Ownership is Everything
Leadership
One of the most unattractive qualities in a leader is a failure to take ownership. The relationship with your leader sours quickly when it becomes clear they are allergic to accepting responsibility. It may start out with a bonding experience to blame leaders above, other departments, or even ignorant customers, but at some point, you begin to notice the obsession with blaming others to look good. Worse than the relational damage is the hit to productivity. Learning does not take place in an environment where great effort is expended to avoid being blamed for anything. Like a virus that spreads quickly, when the leader doesn’t take responsibility, no one does. Trust erodes and accountability dies.
High-performance organizations like the Navy Seals exemplify a culture of ownership. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s book, Extreme Ownership, centers its argument on leaders taking full responsibility for outcomes. Their selection of ownership as the essential attribute highlights its critical role in achieving effective leadership and performance—even in the most demanding environments.
The context of their book is the urban battlefield of Ramadi, which does make most high-pressure office situations appear a little less critical. But the authors argue that the leadership principle that applies in all situations is, “all the responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything…They take extreme ownership of everything that impacts their mission.” And by everything, they mean everything.
How you view ownership drives your mindset, your plans, and your responses, whether you are leading up or leading down. It is always tempting when failing to reach a goal to blame a lack of support or performance from others. And often that accurately describes exactly what happened. The leader didn’t communicate clearly or ask us to execute a poorly conceived plan. Sometimes our direct reports make careless mistakes that turn what should have been a great win into a painful defeat. In those situations, it is easy to pass ownership to others.
Leading up often requires a mental shift. We normally don’t think we should take responsibility for leading our boss. “Above my pay grade” can be our default response. What would change if we did see that we are paid to help influence decisions and results at higher levels in the organization? The best leaders and employees feel vested in the success of the organization and believe they have agency to make a significant contribution. Often, this requires taking the initiative to better communicate and demonstrate the support and clarity needed from our supervisors.
Leaders who do this well have invested in that upward relationship and have proven they are team players. In Extreme Ownership, the authors use the example of needing to complete extensive paperwork to meet the requirements of a commanding officer back at headquarters. The paperwork seemed unnecessary at times and led to a fair amount of complaining by some soldiers. However, their squad leader helped them to see the situation from the commanding officer’s perspective, who needed detailed information to approve their missions. And more importantly, he showed his unit that by completing the paperwork thoroughly and on time, they had developed high levels of trust with headquarters, leading to their mission being approved quickly.
The difficulty of leading up certainly varies based on the willingness of your boss to also be humble and willing to learn and listen. This reminds us that if we want to have subordinates who are committed to the success of the teams we lead, we need to create an environment where leading up is encouraged.