Taking Responsibility is Leadership
It’s easy to criticize from the sidelines. It takes balls to get in the game.
During the birth of my first child, my wife and son were in danger and it felt like none of our doctors were really taking responsibility for them. Finally, we had a doctor with decades of experience and nerves of steel. Her actions said, “I’m going to shoulder this burden. I’m going to make this my problem and I’m going to take responsibility for the outcome.” She was the superhero of the situation. Ironically, she’s the only doctor who came to visit us after, because she’s the only one who chose to fully invest in us. Either from guilt or shame or more likely, a “wasn’t my problem / not really my patient” attitude, none of our other doctors visited us.
This is what responsibility is about. Life is uncertain and nothing is guaranteed. Responsibility is saying I’m going to put myself in a position to be wrong. I’m going to put myself in a position where I could make mistakes and get blamed for them.
None of our other doctors put themselves in that position. Their primary concern was their own liability. They distanced themselves in order to avoid blame. To me, that is the definition of cowardice, and to put it in simple terms, they behaved cowardly. Only our final doctor behaved with boldness and bravery. Where most people play the critic, or stay out of the game entirely, she exemplified the hero by showing true leadership.
Throughout history, people have risen to positions of power through their ability to criticize and blame. Unfortunately, if criticism is is how they got there, criticism is what they’ll do there. Once they are in power, they will shift blame and struggle to create a plan of action. If we want good leaders, look for people who have done things, built things, and taken responsibility for people.
What separates doers from critics is courage. Critics do not have the courage to put themselves in the line of fire. These days the world is full of critics hiding in the shadows, behind a keyboard, nameless, faceless. They don’t have the courage to be seen, so they criticize those in the spotlight. They don’t have the courage to take action, instead they criticize those who do. They don’t have the courage to make strong statements and stand by them, instead they criticize the stances of others. The critic only exists as a mirror. They only exist in opposition to something. On their own, without anything to oppose, they are hollow. They stand for nothing, do nothing, and show nothing. Without the things they hate, they have no identity.
Someone who’s entire identity lies only in opposition to things will not take responsibility, because that requires a level of courage that they do not possess. They don’t build, they tear down. They don’t stand firm, they dodge and void. They don’t show themself, they hide.
Albert Einstein once said, “Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.”
The worst part about being a critic is the stifling of your own potential. You muzzle yourself. You stay away from the light. You waste your capabilities in fear and self-doubt. When someone blesses you with a solution, you counter with a problem. When you come up with your own solution, you dismiss it as an unlikely possibility. All of this doubt and insecurity slowly builds resentment. Over time you begin to hate the doers and the speakers and the showers. You envy their confidence and it makes you angry. That is when you begin to criticize. The pain you feel from your own lack of courage becomes a poison you inflict on others.
The heart of every critic yearns for confidence. They are dying for the confidence to act, the confidence to speak, to be seen for who they are, to take a risk. But confidence comes through action, it comes through speaking, it comes from being seen, it comes from taking risks.
The only way to change from being a critic into being a doer is to take responsibility for something. When you do that, you put yourself in a position to be criticized, and that is good. When people see you taking something seriously, they know they can hurt you by mocking it. When you are afraid of being blamed or criticized, that is when you know you are moving in the right direction.
The boys on my football team call someone a “try-hard” when they put in full effort. It is an easy way to bring them down, to mock them, to try to make them stop outperforming you. It is a critic’s tactic, and with some boys it works. They feel foolish and they take their foot off the gas. With my best players, it never works. They are immune. They are doers, action takers, spotlight standers. They don’t care what their peers think, and they shine all the brighter because of it. They take open responsibility for their own performance, and the best of them take responsibility for the entire outcome of the game.
