Taking Ownership

“Leaders take ownership of the results and do not try to excuse those or blame someone else for them.” - Henry Cloud

Workers, on the other hand, do a job. They do what they are told, and that is all they are responsible for, in their mind set. If the desired result does not happen, that is not their problem because they did what they were told. And at the “worker” level, they are right. They are not held accountable for results, but for what they do, i.e. whether or not they follow instructions and implement what management tells them to do (p. 186).

Leaders and, more than that, all successful people do not worry about just making the authority happy. They worry about the results…. It is not enough for the integrated character to be seen as “having followed orders” if the ship sinks or the company is not profitable… Integrated characters want good fruit. They want things to work, and they take ownership of the results as well as their own performance (p. 186-7).

It is human nature for us to blame and externalize. Losers excuse practically every result in their life and blame something outside themselves for what happens. They do not see themselves as contributors to the result...

Successful people, on the other hand, do not blame the outside world for their lack of success in any given venture or relationship.... Successful people care very, very little about ‘fault”. They do not worry about things “being their fault”. Fault to them does not have the most important implications, as it does for immature characters. What has the most important implications for mature characters is solving the problem.

If it means that they need to do something differently, that the way they did it was part of the problem, to them that is good news, not bad. They love knowing that. It gives them control of making it better (p. 188).

Source: Henry Cloud, Integrity