LEADERSHOCK, RULE 2: OWN IT ALL

Anyone in a leadership role is subject to the whims of other people and the capriciousness of unforeseen events. The competition sneaks up from behind to steal our best accounts and most valued people. New technologies bury us in unwanted information. And unlike years past, a collapse in Tokyo’s money markets can now trigger layoffs for a small manufacturer in Cedar Rapids. With each year that goes by, I’ve watched the spiraling complexity of the business environment take its toll on managers, pushing them ever further into the maelstrom of LeaderShock.

There’s something else I’ve noticed, however, that isn’t complex at all. In fact, it’s strikingly simple: The leaders most gripped by LeaderShock see themselves as victims of circumstance. By contrast, leaders who are undeniably thriving reject the victim role entirely, maintaining a mindset of total ownership. They shout out a philosophy that says: “I am 100 percent responsible to myself, to my Intentions, to my results, to my people, and to the kind of workforce I want to create, no matter what’s going on within my division, my company, the country, or the world. I Own It All!”

But here’s a jarring and sobering thought: This notion of complete ownership runs counter to most organizations’ cultures and is, therefore, counterintuitive for many leaders. These are organizations that talk about accountability all the time; yet few have created anything remotely resembling an accountability culture. How do I know? Because there’s a disease endemic to most companies today. It’s called blame, and it’s the greatest single symptom of non-accountability.

For the last several years I’ve used an unconventional barometer to assess company climates. It involves doing a little eavesdropping as I walk through the lunchroom. Time and again the results are the same. Ninety percent of what I overhear is some version of blame. “Can you believe how hurtful she was to me?” “He made me look bad by dropping the ball on this project.” And the most pervasive of all, “Now look what they’re making me do!” These are examples of the “Victim” trap of LeaderShock.

Sadly, this victim mentality is allowed to infect every cell of the corporate body, whether those corporate cultures consist of three coworkers or 3000.

If we are to survive, leadership must mean emphatically refusing to blame anyone or anything for any reason. Seem impossible? Weeding out blame from your behavioral repertoire doesn’t mean you don’t hold people accountable for their actions. It does mean you refuse to believe that other people your boss, your employees, your customers are doing things to you. If you make the dangerous assumption that people or things control how you feel at work, you become like a king who’s given away his crown. You’re LeaderShocked because you are no longer in charge.

Even though blame’s seductive powers of commiseration and abdication of guilt have us in their thrall, when the blame comes home to roost, as it inevitably does, the effect is always misery. And here’s why. It’s virtually impossible to feel invigorated, competent, or powerful and indulge in blaming at the same time. Blame is a swamp. As soon as you stumble into it, you lose your footing and forward direction. You’re immobilized, mired in the muck of your resentment and frustration. And an entire support system is stalled as its quicksand pulls down everyone around you.

FINDING MY PART

The thrill of leadership and the freedom from LeaderShock, come when we look nowhere but squarely in the mirror. Whenever negative things happen to you, stop and ask the only question that can deliver a sense of true accomplishment and satisfaction: “What’s my part?” As you come to better understand these three power-packed words, you find they actually break down into two supporting questions:

• What did I do to contribute to the problem? What could I have done differently? Was there a piece of this issue that belongs to me, even if it was only a small piece?

• What can I do to make things better? Can I take some action that will fix or undo the part that I played? “What’s my part?” belongs right at the forefront of your new leadership repertoire. By zeroing in on an honest assessment of your role, you avoid the worthless exercises of figuring out what other people did, wishing things were different, or wanting other people to change. In fact, consciously focusing on yourself is the only way to take back the crown of leadership you’ve unconsciously given away.

Now for some words of caution: “What’s my part?” has absolutely nothing to do with blaming yourself. In fact, self-blame is the most insidious form of the blame trap. Internal dialogue such as “That was such a stupid mistake” or “Why didn’t I think of that?” are self-recriminating and leave you in the same pit of resentment as any other form of blame. Rather, “What’s my part?” should be seen as a vigorously analytical and self-affirming step toward growth and change.

