Leading with responsibility.

Organizations continue to face a challenge--how to get more managers to become leaders who take responsibility for the situations they help create. In some ways, organizations encourage managers to play it safe by becoming administrators, deflecting their responsibility and accountability by looking for others to blame. Organizations need trusted and respected leaders who are free to make choices that contribute to the short- and long-term good of all the organization's stakeholders--the customers, shareholders, employees, and the organization's natural environment. These changes require leaders to speak up and take personal responsibility for their decisions and refrain from diminishing their own responsibility by blaming others for failures or mistakes. Leaders need to develop the potential of leading with responsibility among their followers. Followers, who are able and willing to lead upward, enhance their leader's growth to be responsible.

A great leader seeks service to others above self and is willing to be accountable for his or her choices. Making choices for the good of the community requires the freedom that comes with personal psychological maturity.

We have heard about executives at Enron making selfish and unethical decisions and then declining responsibility for their decisions. Sherron Watkins, a middle manager and accountant with Enron at the time, took a leadership role when she informed executives that the financial numbers appeared to be cooked and warned that this would lead to problems. According to her, executives chose to make an unethical decision by not addressing the fact that the numbers stockholders relied upon were misleading. In addition, Enron employees who invested in their company's stock were told that they could not sell their stocks while executives were selling their shares and getting rich. Why would executives do this? One of the common explanations is that they were greedy; however, I believe it also had to do with their lack of psychological maturity and that a critical element of this maturity is the desire to take personal responsibility.

The definition of responsibility, as used in this article, rests on the assumption that individuals have the capacity to choose between alternatives. Taking responsibility means being accountable for one's choices, not depending on others to establish controls for one's behaviors. Responsibility can only reside in the individual and cannot be disclaimed or diminished through delegation or shared duties. Responsibility means not placing blame on others and proactively taking ownership to resolve problems in the interest of serving others above self.

The leadership link

Recent research on great business leaders demonstrates the connection between responsibility and outstanding leadership. The findings reported by Jim Collins in his book From Good to Great indicate that the most highly developed leaders inspire others by placing service to others above self interest, crediting others for their successes, and taking responsibility for mistakes or failures. Collins referred to this as level-five leadership. According to his schema, managers on the first level of leadership have technical competence; on the second level, they also have effective human relations skills; on the third level, management capabilities are boosted by conceptual operational skills; and on the fourth, strategic conceptual skills are developed. His research demonstrated that level-five leadership behaviors significantly contributed to the organization's long-term success.

Much of what Collins describes as level-five leadership appears comparable to Abraham Maslow's description of a self-actualized person, one who has a high level of psychological maturity. In terms of responsibility, this person is honest, trustworthy, reliable, and dependable. He or she spontaneously does the right thing, takes full responsibility for decisions, has a clear perception of reality, feels self-determined, and bases decisions on internal principles rather than external pressures.

A self-actualized person has high levels of self-awareness and self-confidence. This type of person is independent from yet interdependent with others. He or she is motivated by a love of growth rather than by fear and desires to give back to the world. The person communicates with others by listening actively and presenting information and opinions candidly, sincerely, and without defensiveness.

Self-actualized people are not perfect. They make mistakes and experience failures. The difference is that they are willing to allow themselves to be vulnerable by accepting responsibility for their mistakes and weaknesses. They don't take themselves too seriously, but they do take the principle of personal responsibility seriously They expect others to be responsible for themselves.

We can use the alignment between Collins' description of inspirational leaders and Maslow's stages of psychological growth to tram managers to lead with responsibility I propose that we use a process of self-actualization, particularly focusing on the growth of responsibility, as a framework in leadership development.

One of the assumptions in the model is that increases in self-awareness are critical for psychological and responsibility development. At the highest level of maturity, people have learned to face the truth about themselves, even if it is painful, and in the process of becoming more authentic they become less hypocritical and can be trusted to do what they say as a matter of personal integrity As they develop and learn how to manage conflicting interests among stakeholders, they learn how to choose freely to stand up for what is right and not worry whether others accept them. At the lower levels of responsibility, people are not aware of their hypocrisy or their defensive communication. They may have low emotional competence, leading them to be controlled by fear and anxiety.

Let's look more closely at the stages of development for leading with responsibility: altruism, achievement, conformism, and self-protection.

Stages of development

At the highest level of responsibility, the primary drive is service to others, in other words, altruism. Leaders at this level take responsibility for their decisions and actions, which means they are willing to be held accountable. They do not pass the buck, look for who they can blame, or deem their decisions above discussion. Personal integrity is a key component in their decision making; therefore, they are perceived by others to be authentic, honest, and fair-minded. They also are aware of their responsibility to all stakeholders, not just one group, and they share information with others in a timely manner. Leaders at this level are constantly learning what is right for them and what is right for others as they deal with the conflicts and tensions that decisions create for their stakeholders. They accept ownership for their own internal conflicts in each situation. By holding the tension in the thinking process until problems are well defined and solutions meet the short and long-term interests of all stakeholders, they build integrity within the organization as they search and find common ground among stakeholders.

At the achievement level, the primary drive is advancement. While there is an awareness of the importance of ethics, individuals may test the meaning of ethics by finding procedural or legal loopholes or not sharing all information because they were not asked the right questions. These people strive to accomplish more in order to achieve status as producers. They become pacesetting leaders and have learned to do things for personal gain; therefore, they cannot be transformational leaders who are capable of inspiring others. Pacesetting leaders realize the power they have based on their achievements and may not be aware that they have become egotistical and arrogant. These leaders or managers may have a limited awareness of the anxiety that drives their need to control things related to their advancement, and they may not be aware that they are expending excessive amounts of energy protecting their accomplishments. Because the achievement level is about self rather than service to others, responsibility development is somewhat limited.

At the conformism level, people have a strong need for acceptance by their peers. For them, decision making is strongly influenced by perceived group pressures, even when the group's decision is not the best ethical choice. New managers in particular, as they make the transition from technical work to managing their peers, may feel the need to conform to their work group's low performance standard to feel accepted. These managers may not be aware that they try to minimize anxiety in the group by avoiding or accommodating conflicts. At this level, managers tend to avoid taking full ownership of decisions by claiming they were victims of the system in which they work, that they have little power and influence in their management position, or that the decisions were group decisions. They tend not to challenge authority even if their supervisors engage in questionable behaviors.

The lowest level of responsibility development is self-protection. These managers behave in a selfish and opportunistic manner, exploit loopholes, and operate without concern for the negative impact of their decisions. They micromanage information that is shared with others, decide what is good or bad, lie to themselves and others, justify lies, or cover up misdeeds from a position of authority, and blame others or external factors when something goes wrong. Rarely do they identify their own responsibility when problems occur; instead, they manipulate their way out of personal responsibility At this level, managers get triggered emotionally and respond defensively when they receive constructive feedback about undesirable work behaviors. Others may experience these managers as hypocritical. Furthermore, these managers are not aware of their hypocrisy, and when it is pointed out to them, they either justify, act confused, or become arrogant.

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