Item #50: Leadership is Responsibility

When you think about leadership, what comes to mind for you? A corner office? Higher pay? Power? Influence? Privilege? Be honest.

I’ve looked into it and definitions for what leadership means are mostly unclear. I’ve also seen varying versions of leadership firsthand in my years. Most of the time, it involves the leader feeling some sense of importance in having been granted the position of leader. But let me plant an alternative thought on the topic.

Paramount to successful leadership, in my opinion, is a sense of responsibility.

Successful leadership, to me, requires understanding that business strength depends on people. And also then, interdependently, and equally importantly, that people depend on business strength. Successful leadership requires understanding the delicacy of that inter-relationship. Successful leadership ‘lives’ the understanding that the best way to be responsible to people is by ensuring the business that employs them is strong. And the best way to build a strong business is to be responsible to the people that fuel it.

Leadership is therefore very little about ‘self’ and very much about ‘other’. Leadership means you’ve been trusted – to bear the responsibility - to do what is best for the business, and thereby for the people, and hence vice versa. Strong businesses will be best able to care for their people. And strong people will be best able to create business strength.

It’s very little about the corner office; it’s about being in the trenches. It’s very little about higher pay; it’s about heightened accountability. It’s very little about power or influence or privilege; leadership, in my opinion, is about responsibility.