Learning and growth are the fulfillment of REAL interdependence. Your organization’s mission, vision, and to some extent even it’s values will change over time out of necessity. What your organization does, when, where, and how it does it must continually improve and adapt for your organization to remain relevant and strategically viable.

Yet your organization’s purpose, why it does what it does and why that matters, is steadfast. It’s your organization’s purpose – not it’s mission, vision or values – that enables and invigorates the interdependence of purposeful constituents. If you are either unwilling or unable to learn, grow, and adapt as your organization does, then you will lose the capacity to be a purposeful contributor.

Stop learning and growing, and you will become or force others to become either dependent or independent in your relationships at work. Your ability to work autonomously most of the time, yet know when and how to ask for help from others when you need, will erode. You will increasingly become either a burden or a stranger to those you work with. Your role at work will be void of meaning, and there will be no one to blame.

It’s your responsibility to keep that from happening. Real learning is the core technology of interdependent partnerships.

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Accountability is the binding strength of interdependence. The two primary principles of real accountability are that it always starts with you and that it always seeks productive solutions rather than blame when challenges occur at work.

We are accountable for keeping our promise to assume full responsibility for performing our jobs with distinction, trying to continuously improve our jobs as we master them, and caring about what we do. We are accountable for performing as autonomously as possible, but knowing when and how to ask for help when we need it.

We are accountable for knowing what’s expected of us and understanding how we need to behave in order to meet and exceed those expectations. We are also accountable for understanding that our expectations of others, even our leaders, are legitimate, and we must have the courage to share our expectations with others. We can’t expect people to help us excel until we ensure they know what we need.

We are accountable for helping others keep their promises by being enabling and encouraging, rather than disabling and discouraging. As we master our jobs, we try our best to help those around us master and improve their jobs. As purposeful performers, we are driven to find ways we can inspire others to enact their best selves at work.

We are accountable for not looking the other way when things go wrong or when people behave in unexpected or inappropriate ways. We are accountable for seeking solutions rather than laying blame; however, we understand that sometimes solutions require tough choices.

A team or organization that is void of real accountability is one that is incapable of delivering remarkable performance. Interdependence is the walk of excellence, a walk that requires intention, foresight, effort, introspection, discipline, patience, persistence, openness, integrity, respect, trust, compassion, courage, commitment, growth, gratitude, and grace.

That’s what we are accountable for.

Did I miss anything? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Expectations are the framework of interdependent work relationships. They are built on a foundation of REAL responsibility and secured by the glue of REAL accountability.

We naturally expect our leaders to have expectations of their followers. Not all organizations and leaders engage in formal goal setting, but I would not give you a nickel for a leader that does not communicate clear performance and behavioral expectations, help followers achieve those expectations, reward them when they do and take timely and developmental corrective action when they don’t.

That’s status quo leadership. If you want to practice truly remarkable leadership, you have to take your relationships with people to the next level. This means inviting your folks to have higher expectations of you than you have of them, to share those expectations openly with you and everyone else on the team, and to collectively hold you accountable for those expectations.

Get your team together and ask them all to share openly what they need from you in order to excel at their jobs. You need to hear those expectations, and they need to hear each other’s expectations. When the team hears the full spectrum of things people expect from you as a leader, they will probably realize that you are going to need their help if you are going to have any chance of helping them by meeting those expectations. Openly sharing expectations is one way of moving folks on the team toward assuming even more self-responsibility, which is the foundation of interdependence.

You have to work hard to make it safe for your folks to share their expectations of you openly, because you also have to make it unacceptable for them to not hold you accountable for high expectations. Keep in mind that if you go this route, you will be modeling for them a style of leadership that they probably have not seen often if at all. Be patient, be gracious, but be unequivocally resolute.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I’m not a big fan of acronyms, but I created the acronym REAL – responsibility, expectations, accountability, learning - to try to describe what I think right relationships at work should look like. I recognize that very few of our relationships at work will develop into the goal of interdependent partnerships, but that can never be an excuse for us to not continually strive to prepare ourselves and others to be increasingly more interdependent with and less dependent upon each other.

Assuming full responsibility for your performance and citizenship behaviors at work is the foundation of interdependence. You can never be truly interdependent if your behaviors force others to assume responsibility for you. Here are a few suggestions for how we can master our current responsibilities, improve the jobs that we do, do more than what’s expected by helping others, and care about our purpose:

1. Understand your organization’s purpose, why it exists to do what it does. Don’t expect to find this written in an official document – you might have to think hard about this yourself

2. Understand why you were selected for your position over others

3. Understand how your work contributes to the organization’s final products and services, and why your work matters

4. Understand when and how your performance is measured and how it is evaluated. Make a list of the daily behaviors you need to exhibit to exceed your metrics

5. Invest in your own personal development

6. As you master your current responsibilities, look for ways to improve the work you do. Find the courage to communicate your suggestions in the form of solutions rather than complaints

7. As you master and now improve your current responsibilities, look for ways you can help others with their responsibilities

8. Be trustworthy as well as trusting of others

9. Engage with your work and colleagues instead of waiting to be engaged

10. If you are not satisfied with your work, identify the root cause and try to fix it. Commitment is a powerful driver of performance and citizenship behavior, and you will never fully commit if you are not satisfied with your work.

I’m not suggesting this list is compressive, but it’s a good start. Have I left out anything important? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Much has been said about how important relationships are for effective leadership. It’s true that leadership requires influential relationships with others to get things done. Yet it’s also true, and maybe even more significant, that it’s only through right relationships with others that we are even able to fully see what really needs to be done. Right relationships are interdependent, covenantal partnerships, not dependent contracts.

