Good day, team,
This week’s challenge comes from an excellent article–“The Responsible Manager”–which appeared in the January-February 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review. The author, C. K. Prahalad, is a distinguished professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and he ends all of his MBA courses with the following 11 suggestions about ways managers can be more responsible.
1) Leadership is about change, hope and the future. Understand the importance of non-conformity. Don’t be afraid to venture into uncharted territory, and be able to handle solitude and ambiguity.
2) Display a commitment to learning and developing yourself.
3) Cultivate the ability to put your career in perspective. Over your career you will experience success and failure. Humility in success and courage in failure are the hallmarks of a good leader.
4) Invest in the development of other people.
5) Learn to relate to those less fortunate than you. Good leaders are inclusive.
6) Be concerned about due process. People seek fairness, not favors.
7) Be loyal to organization, profession, community, society, and, above all, family.
8) Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with.
9) Remember that you are a part of a privileged few. Balance achievement with compassion and learning with understanding.
10) Expect to be judged by what you do and how well you do it. Balance your actions with empathy and caring for others.
11) Be conscious of the part you play. Leadership is about self-awareness, recognizing your failings, and developing mastery with modesty, humility and humanity.
We often find ourselves having to compromise or to weigh one possibility against another without really knowing which will yield the results we wish. These 11 suggestions can act as a good compass to help us chart our way through the process of managing people and projects.
This week, try committing to some of these suggestions in your managerial position. If you’re not a manager, take a look at these suggestions and see if one of them serves as a good guide for you to improve your performance.
I’m going to try this one out: “Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with.” Although we can’t control how other people work, we do have an opportunity to positively influence others every day. I’ll try being a more positive and creative influence this week.
See which works best for you, and don’t be afraid to experiment with it.
Have a good week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
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