One of my most searing memories as a coach was a loss that we had against the other middle school in Hood River. One of my players (we’ll call him Dave) took complete responsibility for the game. He scored most of our points and got most of our tackles. When the ball was passed over his head to the other team’s receiver, Dave chased him down before he could score. He was a skinny kid, but he was fearless and he was everywhere at once, blitzing on defense and carrying the ball on offense. In the final seconds of the game, we were down 5 points and we got the ball. The first play, he broke multiple tackles, ran for 40 yards and got out of bounds. The next two plays were incomplete passes and we lost.
My other players were sad about the loss, but Dave was devastated. He was more invested than they were. He’d spent more, risked more, tried harder. He was all in. He’d never thought about losing. It hadn’t entered his mind as a possibility. He broke down in tears when the buzzer sounded. I looked him in the eyes, made sure he focused on me between the sobs and told him how impressed I was by him. He’d openly taken responsibility for the game and for the entire team. In doing so, he risked more than everyone else.
He’d made himself vulnerable with his effort, he’d opened himself up to criticism, but instead of receiving it, he earned the respect and admiration of everyone on the field that day. Fearlessly and shamelessly taking responsibility for our team had made him the most impressive player out there, and everyone knew it, including his future high school coaches who had come to watch.
Unfortunately, he was an exception. I’ve had far more players who avoided responsibility. They’d fumble the ball and blame the line, miss their block and made excuses, ridicule the effort of their friends to bring them down. Dave was a true leader. He built up his friends, encouraged them, held them to a high standard, and when they couldn’t meet it, when they missed a tackle, he’d chase the ball-carrier down and tackle him himself.
It’s an interesting thing to learn about leadership and responsibility from a 13 year old boy. But in many ways he’s a better leader than most of the adults I know, and the primary reason is because he has courage. He has the courage to put himself in a position where he may come up short, where he may make mistakes and get blamed, and still perform fearlessly regardless.
This is the essence of responsibility. Whether you’re taking responsibility for your kids, co-workers, employees, students, friends, relatives, teammates, or even for yourself. It comes down to fear and courage. Do you give in to fea, allowing it to slowly brew the resentment that distills into criticism, or do you embrace courage, putting yourself in the line of fire?
It isn’t a one-time choice. It happens every day, in the little decisions we make. When things go wrong, do we shift the blame to someone else or accept it and fix it? When someone insults or criticizes us do we allow it to rock our boat? What about when someone else’s mistake or lack of effort becomes our problem? What then?
My favorite thing about Dave as a player is he never expected anyone to contribute. It never even crossed his mind. He expected his teammates to miss the tackle. He expected them to miss the block. He expected them to fall short, and he was always there to pick up the slack when they did. He didn’t need a thank you or a good job. He didn’t really need anything from anyone. He was there to take full responsibility for the outcome, regardless of what anyone else did. When you have someone like that, or even better, when you ARE someone like that, it makes everyone else stronger. They want to meet your level. They want to impress you. They want to show that they can be that way too. It empowers them to take risks when they know you’ll be there if they don’t succeed.
When you focus on your own actions and take responsibility for something, you become someone other people can rely on. The trick is not to hold them to your same standard. They may not meet it and you could grow resentful. If Dave had gotten bent out of shape at his friends for their mistakes and lack of effort it would have distracted him from taking frull responsibility. Instead of always being there to pick up the pieces of their failures, he would be throwing his hands in the air and yelling at them.
Stoic philosophy says, “Be forgiving of others and strict with yourself.”
Instead of focusing on other people’s failures, focus on your own excellence. Instead of playing the critic, play the hero. Take responsibility for the outcome, regardless of what other people are doing, and it will encourage them more than any criticism ever would. People want to be inspired, they want to reach for difficult goals, but they don’t have the courage to stand alone. They need a leader, someone who is willing to take responsibility for the outcome, absorb the blame and the risk. When they see someone doing that, they’ll gladly fall in line behind the shield that person provides.
It’s difficult to willingly offer yourself up as a shield for other people, to take all the risk and absorb all the blame, but that is what true leadership is. It’s intimidating and it can be frustrating, but for me, I hope I have the courage to take on more responsibility each year.