PUTTING “MY PART” TO WORK

I interviewed a young manager, Brian, who remembered when he first learned to hold up the mirror. “I’d been assigned to a project team, and three weeks into it,” he told me, “I was miserable. What a horrible experience. The boss hadn’t explained our objectives. Team members weren’t pulling their weight and I was getting all the work no one else wanted. On top of everything else, I felt forced to go along with the direction the team decided to take.”

All Brian’s perceptions were valid, but, as he realized one Friday evening, they were misdirected. “I finally got it.” he told me. “The real question is not, what should they be doing? It’s: ‘What should I do?’ So rather than having another agitated weekend, I sat down Saturday morning and made a list.”

See the sidebar for excerpts from Brian’s list.

EXCERPTS FROM BRIAN’S LIST • Ask for clarification from the boss. • Give team members feedback about my concerns. • Look more aggressively for new approaches. • Come to the meetings with recommendations

“When I started doing these things I immediately felt stronger, more uplifted. After I probed my boss for more clarification, I was able to give better feedback. When people on the team didn’t like some of my suggestions, I thought of new ones. There wasn’t nearly the frustration because I was taking full control of myself. Suddenly, what other people did or didn’t do had less and less impact on me”.

“Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”

Helen Keller

THE CASE OF THE “STICKY FINGERS”

Even when blaming seems fully justified and there’s ample evidence to suggest that you’re truly the wounded party, the way out of LeaderShock is still to look at your part. Valerie, the owner of a successful catering company, learned the Own It All lesson the hard way. Last year she reeled from the shock of firing her once trusted in-house accountant for embezzlement. After a painful investigation it became evident that the woman had forged checks and stolen from petty cash to the tune of $30,000. Valerie might have chosen to see herself as the innocent victim of a crime. But she chose differently. “I knew I must have played a major role in this episode.” she said. “Even though it was an unintentional role, I had to figure out how I could stop something like this from happening again.”

After some soul-searching, Valerie realized she hadn’t set appropriate limits for her employees and had designed bookkeeping practices without builtin controls. As a result, Valerie changed her business systems. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. More important, after finding out what had happened, she focused on the underlying causes of why it happened.

“I had desperately wanted to create a cozy family atmosphere at work. I think I actually cared more about preserving that image than about my business itself. Deep down I knew something wasn’t right, but I closed my eyes to the things going on around me.” Carefully analyzing, as Valerie did, the ways in which you played a role, you begin to discover recurring behaviors that might continually undermine your success. To the extent that you see each obstacle as a chance for learning about yourself, rather than spotlighting what other people did to you, you step out from behind the walls of LeaderShock.

DEFENDING YOURSELF BY OWNING NOTHING

Besides blame and victimhood, there’s another way we hurt ourselves. We dodge responsibility by invoking our defense mechanisms. These wellhoned defenses come in a variety of forms. Here are some examples:

1. Passive defense mechanisms used to avoid necessary conflict:

• “When the going gets tough, I’ll withdraw into silence.”

• The self-deprecating, “I’ll be negative about myself before anyone else can.”

• The enchanting approach: “I’ll be so overly nice that people won’t want to show anger toward me.”

• The Robin Williams strategy: “I’ll use humor to cover up anything uncomfortable.”

2. Defense mechanisms that divert any real responsibility away from yourself:

• “Leave me alone, that’s just the way I am.”

• “That’s not my job.”

• “The ball’s in their court. There’s nothing I can do.”

• “I hear only what I want to hear.”

3. The most prevalent and destructive defense mechanisms are the aggressive ones:

• Being in an attack/counterattack mode

• Being critical of everything and everyone

• Actively gossiping or going behind someone’s back rather than being direct

4. And the greatest handmaiden to LeaderShock:

• Needing to be right all the time

DEALING WITH OUR DEFENSE MECHANISMS

If you find yourself resonating with some of these behaviors, you’re not alone. From time to time everyone finds defenses helpful as protection from something painful, but when they become automatic responses they no longer serve you well as a leader. Usually holdovers from the past, now they limit your choices, impede your responses and make it impossible to hear helpful feedback. In the end they keep you away from the healthy relationships and fresh ideas vital to effective leadership.

