subject: Are you a Leader of Leaders or Victims? 5 Strategies to Enhance Accountability and Responsibility [print this page] A man found a cocoon of a butterflyA man found a cocoon of a butterfly. After a few hours a small opening appeared. The butterfly wanted to emerge and the man watched for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop. It appeared as if its task had become daunting. To the man it looked as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no further.
The man decided he must help the butterfly. With a pair of scissors he snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But, it had a swollen body and small shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, with good intentions, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Are you, with the best of intentions, creating dependent victims in your organization or are you creating and encouraging independent thinkers who solve their own problems?
Our culture tends to reward those who provide instant answers to difficult problems. We tend to be impatient with those who take time to think through solutions. We often promote fast paced and narcissistic behaviors because it creates instant results. Instant results can often carry with them delayed unintended consequences.
A leader has willing followers and works with them to solve problems. A victim is most often stuck and often attempts to enroll others to join in the mutual misery. A leader has a positive influence on others and uses it often in place of authority and/or power to create action. Victims more often rely only on authority and power to cause others to act. Leaders are able to persuade. Victims rely on demands.
Victims feel tricked or duped by others and frequently blame others for their troubles. Leaders spend time fixing problems and working to prevent them. Victims feel powerless and spend time complaining about problems instead of fixing them.
What can leaders do to encourage leaders to follow and what can they do (and stop doing) to discourage victims from sabotaging productivity and engagement? Here are 5 strategies you can use now to create leaders (butterflies that can easily fly) and avoid inadvertently creating victims (with swollen bodies and shriveled wings):
Believe in people and trust them in order to create trust in you. Give people a chance to make mistakes and, when and if they do, avoid punishment. Instead, use the event as a learning experience for both you and the person who made the mistake. That doesn't mean you allow them to avoid the consequences of their error. Ask them to make amends. Don't hide the mistake and don't take away the consequences.
My daughter wanted to buy a motorcycle. She had taken her motorcycle skills class and achieved her license. As her dad, instead of saying no, I encouraged her to drive a few cycles before buying one so she could assess which one might be best. In the mean time, her brother purchased a rather large bike and she asked if she could try it.
After receiving his permission, she took it for a ride and found it to be a bit more than she could handle. She had to lay it down at a stop sign when she lost her balance. The bike was a bit too large. We had a discussion about the size she needed.
We used the mistake as a learning experience to decide the bike size she needed and the need for safety above all else. In addition, she had to pay her brother money to repair the small amount of scratches she caused when she put down the bike on the street.
Proactively empower others. Look for opportunities for others to be independent and give them the option to act on their own.
Be respectful always in words and tone even in the face of emotional upsets caused by mistakes. Unless people purposely make mistakes, the discovery of the mistake itself is enough motivation for the person to feel remorse. Adding to it by being disrespectful with criticism is unnecessary and damaging to the relationship while stunting the learning opportunity. This doesn't mean you avoid giving feedback when needed. It means delivering feedback not criticism. Feedback is specific data about behaviors. Criticism is opinions.
Unless asked for your opinion, avoid giving it because you will create dependency. You will be preventing optimum learning if you give your opinion before being asked. You create dependency if you try to solve the problem before they have had a chance to exercise their own problem solving skills. An effective leader offers suggestions and other options to change the observed results but usually only when asked. Even then tend to delay their response to give permission for the person to process their own solution. Wait for the learning to start. Their learning pace may be different than yours. If you jump in with an answer you create dependency. If you jump in it may cause fear to offer solutions in the future.
Truly listen to concerns, use empathy, provide forgiveness, and emphasize continuous learning. Leaders who look for scapegoats for mistakes create victims. Those who focus on learning will make more money. Our knowledge economy requires that we manage the engagement of all employees. Engaging their hearts and minds will be the only way to compete in the global marketplace. W e need every brain focused on improving performance, process, and serving customers. The higher the percentage of engaged brains the more money everyone makes.
Hold people accountable to their word not numerical goals. Ask people to make agreements and then let them know if they break them. Acknowledge and thank them when they keep agreements. Avoid the accountability trap by attempting to hold people accountable to numerical goals where they don't have full control over all the factors.
The butterfly needed to work hard to emerge from the cocoon. It didn't have a goal to fill its wings with fluid and reduce its swollen body. It had the task to emerge through the hole. The normal body and functional wings were the outcomes of the task of emerging through the hole. Identify the challenging tasks people need to perform to accomplish their goals and ask them to make agreements to perform those tasks. Then, hold them accountable for completing those tasks. Don't help them unless they ask for help and even then, question them about what they need to do to accomplish it themselves. Don't enable poor behaviors for the purpose of achieving the goal. It damages the learning experience and usually creates dependency.
Facilitate problem solving. Don't tell them what they did wrong (unless asked) instead explore with them (with effective questioning) what they learned and how to resolve the issues. Instead of criticizing for missing numerical goals, explore the root causes of problems and provide tools to solve their own problems.
An effective leader knows how to teach and coach. He/she knows the problem solving method and the tools needed for problems solving. They teach and coach people to solve their own problems. They teach people to fish and they stop feeding them the fish. A leader will encourage the butterfly to emerge on its own.
Ask questions to uncover what YOU could have done differently to help them. There is an interdependent relationship between leader and employee. Employees cannot operate completely independently in a system. Ask questions to uncover what you could learn form the situation and what you can do differently.
Give away credit when things go well and, when things don't go well, look for the part you played in the dysfunction and take full responsibility. Look for opportunities to express appreciation and gratitude for their hard work.
One of my clients exemplifies humility and yet is extremely ambitious. His leadership has propelled his organization forward to be one of the most admired in its industry. He has expanded the business and continues to praise and give credit to his board of directors and his employees. I reminded him one day that his leadership played a significant role in the success he was enjoying. I told him he didn't give himself enough credit for the success. He said, "I know, others remind me of that often." His humility and willingness to acknowledge others is a characteristic of Level 5 Leadership a phase coined by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. A combination of humility and will creates a Level 5 Leader.
Be a facilitator of performance not a controller. Resist the urge to achieve instant results and be patient by asking questions. Don't be so quick to take out the scissors. Allow the butterfly to emerge. The beauty of high performance will be the result of your patient leadership.
Are you a Leader of Leaders or Victims? 5 Strategies to Enhance Accountability and Responsibility
