Step 2: Accept Personal Responsibility


In both business and life, our reflex is to blame other people or circumstances for our failures and problems. In business, we say things like this:

“I wasn’t trained properly.”

“We missed last quarter’s numbers because of unexpected events.”

“The organization withheld vital resources.”

“Unfortunately, my boss did not support this.”

“A new technology upended our forecasts.”

In business, the list goes on endlessly, excuses coming from leaders’ mouths with frequency and ease. In personal life, a similar list is at hand: the former spouse wouldn’t cooperate, the economy (again) created financial setbacks, the children were ungrateful, and so on. At times, it seems as if we live in a culture of avoiding personal responsibility.

All this may be true, and bad things do happen. But leaders can be divided into two groups: those who take responsibility and those who don’t. Learning and growth in a difficult or even positive passage is impossible if you don’t take personal responsibility. You need this responsibility to engage in constructive self-examination. Without it, you’ll turn your attention outward, ignoring how a particular event affects you or what your role in bringing it about might have been.

To help leaders accept responsibility, we frequently use the SARA model (see Chapter One) for receiving feedback or dealing with negative events. Understanding these predictable reactions makes it possible to increase self-awareness:

S—Shock

A—Anger

R—Rejection

A—Acceptance

One of the executives we interviewed had been passed over for a promotion he felt he richly deserved. He made a conscious effort to manage his response by working through the four letters of the model. Of course, he didn’t need the model to react first with shock and then with anger to the company’s decision. But the third word, rejection, was useful; it made him aware that he was rejecting the possibility that he was culpable. Thinking about this issue and talking about it with a coach helped him realize that his arrogance may have been a legitimate reason why the company felt he wasn’t ready to take on this new leadership role. Over time, he came to accept that he himself was responsible for being passed over. The acceptance motivated him to work at moderating his arrogance. And as his arrogance moderated, he began receiving more important assignments from his boss, and this gave him hope that he might receive the promotion he desired at some point in the future.




Leadership Passages. The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader
Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)
ISBN: 0787974277
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 121

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