Is the goal to be free of all defenses? I’ve never run across anyone who is. They’re a natural human response to vulnerability. However, one of the most compelling and irrefutable discoveries from my research is this: Thriving leaders spend the least amount of time reacting defensively.

Part of your liberation from LeaderShock is acknowledging that as your defensiveness decreases, your leadership effectiveness increases. Defensive conversations never work! They’re like a greasy fast-food burger. The first few bites seem appealing but in the end all you’ve got is a stomachache.

The results are always unsatisfying. And the mistrust at the heart of defensive positions supplants the trust on which successful relationships are built. Paradoxically, the best defense is to have no defense.

Considering that most of our defense mechanisms are ingrained behaviors and so many other people in the work environment are making excuses and pointing fingers, taking a nondefensive position might seem formidable.

The Defense Remedy

There are two surefire approaches that end up protecting you better than your defensiveness. Both require that you first understand which defensive behaviors consistently get in your way and then become acutely aware of times when you invoke them.

The first approach goes back to Rule 1. When you’re aware of retreating into defensiveness, stop and search for a more honest, authentic response.

State your Intentions.

Gretchen, an accounting supervisor for a large insurance company, describes how she uses an Intention statement to eliminate a common fear: “Oddly enough, I figured out that my most debilitating defense was wanting everyone to like me.

Afraid of hurting people’s feelings or having them think I wasn’t a nice person, I avoided giving tough feedback. When I did give any, it was so sugarcoated my message was always lost. I justified it by believing that leaders who want to motivate people should always be positive. “Learning about LeaderShock opened up my eyes. I still want to be liked and I think I always will, but now I’m careful not to use that need as a way of avoiding responsibility. What helps me deliver tough messages now is to preface them with my Intention. ‘I want to give you some feedback to help you be the best you can be. As a manager, I owe it to you.’ I realize I’m actually being kinder when I give people important information, even if it’s negative. In reality, I’m probably even more likable.” The second approach to avoiding defensiveness is to simply stop talking and listen. Actively shift the conversation by inviting other people to expand their thoughts through comments like, “Tell me more.” or “I really want to hear what you have to say.” Contrary to popular belief, it’s the listener in a conversation who holds the power, not the speaker. Hard to believe? Think about it. The speaker’s tone, focus, and content are actually determined by the way you’re listening. Think about how you would speak to a person with a hostile facial expression and aggressive physical stance versus someone showing you undivided attention. When you’re listening solely to hear the other person you diffuse the defensiveness. What you’ll get is:

• Deeper understanding of the issue beneath the words of attack or anger

• Better information, which can change your assumptions about what’s going on

• More time to collect your thoughts

• The speaker’s feeling that you value their point of view Best of all, after you’ve listened, the other person is typically more willing to listen to you.

True listening is defense-free. It insists you listen to hear and learn rather than to respond, even when you don’t like the message. Deep listening is not so much a skill as it is an attitude. Olympic skiers focus 100 percent of their attention to each second of the slalom course, never breaking concentration to consider what they might say after they cross the finish line. In much the same way, as an active listener you devote 100 percent of your attention to the other person without allowing your mind to race ahead to your answer. This is how you clear away assumptions and open the door to creating a more meaningful and effective dialogue.

Both approaches, sharing your real Intentions and active listening, are about owning what’s true, rather than running from the issues. And it’s the running away from the difficult and painful things that often keeps us in the clutches of LeaderShock.

WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT?

Thriving leaders ask themselves, “In what ways am I responsible to myself and to others?” And, “In what ways are these people responsible to me?”

But let your caution lights flash: One setup for LeaderShock is the belief that taking responsibility means being responsible for doing it all. The notion that a leader’s job is to know-it-all, fix-it-all, solve it all will drag you down. This savior mentality is part of an old leadership paradigm that is no longer Desirable or even possible. If you see yourself as the white knight galloping in to save the day, stop. The self-sabotaging savior phenomenon is yet another route into LeaderShock.

