One of the Timeless Leadership Principles in our Leadership Wheel model (view the model at timeless leadership) is Responsibility for Choices. I have come to emphasize this one more heavily than the others because so many people in my keynote speaking and workshop audiences feel so helpless and powerless.

It’s so easy to get stuck in Pity City. Since misery loves company, Pity Parties become popular as everyone points fingers at their favorite targets on the other side of the We/They Gap found in many organizations (head office versus regions/divisions, frontline staff versus management, lower management versus senior management, management versus unions, sales versus operations, etc.). Problems, setbacks, and disappointments are often wailed about in a rousing game of Blame Storming (“They are doing it to us again”). One group that I worked with recently reflected on how they don’t spend as much time in Pity City, but they do get stuck in Frown Town far too often!

Responsibility for Choices

I have been in too many workshops, over too many years, listening to managers complain about staff not taking initiative and being disempowered. Those same managers then turn around and helplessly point fingers upward or outward at others as the reason for their own negativity, cynicism, and inaction. That’s not leadership. In the Responsibility for Choices chapter of The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success I decided to address this growing problem directly.

We need fewer middle managers, and far more middle leaders