The Mindset of a Leader Requires Taking Responsibility
Who can exhibit leadership?
Anyone. Anytime. It’s leadership behavior that’s crucial to teams, not an assigned leader.
Leadership is an emergent behavior (i.e., it emerges in a context of need or opportunity, rather than is assigned or part of a structure) that moves a group closer to its outcome.
Successful leadership can be learned.
What if there were a deceptively simple way of thinking that
- was independent of personality and personal style
- naturally supported and leveraged the complex adaptive nature of the human mind and personal development
- was a perfect fit for agile environments
- could be learned, propagated, and even spread contagiously throughout a team or organization?
Would you want to know about it? Would you pursue that mindset for yourself and your organization?
Such a mindset does exist: it is the mindset of personal responsibility and problem ownership.
Personal responsibility — taking ownership for one’s actions, outcomes, opportunities, and problems — is one of those few essential attributes executives desire most in employees yet seem to find in scarce supply. And it’s not just executives who would like to see more of it in others.
The frustration of relying on coworkers who avoid taking personal responsibility is experienced by anyone who shares responsibility with others to get things done and whose paycheck ultimately depends on the ability to create a productive relationship with those coworkers.
Most people like to assign the cause of their problems to others, but there is only one person who can change what isn’t working for you – you.
When you choose to respond intentionally to whatever happens in your life, you have the key to personal power and growth. A breakthrough discovery about how the mind works, the Responsibility Process™ illustrates how we avoid responsibility and how we take it. We are hardwired for both, so trust me, accessing successful solutions for when you are stuck — at work or at home — is a simple (though not necessarily easy) switch of mindset.
If you are interested in learning more about tapping into your leadership abilities, I invite you to check out The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders or my book “Teamwork Is an Individual Skill.”