So let go of it. A big part of your accountability to yourself is holding other people accountable for what they are supposed to do. Great leaders don’t do for others what those people can and must do for themselves.

WHEN EVERYONE OWNS IT ALL: CREATING AN ACCOUNTABLE CULTURE

So what happens if you work for a blame-centered organization? In truth, your peers may be a bunch of vicious, backstabbing grandstanders, and your boss an attacking, finger-wagging tyrant. Still, you have the power to design the culture you want for your own team. Regardless of what’s going on in the rest of your company, you can build a team that owns it all just as much as you do.

Start by modeling the way. You set the atmosphere, mood, and tone for your team. Your department is a direct reflection of you. When you don’t own it all you can bet your team members won’t either. You can’t just model behavior and hope your staff embraces your own-it-all attitude. Your role as leader requires that you become just as explicit about interpersonal behavior as you are about performance expectations.

Here’s what Max, leader of one of the most functional departments I’ve seen, does. Watching Max at work, I could see without a doubt how one, clear, adamant rule works in such panoramic ways. “Everyone who works for me knows my cardinal rule, no blame or excuses! It simply isn’t allowed. It’s my hot button and everyone knows it. I don’t punish people for making mistakes, but I deal with unaccountable behavior, including not owning mistakes, more aggressively than I do any other performance issue. We have a team agreement that we all resolutely enforce. Our mantra is: Support, encouragement and respect will be embraced and celebrated. Gossip, backstabbing, and making excuses without suggesting solutions, will not be tolerated.

“Make no mistake: My staff can come to me anytime to share concerns or just blow off steam, but they don’t leave my office before we’ve transitioned to an accountable approach to moving forward.

The result: We trust each other because we know it’s all out in the open.” Holding others accountable, not just for work product but for their behaviors, is the key. When you’re relentless in this pursuit, your colleagues will see that there’s something significant going on in your department, even if they don’t know what’s causing it. They’ll just see you’ve got a motivated, upbeat team that gets a lot done. As Max put it, “When other managers say to me, ‘You’re so lucky to have such good people. All I’ve got is a bunch of complainers!’ I just smile and think to myself, ‘Yeah, I know.’”

What Max knows is that when a department or team is dysfunctional, everyone on that team, including the leader, has colluded to make it that way. Certainly the aggressive complainers and back stabbers have. But so has the quietest person who doesn’t appear to be directly involved. How? Chances are that person wasn’t doing anything to make things better. Chances are the quiet one wasn’t accountable enough to give the feedback others needed to hear.

So we’ve finally arrived at the answer to the dilemma posed at the beginning of the chapter! If you want to break organizational patterns and create a culture of accountability, do something extraordinary. Convert the question you must ask yourself into a query to your employees. “What’s my part?” becomes “What’s your part? What can you do to make things better?” This is what creates the accountable culture we all want. By way of review, let’s spend a moment integrating the first two rules of the LeaderShock program.

As issues arise, first set your Intentions (attitude and behavior) and then own it all by deter- mining appropriate responsibilities for yourself and your staff. Just as Intention defines how you want to be, the own-it-all approach puts you on a path to get it. Combine these rules and you understand that you have both the freedom to choose your Intentions and the responsibility to ensure they are acted upon.

You’re poised to make great things happen, which evokes the next question: How will you marshal your limited resources to get it all done?

SUMMARY OF RULE TWO LeaderShock Trap No. 2: The Victim/Savior When we feel victimized by circumstances, we assign blame to others and react defensively. At other times we take on too much responsibility and undermine our ability to get things done. New Intentions • I refuse to blame anyone or anything, especially myself. I understand that blame can only lead to frustration and stagnation. Instead, I ask “What’s my part?” and use the answer to that question to move to a better place. • I don’t react defensively. I state my Intentions instead. During volatile conversations I diffuse unproductive conflict by listening to hear, not to respond. • I create a department rule that blame, gossip, and finger-pointing in any form are prohibited. This does not include discussing bad feelings or relevant issues so long as that discussion concludes with owning it all.