I Am Part of the Problem Here

When Leadership Means Saying ‘I Am Part of the Problem Here’ : Leadership : HBS Working Knowledge: "Before they fix it, leaders need to ask themselves how they broke it in the first place. In this excerpt from their new book, Leadership on the Line, Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government offer their help.

When you belong to the organization or community that you are trying to lead, you are part of the problem. This is particularly true when you have been a member of the group for some time, as in a family. Taking the initiative to address the issue does not relieve you of your share of responsibility. If you have been in a senior role for a while and there's a problem, it is almost certain that you had some part in creating it and are part of the reason it has not yet been addressed. Even if you are new, or outside the organization, you need to identify those behaviors you practice or values you embody that could stifle the very change you want to advance. In short, you need to identify and accept responsibility for your contributions to the current situation, even as you try to move your people to a different, better place.

In our teaching, training, and consulting, we often ask people to write or deliver orally a short version of a leadership challenge they are currently facing in their professional, personal, or civic lives. Over the years, we have read and heard literally thousands of such challenges. Most often in the first iteration of the story the author is nowhere to be found. The storyteller implicitly says, "I have no options. If only other people would shape up, I could make progress here."

When you are too quick to lay blame on others, whether inside or outside the community, you create risks for yourself. Obviously, you risk misdiagnosing the situation. But you also risk making yourself a target by denying that you are part of the problem and that you, too, need to change. After all, if you are pointing your finger at them, pushing them to do something they don't want to do, the easiest option for them is to get rid of you. The dynamic becomes you versus them. But if you are with them, facing the problem together and each accepting some share of responsibility for it, then you are not as vulnerable to attack.

The consultant returned with three messages. First, strengthen the brands; that made sense to Wexner. Second, Wexner would have to fire a significant portion of the corporation's workforce, perhaps as many as one third of his people. But Wexner had run the company as a family since its inception in 1963. He had never been in the habit of firing people. He thought this part heretical.

The third message cut even deeper. Schlesinger told Wexner that he was part of the problem. The company could make a transition with him or without him, the consultant said, but if the former, he would have to take responsibility. He would have to make substantial, significant changes in his own beliefs and behaviors. Without that, the remaining employees, the shareholders, and the company's corporate board would be able to successfully resist the needed transformation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged Americans in that way during the civil rights movement. The abhorrent treatment he and his allies received in marches and demonstrations dramatized the gap between the traditional American values of freedom, fairness, and tolerance and the reality of life for African-Americans. He forced many of us, self-satisfied that we were good people living in a good country, to come face-to-face with the gulf between our values and behavior; once we did that, we had to act. The pain of ignoring our own hypocrisy hurt us more than giving up the status quo. The country changed.

Of course, this takes time. Confronting the gaps between our values and behavior—the internal contradictions in our lives and communities—requires going through a period of loss. Adaptive work often demands some disloyalty to our roots. To tell someone that he should stop being prejudiced is really to tell him that some of the lessons of his loving grandfather were wrong. To tell a Christian missionary that, in the name of love, she may be doing damage to a native community, calls into question the meaning of mission itself. To suggest to her that, in an age of global interdependence, we can no longer afford to have religious communities compete for divine truth and souls, calls into question the interpretation of scripture lovingly bestowed upon her by family and teachers.

Asking people to leave behind something they have lived with for years or for generations practically invites them to get rid of you. Sometimes leaders are taken out simply because they do not appreciate the sacrifice they are asking from others. To them, the change does not seem like much of a sacrifice, so they have difficulty imagining that it seems that way to others. Yet the status quo may not look so terrible to those immersed in it, and may look pretty good when compared to a future that is unknown. Exercising leadership involves helping organizations and communities figure out what, and whom, they are willing to let go. Of all the values honored by the community, which of them can be sacrificed in the interest of progress?

When the terrorists attacked on September 11, 2001, they generated extraordinary disruption and loss to the United States in general and to New York City in particular. People in New York were forced, not only to grieve losses, but to face a new reality: their own vulnerability. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani seemed immediately to grasp people's struggle to adapt. He spoke clearly, passionately, and repeatedly, giving voice to people's pain. Over and over again, he urged people to resume their pre-September 11 activities, to go to work, use the city's parks, and patronize restaurants and theatres, even though everyone's natural response was to hunker down and stay out of harm's way. But as people began to heed his advice, he also let them know that he realized what he was asking them to do. He asked them to give up their heightened need to maintain a sense of their own personal security on behalf of larger values: not giving in to the terrorists, and rebuilding New York City. Giuliani went even further. He modeled the behavior he was asking of others by putting himself in harm's way, going to Ground Zero over and over again, barely escaping being injured himself on September 11 when the towers fell. Sometimes, modeling the behavior you are asking of others presents itself as an even more powerful way than just words to acknowledge their loss."

Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky serve on the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Heifetz is the author of Leadership Without Easy Answers, and founding director of the school's Center for Public Leadership. Linsky is faculty chair of many of the school's executive programs.