Responsibility

A big leadership failure of mine was losing a teenage girl for 12 hours on a railway station in India.  I was a young leader with responsibility for 7 teenagers when it happened.  My natural reaction was to both blame her for getting lost and then to justify myself because of the circumstances in which it happened.  Providentially she was found safe and I learnt a valuable lesson.

There is something wonderfully attractive about people who take ownership and responsibility when things go wrong.  You sometimes see it in football managers when their players perform badly or in the political arena when someone makes a decision that has a negative impact in their sphere of influence.  It’s attractive in part because it is so rare that it stands out like a beacon of light in the midst of the plethora of excuse givers, blamers and justifiers.  It is so much easier to look for the cause of failure outside of ourselves instead of within.  

In my experience in training young leaders, I have never met someone who isn’t aware of their natural tendency to blame and justify.  It is a hurdle that must be overcome if they are to grow and develop into someone that others want to follow.  In fact, I would go further and say that, in my opinion, it is one of a few central characteristics that will define a leader’s ability to harness the energy in any group of people towards the vision they share.  

Blaming and justifying are natural reactions and are almost impossible to eradicate as a response to life’s circumstances.  What we can do though is catch ourselves when this line of thought begins, realise what we are doing and change our thought patterns accordingly.  Instead of blaming other people we can focus on what we might have done differently.  Instead of justifying our words or actions we can begin to give others involved the same excuses we like to give ourselves.

The ability to do this is a foundational leadership attribute.  

-Andy Matheson