Rules Of Management

RULE 14 - Take the Rap

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say, ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit… This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Peter F. Drucker, Managing the Nonprofit Organization

Sorry, but if the team screws up, it is entirely your fault. If the team does well, the credit is all theirs. A good manager will always take the rap. I know it’s easy to use your team as an excuse, but it won’t wash. You are the leader, the manager, the boss. If it all goes pear-shaped you have to stand up and take the flack.

“It’s easy to use your team as an excuse, but it won’t wash.”

It is easy to say, ‘We didn’t meet our targets because…’ But you have to say, ‘I didn’t meet my targets because…’ And that ‘because’ has to be followed by ‘I’, never ‘they’.

It is easy to say, ‘We didn’t meet our targets because young Brian accidentally upset Client X and they pulled out leaving us short of our sales’. But put young Brian in charge of such an important client? You. Who organized the sale? You. It has to be you. And your team will die for you if you ask it to, if you take the rap when the going get tough, believe me. Nothing generates more loyalty than a boss who’s prepared to stand up and say, ‘I take responsibility’.

But I also know this is a tough one, really tough to do. It takes self-confidence, courage, trust (that you won’t get sacked or disciplined) and a certain maturity.

You might think it will go against you, look as if you are incompetent, but on the contrary. If your boss sees you stand up and say, ‘We lost the contract and I take responsibility – these are the steps we’re taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again’ they won’t see a failure – they will see a future board member.

posted by Right Ranger @ 6:12 PM