7 What Must a Leader Do?

Barbara had thought that leading her organization would be exciting, freeing, and creative. And to an extent, it was. But to Barbara’s surprise, leadership had a lot of responsibilities to it. Barbara had thought that others would bear the brunt of the organizational responsibilities. After all, Barbara was in charge. Others should be doing the bulk of the work so that Barbara could be free to strategize and motivate. Yet Barbara found that she was responsible for so many more things than she had imagined. She had far more to do and far less time in which to do it. Leadership felt to Barbara a lot like one big treadmill. For that reason, she wasn’t sure she liked it. She was even thinking of returning to the design department where she could once again be more free and creative.

Responsibility

Responsibility is important to teams and organizations, and thus to leadership. To be responsible means to be accountable, trustworthy, one on whom another can rely to do as the other reasonably expects. Responsibility suggests not only reliability, accountability, and trustworthiness but also predictability, stability, and consistency. In a chaotic world, responsibility becomes like an anchor or foundation. Organizations need the opportunity that comes with chaos and change. Shifting sands spur growth, adaptation, and refreshing. But organizations also need stability and foundation. You can’t build systems and operations on chaos. Something must remain steady, stable, and relatively the same, if the organization is going to have a core around which to build out the organization’s programs and initiatives, and from which to offer its goods and services. A leader’s responsibilities are an organization’s foundation and core. A responsible leader stabilizes an organization.

Mission

The leader’s responsibility to promote the organization’s mission grounds the organization. A mission statement means little if the leader does not align the organization’s resources toward the mission’s accomplishment. Whatever way in which an organization’s board measures the leader’s performance, whether on revenue, profit, new product launches, share price, acquisitions, fundraising, or otherwise, the measures must in some way relate to the organization’s mission. Organizations exist for purposes. The leader has the primary responsibility of aligning the organization’s resources and activities to meet those purposes. An effective leader may do so through a vision, strategic initiatives, clear communication, powerful presence and command, insightful goal setting, or in other ways. Whatever the leader’s gifts, commitment, disciplines, and activities, the leader must remain responsible to the organization’s mission. If the leader is not mission committed, no one else in the organization may be either, and the organization will not long survive. 

Strategy

A leader is also responsible to conceive, communicate, and implement strategic initiatives. Strategy involves an insight or approach for achieving an overall aim. Strategies are not schemes or plans. Instead, strategies generate plans. Anyone can come up with a plan. But on what insight or approach has the planner based the plan? Effective leaders start with the strategy and from there form the plans. An organization that sells goods may, for example, begin with a strategy to penetrate an existing market for goods, develop a new market for goods, develop new products to bring to existing or new markets, or diversify markets and goods. Each of those four alternative strategies would warrant different plans, devoting different resources in different ways. Rather than start with plans, a wise leader will discern the best strategy to achieve the organization’s goals and then develop the plans in line with the strategy. Strategy takes the organization’s leadership to a deeper level. No one within the organization can do that better than the organization’s leader. A leader’s depth, insight, sensitivity, and wisdom, expressed through strategy, can suffuse an organization.

Planning

Leaders are also responsible for organizational planning. Teams and organizations need plans. Plans aren’t perfect. Some miss the target entirely, while others need major adjustment to keep the organization or team on track as the target approaches. But an organization or team without any plan is shooting in the dark. To employ a different analogy, plans are the bridge from the mission to its outcome. When a leader is trying to get an organization from here to there, across a figurative canyon or river to the promised land, the leader must show the organization’s members how to build the bridge. A leader’s pointing in the destination’s direction, across the great divide from the present to the future, isn’t generally enough. The leader must help the team organize itself around specific objectives, step by step toward the destination. Goals are too big to be meaningful directives to action. Goals motivate but don’t say much of anything about how to achieve them. A leader’s plans say what to do, who to do it, and when. Planning is where the rubber meets the road on the trip from vision to destination. Leaders are responsible for plans.

Communication

Leaders are also responsible for an organization’s communications. In a smaller organization, the leader may communicate with every constituent necessary to the organization’s success, from founders, owners, and boards, to directors, managers, employees, volunteers, suppliers, and clients, patrons, or customers. Smaller organizations largely depend on the leader’s ability and willingness to communicate clearly, consistently, and inspirationally with all constituents, both internally and externally. Larger organizations have communications departments and program managers and directors to do a lot of the communicating. But even in larger organizations, the leader must supply the narrative and set the communication goals, parameters, and tone. Communications directors and departments don’t determine the message, narrative, and content. They instead act at the leader’s direction, employing their own communication knowledge and skills. The leader who is a hesitant communicator of a confused message won’t rally and inspire the organization’s members or its customers, clients, or patrons. Communication is a key leader responsibility. Great communicators tend to make strong and effective leaders. 

Direction

A leader is also responsible for directing the organization’s operations. Planning and communication make good starts. But as to certain functions and tasks, the leader must decide and direct. Of course, the better direction requires better decisions as to which course to direct. Leaders are responsible for deciding and directing. Yet leaders also need to know when to decide and direct versus when to withhold decision and direction in tension. The obvious options A and B may not be the only options. They may both be poor options. Effective leaders know how to reserve judgment and direction until the tension transforms the team, generating new options and commitments. Leaders decide when the time for decision and direction are right, rather than deciding prematurely. Premature decision and direction foreclose better options. Effective leaders know how to balance decisiveness and clear direction against intentional ambiguity and patience. The question of whether to go this way or that way is the leader’s responsibility to answer. A team can’t have some members going one way but other members going another way, at least not for long. The leader has the responsibility for direction.

