Recently, I read an anecdote about Warren Buffet which seemed very distinctive. Apparently, he writes annual letters to his shareholders and in the one from 2015, he mentions how he made some mistakes in capital allocation and how the company suffered due to that.
He goes on to admit that he might make blunders in the future as well, but those hopefully will be of smaller scale. I found this worth learning something from. After all, it is Warren Buffet we are talking about!
Over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to interact with several business leaders and help them with their business transformations. Obviously, every person is different. Everybody has a different personality influenced by the principles they live by.
I feel that there are many aspects which contribute to the success or failures of businesses and certain qualities of the leaders have a bigger impact – let’s talk about one such crucial aspect today – blaming others vs. taking responsibility.
Modern times are truly difficult time for leaders. The fast pace of technology disruptions and stiff competition emerging from unknown quarters is making their life miserable. They are overwhelmed by the tasks of meeting the market expectations, smoothly running the operations, managing and growing the talent and next level of leadership, creating winning strategies, and establishing next level of capabilities.
Quite understandably, handling such pressures is a tough job and when the expectations are extremely high, there is a possibility that people may start pointing figures within and also towards leaders. The leaders may be under pressure and answerable to the board and may fall prey to pass on the buck to situations or to their team or directs.
This is not a healthy situation. When mistakes happen, it’s difficult to hold the team together. When the temptation to point fingers is hard to resist, here is how successful leaders beat the blame game.
They stay calm
Reacting to troubling situations with a knee-jerk reaction is a physiological response. But let’s also accept that problems are bound to happen – you could lose a big business, some unexpected competition may emerge with a near kill product/service or even worse, a new innovation might mean a death knell for your business.
Do you know about the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams? They are the people who defuse torpedoes while underwater. They disable biological weapons, chemical weapons, and even nuclear weapons. Imagine the amount of intense pressure they must be facing - but they remain calm, maintain their focus and don’t hesitate to take tough decisions.
That’s what leadership is all about. Good leaders have the maturity, patience, and acumen to handle tough situations. Remaining calm and composed allows the brain to think rationally.
It gives the mind enough time to weigh the pros and cons of possible outcomes. Panic is only going to worsen the situation – instead, just take a pause when you come across a bad news. When you are composed, you will be able to see an opportunity in every adversity. Take a step back and spend your energy in detecting the problem areas and solving those.
They take charge
In my earlier blog on my favorite inspirational leadership stories, I had mentioned how Captain Sully of US Airways took charge of the situation when the crisis happened and he made sure that he saved the lives of 155 people on the plane.
When a crisis happens, people need the right direction and assurance that it will soon be over. It is the leader’s responsibility to guide people to do things which, in most cases, they already know very well how to do. Good leaders see the crisis coming and they prepare themselves to handle it.
They don’t wait for anyone to ask them to take charge – they quickly get into action and lead from the front. They also understand the power of right delegation and, therefore, they identify the right people to do the right job. And last but not the least, they constantly encourage people and tell them how good they are doing – especially in the crisis situations, when everything appears to be going out of hand, such encouragements help in keeping everyone together.
They take the responsibility
Many people think that accountability is the same as responsibility. Actually, there is a subtle difference between the two. While accountability means you will do the work and you will accept the results of that, responsibility means that you will make sure that the work gets done.
When the new Honda Civic failed to impress the market and the sales dropped by 15%, the Honda CEO, Takanobu Ito, publicly assumed the complete responsibility of the model’s failure – it did not matter what or who really failed, he did not find faults, he simply accepted the responsibility and devised the path forward. Immediately after this, Honda announced a new release for 2013, one year before the original plan and reclaimed its market position.
Good leaders are trustworthy, demonstrate high integrity, they are extremely fast decision-markers and equally fast at applying actions to the decisions, they are focused on achieving results and of course, they are confident.
Their words and actions reflect positivity
Most of our actions are a response to external stimuli. When we face situations or words spoken or written by others, our reaction or response is based on two aspects: a) the context and b) who is saying it. The second part plays a vital role in our inter-personal communications. There is a concept of reciprocal roles in Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT)
Although this therapy primarily comes under the medicine domain, more so the psychological health, I would like to explain its application for the leadership role we are discussing.
At a broader level, in human beings, every action creates an equal but different reaction based on the person's upbringing or natural orientation. Thus, if a leader constantly blames others for failures, three kinds of possible reactions can be expected -
employees become submissive and start following orders as “do as directed” and nothing more
employees start accusing their colleagues or subordinates for the failures
employees may start either challenging or completely ignoring the leader
And all of these are toxic situations in any organization.
Even though many good leaders might not have read about reciprocal roles or CAT, they know the impact their words and actions can create on others and hence avoid any negative impact through their words and actions. We, in our business, have benefitted a lot from reading and understanding such concepts and their benefits to leaders. It provides a valuable perspective into the individual/team mind-set and in fact, can help avoid confrontational situations at the workplace.
Leading from the front takes a lot out of a person but leadership is not as hard as we make it. Good leaders demonstrate the ability and willingness to accept reality and identity the future course of action. As Publilius Syrus once said, "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm". I agree. It is only during the turbulent times that the true character of a leader is revealed.
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Thank you for reading my post. I write about leadership, strategy, and business transformation. If you would like to read my regular posts you can subscribe here. Feel free to connect with me via Twitter at @spbarve. Look forward to some great connections here!