Do you know who your bank manager is?

Responsibility in the 21st Century

I recently attended a talk given by Sir John Whitmore. For those of you unfamiliar with him, John Whitmore is probably the pre-eminent UK force in organisational and personal development over the last 30 years or so. A former racing car driver, he is Executive Chairman of Performance Consultants International and is one of the leading figures in the international coaching community with activities and operations globally. He is currently working with multinational corporations and government organisations to establish coaching management cultures and values-based leadership for whole system transformation.

One of Sir John’s main themes was responsibility and where it lies within our rapidly evolving societies. He posited the thought that we are currently experiencing a global paradox – on the one hand we in the West (and increasingly the East) are in the throes of consumerism (i.e. more and more), yet on the other hand we are faced with issues of sustainability (i.e. less and less). I’m sure that most of us experience this paradox regularly in our lives, even on a small scale by simply owning a newer car (with newer features) or by purchasing strawberries out of season because they’re there on the supermarket shelves.

At the same time as this paradox we are also experiencing a number of new business challenges some of which Whitmore listed as:

1. Accelerating rate of change
2. Globalisation and multi-culturalism
3. Unpredictable markets and economics
4. Environmental concerns and legislation

To focus on the first in this list for example, we are witnessing quantitative technological advance far ahead of qualitative wisdom; i.e. our ability to both understand and use those advances responsibly. And surrounding all of these challenges Whitmore suggested that our traditional hierarchical structures – the structures that have usually carried responsibility in our societies – are failing us.

One seemingly trivial example of this he gave, was to remind those of us of a certain age of the time when the Bank Manager was an important pillar of a community – known to most in that locale – whereas few of us nowadays even know the location of our bank manager let alone are able to name him or her. The point being if we look around us, the traditional fixtures in our society no longer play the roles they once did – religion, politics, education, the civil service, families, etc. Without these respected outer authorities standards and ethics tend to be abandoned. Whitmore spoke about the liberalisation of society in fact becoming a sort of free licence – we’re trying everything out because we can.

So what’s taking their place? Whitmore suggests its us taking responsibility – we step into the breech ourselves and take responsibility for our own personal development, thereby connecting to the values that emerge and affect the choices we make in our lives whilst at the same time considering their collateral impact. However, and I agree with him wholeheartedly here, we are yet to fully embrace this concept. In fact we are somewhat in limbo, without the tools and experience to fully understand and exercise this on a global scale. This is totally understandable, after all we’ve grown up with these hierarchies in place and it’ll take time to learn how to do without them. I’d like to say here that I’m not trying to be pessimistic; in fact I think we’re witnessing a sort of natural societal evolution, albeit at possibly the fastest pace ever, rather I’m interested in asking the question about how we deal with the issues that are raised.

I recently presented a short session with a group of managers at Standard Life in Edinburgh. My approach was to outline these new challenges facing leaders and look at how we might respond.

Given the paradox outlined earlier and the lack of external structures much of our contemporary work lives seem to be driven by fear reactions:

1. Getting things done on time
2. Fear of failure
3. Short term financial goals

However, if excellence is to be achieved and responsibility embraced then fear has to be replaced by trust. We have to nurture new qualities within our leaders and, as Whitmore stated, spread leadership amongst a wider constituency. The thrust of my session at Standard Life was therefore to explore the first port of call on this journey – self. In fact the title for the session gives it away – “Making a difference by being different.”

By starting with yourself – your life and personal leadership stories, your values, your motivations, we can start to see where you are taking (or not taking) responsibility in your own life. We are all making choices constantly. What choices are you making on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis? The clearer we see these choices the more we can start to see the impact this has on ourselves and on others. By starting a process of questioning your own assumptions, beliefs, expectations, conditioning, etc we can start to see how they’re serving you and where you may need to rewrite them. I profoundly believe that a greater awareness of self leads to a greater awareness of those around you (family, friends, colleagues,). As a manager that means greater awareness of your team and their needs resulting ultimately in greater performance.

One of the things I stressed at Standard Life was their ability “to write themselves out of the picture” when leading their teams. This requires them to move from the fear paradigm to a trust paradigm and requires them to look at their team through the lens of “my faults, your needs” as opposed to the seemingly usual managerial one of “your faults, my needs”. My own background and experience as a theatre director were of direct relevance here: whilst I may have been providing the vision via my writing and direction the process had to be collaborative and trusting, leading to genuine shared ownership due to one unassailable fact – I was never part of the delivery team. When the performance started I was powerless (as I should have been), yes I could give feedback after the show but there are many occasions when even that wasn’t possible due simply to the fact that I wasn’t actually there. 

My point with these managers was that if they empowered their teams then trust can be built and crucially capacity - capacity to hold the responsibility for themselves and experience the commensurate increase in confidence, belief and ability. When I got this right myself in my theatre career (and I didn’t always) then something special happened – the performance went way beyond what I (& the team) may have originally visualised.

This is the power of trust allied to potential.

Sir John Whitmore believes profoundly that coaching has a crucial role to play in this. The focus of coaching is to bring people to higher levels of awareness and responsibility, and is possibly the only industry that is geared specifically to these needs. At the end of his talk Whitmore listed the qualities he identified for new leaders:

• Emotional intelligence
• Coaching principles
• Wisdom before knowledge
• Intentionality and passion
• Whole system vision
• Natural systems application
• Agility and resilience
• Authenticity and humility
• Alignment with purpose
• Self-awareness, self-knowledge

Quite a long list I’m sure you’ll agree and in this article I’ve only really touched upon the last one, but the principles behind it are crucial in terms of realising and grasping the responsibilities with which we are faced.

To sum up – yes, we are facing challenges, but we also have the capacity and opportunity to face up to these challenges in the most positive and vital way, and by doing so ensure that sustainability can be allied to personal and societal happiness.

---

If you’re interested in exploring what the above might look like for your working life please do get in touch. Also if you want to share any thoughts on any of the above I’d love to hear from you.