How Personal Responsibility Causes Empowering Cultural Shifts For Business Organizations

The success and failure of businesses are determined by the personal responsibility and accountability of their leaders.

Symbol for being calm and composedPhoto by Javardh on Unsplash

I worked and collaborated with many business leaders in America, not only studied their distinguishing traits. Exceptional leaders take personal responsibility, resolve issues with empathy and collaboration, and measure actions and outcomes with diligence.

Why is this a big deal?

Taking personal responsibility is a critical factor for personal and professional success. As a foundational human attribute, taking personal responsibility for success and failure is an empowering capability for business leaders.

Taking personal responsibility requires being accountable for the situations no matter how severe they are.

Not just accepting the success but embracing the failure consequences is also essential.

Such exceptional leaders can leave positive impressions on their followers. This positive impression reflecting the integrity of leaders can create trust. Trusted leaders can turn failures into success.

Instead of taking personal responsibility, blaming others and circumstances for undesirable outcomes and complaining about situations can create a negative and hostile atmosphere in workplaces and turn off followers.

Blaming and complaining can diminish the power of leaders. These undesirable traits make them weak and show them incompetent. Blaming people and circumstances can create unpleasant situations in the workplace. People fear taking the blame publicly even if they make mistakes. Exceptional leaders are aware of this psychological fact.

Responsible leaders see mistakes as learning lessons. Rather than blaming people, they kindly point out and help them feel good instead of feeling guilty. They inspire them to correct their errors with constructive and guiding feedback.

Exceptional leaders are always aware of the adverse impact and long-term implications of blaming and complaining in their organizations. They not only take personal responsibility for their actions, emotions and results that they produce, but they also take actions to correct the behaviour of their followers.

These emotionally mature and inspiring leaders encourage people in their teams and in their extended circles to take responsibility by being role models for them.

Modern business cultures require this critical leadership trait for surviving and thriving in every economic condition. These exceptional leaders make a significant difference in shifting and transforming dismal situations into pleasant conditions by influencing team members to take personal responsibility for their actions.

Employees become more responsive and transparent to each other. Trust-based cultures made up of people with integrity sustain success and grow delightfully.

Symbol of trustPhoto by Danae Callister on Unsplash

Talent is essential, but knowledge, skills, and capabilities without taking actions with personal responsibility do not produce the desired outcomes in the business world.

Exceptional leaders are aware of this critical fact. Therefore, they pay special attention to their own behaviour and the behaviour of their team members by being role models and change catalysts.

When they face toxic and unethical situations, exceptional leaders prioritize these situations and immediately rectify them. They know the toxic behaviour can harm and ruin the pleasant culture in business organizations. Not taking personal responsibility is seen as a toxic behaviour in high performing business teams.

Rather than delaying necessary actions and procrastinating over them, these exceptional leaders promptly assess the situations by checking issues, mitigating risks, validating assumptions, and removing constraints.

Bad situations and incidents not only relate to people, but they also may relate to processes and tools. The same principle applies to processes and tools. Rather than blaming a faulty process or a malfunctioning device, these exceptional leaders take personal responsibility to fix the problems by collaborating with the owners of the processes and tools.

In some complex and challenging situations like a disaster, acting with this principle can be a daunting task for many leaders and team members. But emotionally mature leaders are capable of staying calm and composed amid a disaster with logic and emotional stamina.

They can see the big picture quickly in a calm and composed state, detect errors with help from professionals, and create a quick roadmap for resolution. They don’t waste their energy by blaming conditions creating the disasters. Instead, they take personal responsibility and focus their valuable energy on understanding and resolving issues with acceptance, diligence, and collaboration.

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