Taking responsibility is a characteristic of leaders; could it also be what hinders them from making the best use of their people?

A comment from a reader of my last blog got me reflecting on this topic and my own leadership journey.  He said it was the last line of the article, ‘None of us is as wise as all of us’, that caught his attention. I had mixed feelings about his feedback; I was slightly put out that it took him to the last line to get something significant out of the article, and at the same time I was pleased that he read right to the end. I concluded that the rest of it must have been all right!

He’d gone to the effort of phoning me with his observation so I had the perfect opportunity to delve into why the line had resonated with him. He said that his biggest learning in his life to date is that what got him to the top role in his company was not going to keep him there. I asked him to elaborate.

If it’s to be it’s up to me

He told me that he believed his success to date came from his commitment to getting things done, his willingness to take on additional roles of responsibility and his attendance at various training courses and seminars. He briefly described his leadership journey as one driven by the motto ‘If it’s to be it’s up to me’, an expression he’d picked up over 25 years ago when he attended his first leadership seminar while in his early 20s and starting up the leadership ladder. While he learned to delegate responsibility, he had held on to much of the key decision-making.  He believed that due to his position and experience, he instinctively knew the solution to every challenge his people encountered. He relished both the responsibility for and the power in achieving better results. There is no doubt that his self-conviction was a key ingredient in his recipe for success, but was it also giving him indigestion?

While his leadership had a very positive impact on his organisation and he always had a great connection with his people, over the past few years he had begun to notice that younger and newer people did not share his enthusiasm for getting results and going the extra mile. He also observed that taking full responsibility for the challenges the business encountered was putting him under continuous stress and he did not enjoy the journey as much as he would have liked, but he felt this was a price worth paying for the material success he encountered.

How things change

This leader, like many of my readers, had been coming to peer-to-peer coaching forums for some time. It was through attending the forums that he’d come to the realisation that when you give people the answer to a problem you reinforce their reliance on you and they will invariably keep coming back for more. However, when you help them find their own answers you facilitate their leadership growth and boost their self-esteem. People are much more motivated to implement their solution than one you give or suggest, he had noted.

These ‘A-ha’ moments

As this leader tentatively experimented with letting go of control he made a discovery about other people that was a real turning point.

The real shift happened, he told me, when he realised that others have their own untapped wisdom, waiting to be explored. Up to this he had been so fixated on the belief that he had the most wisdom and the best solution that he never considered that others can also learn from their own life experiences. He said that was why the expression ‘None of us is as wise as all of us’ resonated with him.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

He feels he doesn’t need to drop his ‘If it’s to be it is up to me’ motto. In fact he uses it to create a culture that enables his people to develop their own unique leadership skills. He also said that while the school of taking responsibility was hard, the wisdom he gained was priceless. His next goal is to enjoy that wisdom.

I smiled after he hung up as he had more or less written my biography, only he has arrived at this point much earlier in his life. This reinforced a new belief of mine that we are all developing and that each of our journeys is exactly right for us to develop our own unique wisdom.

What wisdom are you coming to with regard to your own leadership journey?