is doubly and triply true for an organization, a nation, a city, a community.


Stagnation, and eventually, paralysis, follow when the opposite occurs. When you keep ignoring, and covering up, what did not work well.


4.THE BLAME GAME IS A FOOL’S (VICTIM’S) PARADISE


Since we are all human, let’s be aware the first, knee-jerk response we humans have is to shift the responsibility to someone else.
We try to shield ourselves from the logical consequences of our actions.

"By making up an excuse or blaming an outside source, we create the illusion that the world--not us--needs correction.
"
Dan Montgomery, 1995


No matter how tempting it is to lay the fault elsewhere, remember: It is better to be the agent of change than the victim of change. And the choice is yours.


Recall Dyer’s quotation at the top of this Article. As a leader, trying to shift blame, or lay blame on a subordinate, leaves you the loser, not the winner.

Step by step, train yourself to straighten your spine, breathe deeply, and take the responsibility for the slipshod action or decision.


By doing so, you move from passive to active stance.
The fault-finding ‘victim’ role is discarded.
The Self Reliant (Emerson’s term), self-responsible active leader role is reclaimed.



5.”THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING”


It may very well be the learning, and the consequent skill enhancement and proficiency augmentation it brings with it, were less pivotal for business organizations operating in the 16th Century.
Conditions were largely static then. Performance remained the same for generations, from father craftsman to son.


But the 21st Century is marked by a speeding up of the process of change.
We face a world where what has worked in the past is no longer effective today.
We need to continuously invent fresh, more efficient, more profitable or cost-effective techniques and procedures.
And this is true across the board, not merely in business.


To serve their followers and organizations well, leaders must remember the mantra:
Grow or Die !

Much like software, conditions and performance must be continuously upgraded, just to stay current.
In order to ensure this ongoing growth and development process, leaders are now required to guarantee that the readiness and willingness to learn will get a much higher premium than any other ability.


The only way to do that, when you are a leader, is to set an example.

In other words, ‘Take Responsibility for the Choices and Actions’:
Swallow your embarrassment.
Draw positive lessons from what was botched.

Put in place procedures and protocols that will make it hard to repeat the same mistake twice.

You followers will soon see your example, and copy it all the way down the hierarchy.


6.THE BENEFITS?


Your organization will gain an edge in productivity, in competence, and in finding and executing many small ways to continually improve their performance as individuals and as teams.
Performance will go from good to excellent to superior.

The morale of your work force will rise very quickly.
Conditions will reflect that, as will the organization’s culture.


Aren’t all these gains for your followers, and for your organization, enough of an inducement to embrace the leadership motto
– ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE !’ ?



COPYRIGHT 2008 Dinnah G. Pladott, Ph.D., All Rights Preserved

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Article Tags: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT, EFFECTIVENESS, GROWTH DEVELOPMENT, LEADERSHIP, PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT



Related Forum Posts
Re: LEADERS - Nice post, i like the Doers and the listeners comments from my handbook 8.5 HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LEADERSHIP? Planning Problem Solving Vision Innovation Leadership Emotional Intelligence Delegation Communication Self-Development Relationship Building Commercial Financial skills Personal Energy Ethics Transparency Even there I see that we are missing "PASSION"


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