Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 612 - "Accountability Requires Clear Communication" (Liz Wiseman and John Wooden)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 12	Issue 612
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"ACCOUNTABILITY REQUIRES CLEAR COMMUNICATION" (LIZ WISEMAN AND JOHN WOODEN) John Wooden Video Clip (64 sec.): Coach Wooden describes "Skill". Liz Wiseman is a bestselling author, researcher, and elite leadership coach. In her New York Times bestseller, Multipliers: she researched over 150 leaders worldwide. Liz Wiseman and John Wooden would both tell you that great leaders are able to create a team culture with accountability. A good step in creating accountability is to ask the person you are assigning the task to tell you exactly what they understand their responsibility is. It is also important that you establish you will not accept incomplete work. Liz Wiseman describes how she learned this lesson the hard way: "I was six months into my first management job. It was 7:30 p.m., as I sat at my desk. The halls were dark, and all of my staff had gone home for the night. Everyone was home but me. I was still busy trying to close out my "to dos" for the day, many of which had emerged during the workday as one little crisis after another landed on my desk. I came up from my absorption in my work and thought, Why am I still doing so much of the work? I’ve delegated. Why does it all come back to me? People were bringing me their problems, and I would take them back. At this realization, I became irritated at my team for dumping the problems on me and for not doing their jobs. Then, alone in a dark office, I had the epiphany: I wasn’t doing my job. As a manager, my job was no longer about me. It was my responsibility to manage the work, not do the work. I had been solving problems like some overzealous superhero, when I was really supposed to help other people solve problems. My job was to flow the work to my team and keep it there. It is an embarrassingly simple idea, but for me as a newly promoted manager, it was a startling realization." John Wooden did not accept incomplete work. Do you? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 612. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 612. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE The Neighborly Person Some are eager to be famous, some are striving to be great, Some are toiling to be leaders of their nation or their state, And in every person’s ambition, if we only understood, There is much that's fine and splendid; every hope is mostly good. So I cling unto the notion that contented I will be If the people upon life's pathway find a needed friend in me. I rather like to putter 'round the walks and yards of life, To spray at night the roses that are burned and browned with strife; To eat a frugal dinner, but always to have a chair For the unexpected stranger that my simple meal would share. I don't care to be a traveler, I would rather be the one Sitting calmly by the roadside helping weary travelers on. I'd like to be a neighbor in the good old-fashioned way, Finding much to do for others, but not over much to say. I like to read the papers, but I do not yearn to see What the journal of the morning has been moved to say of me; In the silences and shadows I would live my life and die And depend for fond remembrance on some grateful passers-by. I guess I wasn't fashioned for the brilliant things of earth, Wasn't gifted much with talent or designed for special worth, But was just sent here to putter with life's little odds and ends And keep a simple corner where the stirring highway bends, And if folks should chance to linger, worn and weary through the day, To do some needed service and to cheer them on their way. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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