How often does one of your colleagues let you down? Such situations happen way too often, but you can turn them around. The key is your response (not the other person's actions). I recently enjoyed the opportunity to decide how to react to a co-worker who was bailing out of a conference call for the second time in a row. "Steve"...

[caption id="attachment_2541" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Click image for full size"][/caption] As you saw in the Responsibility Man - Part 1 video, my son Thom is having fun mastering his Leadership Gift by lovingly mocking his dad. Here is the super-hero costume he's outfitted for me. What do you think? I'm not sure I can have the costume pulled together by Agile2011. Should...

The other day I received an interesting e-mail from a mom and IT professional who was inquiring about my ideas for teaching personal responsibility to kids. We felt our exchange could be worth sharing with you: Hi Christopher, I found your site at just the right time in my own quest for personal growth as a business analyst on my...

In the first part of this series, 3 Keys to Extraordinary Collaboration - Part 1, we examined three keys to collaboration: Exchange + Expansion + Integrity. Remember, we can't successfully collaborate until we're "in exchange." To be in exchange, each party to a relationship must be providing and receiving fair value -- as each perceives it. Beyond the issue of...

Can a 14-year-old give a greater gift than to affectionately mock Dad's work? I'm proudly thinking "No." Thom cooked up this video idea in June, while accompanying me to a Houston event. He enjoys developing characters and thinks he may want to be a director. Apologies to machinima.com if this mash-up infringes on the copyright. [hana-flv-player video="http://ca-files.s3.amazonaws.com/ResponsibilityMan1.mp4" width="640" height="380" description="Responsibility Man 1...

Before you answer that question, let me assure you of the answer: Yes, you do have the Leadership Gift. You might not know it yet, but you do. What is leadership? Leadership means leading, i.e., going first, right? It means taking ownership or responsibility for a space in time and place, thinking ahead, and facing tough challenges with courage and...

I want to dispel the myth that responsibility is an inherent personality characteristic. Responsibility is learnable -- my client’s results prove it over and over again. With the advances of the last twenty-five years responsibility is a directly observable, learnable, and teachable mental process anyone can understand and master. When leaders treat responsibility as a personality trait (or flaw), then...

Everyone says they want to be on a winning team. And nobody ever says they want to be on a lousy team. So how come we end up on frustrating teams much of the time? Here are the steps you can take to make sure that being on your teams remain the worst, most frustrating experiences ever. Master each of...

In one of my recent blog posts, Teamwork Basics: Creating Positive Interdependence in Groups, I offered three strategies you can use to get people feeling and acting like they are in the same boat together: Start shining the spotlight on the whole, not the pieces Solicit help shining the light Know the standard you are striving to achieve Building on...

I'm going to make an exception to one of my practices: I normally refrain from publicly using the Leadership Gift to analyze current affairs. It would be so easy for me: every day some prominent journalist or blogger bellows, "When will [insert reviled public figure] stand up and take responsibility for this mess?!" and I could cite it and show...