Interdependent relationships with courageous others help us better see things for what they really are, rather than we want them to be. Right relationships help leaders discover innovative opportunities, avoid strategic myopia, and select purposeful courses of action that others can support with enthusiasm and authenticity.

Can you see right relationship? Interdependent relationships should be REAL – characterized by responsibility, expectations, accountability, and learning:

• Responsibility: unless and until you assume full responsibility for your own behavior and results, you force others to assume responsibility for you. It is your responsibility to perform your job with ethical distinction and to care about what you do, who you do it with, and who you do it for. Personal responsibility is the foundation of interdependence.
• Expectations: healthy, interdependent relationships are characterized by mutual expectations that every party in the relationship recognizes as legitimate. To be a partner, you must care about the expectations others have of you, and you must have the courage to share with others the expectations you have of them. Expectations provide the framework for interdependence.
• Accountability:  interdependent partners first hold themselves accountable for personal responsibility and reciprocal expectations. They then hold themselves accountable for enabling others to assume responsibility and exceed expectations. Finally, they hold others accountable for performing as promised and for caring about their work. Accountability is the glue that secures interdependence.
• Learning: interdependent relationships change and continuously improve over time as partners learn how they can assume more responsibility for themselves and how they can better enable others to assume the fullness of their roles. Learning and growth are the fulfillment of interdependence.

Can you see yourself in REAL relationships? Being REAL in our relationships with others is a skill we have to develop even if others never invite us to be REAL or treat us the same way. We are responsible for our behavior, not how others respond to our behavior. How well are you doing establishing REAL relationships with others at work?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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In contractual relationships, our primary concern is holding others accountable for high standards of performance. Effective contractual relationships require what we deal with others in good faith and that we assume full responsibility for performing our part of the arrangement. That is absolutely essential, but the normative trust and commitment of contractual relationships will never be enough to establish a high performance work environment.

Research has shown that only affective trust and commitment between leaders and followers produces the psychological safety requisite for people to apply the full potential of their heads, hands, and hearts to work. Building on a solid foundation of fair contractual relationships for everyone, high performance leadership moves to establish covenantal relationships with as many employees as possible.

Covenant promises require a different kind of trust, commitment, and leadership intimacy than do contracts.  Contracts are the currency of bosses and subordinates; covenants the currency of partners. Interdependent partners in covenant relationship commit to enabling each other to keep promises established to achieve the vision, values, goals, and daily behaviors consonant with their shared purpose.

Unless and until you are willing to hold yourself accountable for performing your own job with distinction, walking the talk your employees value, and genuinely caring for those you’ve been given the privilege to lead, you will never master covenant leadership. You are not entitled to partnership; you earn partnership by first providing it to others.

“How can I help?” may be the single most important question you can learn to ask as a leader.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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How do you work with or around hateful people?

A reader I admire a lot asked me this question in a private e-mail. I’ve never blogged on this topic, so I didn’t have an answer ready.

Because of my communication style, not too many folks engage me in open confrontation over time. When people hate me, they hate me behind my back and seldom to my face. I think personality has a lot to do with how people both express disdain and react to the venom of others.

I confront ugly behavior when it happens openly to me. I don’t hold grudges, so I prefer to have issue focused conflict, then move on. I know others that do the exact opposite – they avoid issue focused conflict and hold personal grudges for years. Covert hatefulness is for me the worst kind.

I don’t hate people, but there are few behaviors that I loathe and my personality makes it impossible for me to hide my true feelings. I hate being lied to, and I hate selfishness, which is ironic, because to varying degrees we all lie to ourselves and others to try to hide the deepest roots of our own pride and greed.

So how do you deal with hateful people at work? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below!

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Leadership liberates others by enabling them to find meaning and full responsibility in their roles. Are you waiting around for a hero leader to arrive on the scene to liberate you? I hope not.

Leadership is a relationship, which means you have to do your part by assuming responsibility for continuously developing yourself into an increasingly interdependent and purposeful partner in the relationship. Unless and until you assume full responsibility for yourself, you force others to assume responsibility for you.

Work hard to liberate your leader from the burden of having to worry about how well you will perform and how much you will care about the work you do, those you do it for, and those you do it with. Give yourself permission to do this work free from external sanctions and rewards. The primary barriers to empowerment are between your ears.

Your choices, as much as anything else, determine whether you will be restrained or liberated by leadership. If you never learn to liberate yourself, you’ll never be prepared to help others do the same.

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Michael Hyatt wrote a great blog post today entitled “How Leaders Make Tough Decisions.” The inspiration for the post was interviews former President George W. Bush has been giving recently about his new book. Michael stayed away from politics in his post and listed five things about decision making that he gleaned from the interviews. It’s a great list, so I strongly encourage you to read the full text of Michael’s post by clicking the link above.

Number 2 on his list was “You Must Surround Yourself With Trusted Advisors.” According to Michael:

You can’t research every aspect of important decisions yourself. At some point you have to depend on the expertise of others. Ultimately, your leadership will stand or fall based on the quality of the advise you receive. Bush made some great decisions here and some unfortunate ones.

I strongly concur that leaders need trusted advisors. In practice, the problem with that idea is that trusted means they are loyal and won’t rock the boat. When that happens, the leader creates a culture of personality instead of a culture of performance. A group of trusted advisors too often provides a solid foundation for the walls of groupthink.

Leaders must include in their group of advisors people that can be trusted to have the courage to disagree even if they stand alone in their dissent. You need to have people that will tell you what you need to know, not what they think you want to hear. Standing on principle is tantamount to blind stubbornness if you systematically eliminate and exclude the voices that challenge your principles.

If your people never tell you no, you can trust that you are in trouble.

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