It's A Circle of Life Kind of Thing.... Quote by Hopper

Who remembers the famous kids' movie, A Bug's Life? I may be showing my inner kid here but that is still a great classic to put on every now and then just to kill time or have background noise.

Although, I will say there was a phrase in that movie at the beginning that I didn't really understand. It was a quote referring to leadership.... Hopper's quote was, "first rule of leadership princess, everything is your fault" WOW, I didn't realize at such a young age I heard the single most powerful phrase that later on in my life would become so true.

I think often in leadership we know the pressure is mounting on our shoulders and we know the self-accountability we must have but how often do we truly let the problem be our fault?

I will be the first to speak that early in my career I didn't really blame others for the mistakes that happened when the boss came to town, but I will say I didn't own up to them either. It was more of the deer in the headlights look and mind spinning, I knew there was a problem, but I assumed my team understood the solution. Clearly not always the truth. I needed to own it one hundred percent, but it took many lessons to fully understand the respect of self-ownership.

How often do you "think" your team has the solution but come to find out that when the time comes for the answer they are not delivering? I feel a great point here is that somewhere in the chain of idea, communication or direction we failed to clarify the objective. How often do we see from hindsight that if we just followed up a few more times than the project would have been successful? Again, everything is our fault as the leader, don't make the mistake of not owning that piece.

One of the greatest gifts I learned and earned was owning my faults and gaining the respect of the team. Now, really take that point to heart. When was the last time you stood before your team or during an individual meeting and said, "hey, that was my fault we missed the objective but just know next time we will course correct for success". It took a few life lessons for me to own up to saying this phrase because I thought the opposite would happen with my team. I felt that if they knew I messed up they would lose their faith in my leadership, and in fact it soon became the opposite. They knew they could trust me even more because I was always going to take the fault "so to speak" but ensure the credit was given.

The last thought I want to leave you with is that everything is your fault in your organization because at some point there is something you can impact or correct, and you need to have that vision in order to course correct. Trust your teams but ensure you own the communication to your delegation, if you find that the objective you issued wasn't done correctly, find out why and course correct. Figure out the problem of when you issued the objective to the time it became wrong.

Remember, everything is your fault.... it's a circle of life kind of thing!

Stay Blessed and Stay Above Your Horizon