Motivation

A leader is also responsible to inspire and motivate the organization’s members toward the goal. The degree to which team members actively engage themselves toward the goal largely determines the success or failure of the team. Direction isn’t enough. In many organizations, outside of strictly hierarchical organizations like the military, leadership is less a matter of commanding others than inspiring them in the desired direction. Participants, even paid employees, may not take commands and direction so well, especially when they have considerable skill and experience in their roles about which the leader may know little. Even in formal organizations like the military and law enforcement, motivation can make the difference between achieving the objective and failing to achieve it. Soldiers go to battle with greater commitment for some commanders than for others. Inspiration has something to do with it. Yet inspiration isn’t necessarily a matter of a leader’s charisma or presence. Motivation may instead require a sensitive arrangement of stimuli and rewards, or a greater degree of awareness and emotional intelligence. Motivating a team may require greater respect, greater deference, or simply a more-genuine relationship, treating team members as worthy individuals rather than cogs in a machine. Whatever the ingredient, motivation remains a key leader responsibility. 

Development

A leader is also responsible for developing the team. Organizations are never static. They are always growing or shrinking, moving forward or pulling back. Every new challenge invites growth and transformation. Confronting new problems with old solutions won’t work, not to the extent that the new problems invite new solutions. A leader must continually develop, grow, and seek new awareness and transformation, but the leader must also permit, encourage, and require team members to do so, too. Faculty development in a school, workforce development in a business, and staff and volunteer development in a nonprofit organization are all critical to the organization’s long-term success. Individual members of the team may take an interest in their own growth and their development of emerging attributes and new skills. But unless the organization gives those members permission and opportunity to grow, they generally won’t do so, or they’ll take their growth elsewhere, to a different organization or into personal ventures. That permission and inspiration to grow can come from co-workers and supervisors but is best when coming from the organization’s leader. Plan for developing your team members, even as you pursue your own development. Doing so will gain you their appreciation, loyalty, and engagement. Development opportunities motivate engagement. Make organizational development your leadership responsibility. 

Management

A leader is also responsible for managing the organization’s affairs or, more accurately, for ensuring the organization’s proper management. Smaller organizations and teams depend on their leader for management, including whatever financing, recruiting, orienting, training, directing, scheduling, monitoring, reporting, evaluation, adjusting, and compliance the organization takes. Management is a complex responsibility involving continual involvement, assessment, and modification. Larger organizations have managers and directors under their leader, to do the hands-on management. But even if others do the bulk of the management tasks, the leader is still responsible for ensuring that tasks get done according to the standards the tasks demand. If an organization poorly manages its personnel, finances, programs, systems, facilities, or operations, and their mismanagement slows or cripples the organization, ultimate responsibility falls on the leader. Make management your leadership responsibility. 

Accountability

A leader’s ultimate responsibility is accountability. Responsibility and accountability are nearly synonyms. Responsibility, though, refers to the obligation to address a function or task. Accountability, by contrast, refers to the consequences when the leader fails in fulfilling a responsibility. Proof that a leader is accountable for team performance comes from the adage that when a team fails, ownership doesn’t generally hire a new team. Ownership instead changes the team leader. Poor team performance gets the leader or manager fired, not the supervisors and workers. The line workers, maintenance staff, and custodians may far outlast the leaders, whom the organization will swap in and out as a measure of accountability for the organization’s performance. Accountability, though, isn’t a burden or threat. Effective leaders instead find accountability to be a gift. We should all have the privilege of consequences for our actions and inactions. We are generally better off in positions in which we have influence and efficacy, matched with the natural consequences that guide them. Be willing as a leader to be accountable to your team or organization and its members, mission, and management. Ignore your accountability, and your team or organization will likely introduce you to it anyway. 

Reflection

Do you have a strong or weak sense of responsibility? What helps you feel more responsible? What is the source of your sense of responsibility? Do you have a clear sense of responsibility for your organization’s mission? Can you communicate your organization’s mission clearly and compellingly? Are you an effective planner? Do you have a strategy behind your plans? Can you articulate your strategic vision to others? Do you understand your organization’s functions to the extent that you can direct them as appropriate, even if you rely on others to manage them? Are you able to evaluate your management team well enough to take responsibility for the mismanagement of your organization’s functions, if and when it occurs? Are you an effective motivator? Do you have a theory for motivation and inspiration? Do you accept accountability for the faults, shortfalls, and failures of your team or organization? 

Key Points

• A leader has several responsibilities to carry out to good effect.

• A leader’s first responsibility is to the organization’s mission.

• A leader should share strategic insight into the mission’s pursuit.

• A leader is also responsible for planning the mission’s pursuit.

• A leader is also responsible for communicating the mission.

• A leader is responsible for directing the organization’s functions.

• A leader is responsible for motivating the organization’s members.

• A leader is responsible for ensuring management of all systems.

• A leader is ultimately accountable for the organization’s success.

Read Chapter 8.