The picture above relates to my latest, huge followed blog post. Can you relate? Here it it - love to hear your comments! see more at wayneelsey Leadership Fail - blaming others for your failures! Perhaps it is just another example of the Peter Principle, or maybe it’s just about someone who does not know how to be a leader. Either way, it amazes me sometimes to see people who are supposed to be examples of leadership into being self-serving opportunists who feel a need to step on others in order to demonstrate some sort of success. I have seen it all with these supposed leaders, and I have found they will lie about anything to increase their own self-worth and protect their position. I have also realized this is common with a leader in an organization who is in over his or her own head or with someone who is like a fish out of water because they have no vision, ideas and/or strategy that moves their organization forward. So, in order to appear successful or explain away situations about their own lack of performance and success, they waste time and energy blaming others and finding excuses in order to help mask their own track record. Here’s the deal with that approach to supposed leadership, which it is not, and management – eventually, it gets uncovered and people get tired of seeing and hearing it. Everyone is accountable and responsible for their own performance and sooner or later, when it is lacking, say in a business or non-profit, people in power (typically the board or even employees) will get tired of the same tune and seek to understand matters as they truly exist in the present day. The past or the future, two points in time that do not exist, can never really be the reason for failure today. Ultimately, any problems that an organization may be experiencing are the responsibility of the leaders and management within that organization. Blame can always go around, but true leaders evaluate their own performance and do not spend energy placing criticism at the feet of others. Genuine leaders lead. Providing excuses and shifting the focus to other people or circumstances is not leadership. Besides being unflattering to the purported leader, it is simply bad form and exemplifies a lack of professionalism and thorough misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about what being successful means – even working through failure. Yes, authentic leaders fail. They own up to their responsibilities and are accountable for their actions. They then develop strategies to actually lead their team through failure. Think about the best leaders in the world or books written about leadership and management. Have you ever read or heard of a great leader going around blaming and putting failure at the doorstep of someone else other than him or herself? Have you ever heard of Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln or Peter Drucker speak or write about how someone else is to blame for their circumstance? All of these people and hundreds of others were too busy disrupting the system to spend any time saying that their circumstance is the fault of so-and-so. They were responsible and accountable and they became great leaders. It just would not happen. So, the next time you are thinking that wherever you are in life or business is the fault or responsibility of someone else, take a look in the mirror. Everything you have or do not have, everything you have achieved or have not achieved boils down to the actions of the person in the mirror. Be responsible and accountable for your own life and performance and lead through success – and failure. That is true leadership.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 14:47:30 +0000
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