Kuleana Responsibility is what you Accept more than what you are Given
When you define it as Kuleana, responsibility is what you accept more than what you are given. Read that again slowly, and sit with it for a moment.
It is a statement which implies, and rightly so, that responsibility is more about what you think it is, over and above what others might think.
Now, let's review this, listed at number 4 of my 21 Core Beliefs within Managing with Aloha:
It may often require a charismatic leader to create excitement, and lead the way with new and innovative thinking. However it will require a great manager of people to actually inspire employees to get the job done.
We just talked about the manager's responsibility for leadership in the last week, so how does this connect?
When you are a coach (and I believe that all managers are coaches; I am not referring to the coaching profession, though this certainly applies there too) you quickly learn to be more specific with the vocabulary you use. It doesn't necessarily have to be completely dictionary-accurate as much as commonly understood between the people using it, for language is a powerful trigger (and thus my site Talking Story is more narrowly focused on our language of intention and our conversations).
For instance, and to the subject at hand, one of my hot buttons is the way that the words management/leadership and manager/leader get interchanged so much. Then at other times I am grateful for the opportunity they give me to better explain myself and clean up my own language too! It's a continual effort for all of us, me included. Our old habits with choosing our words die hard, and it takes deliberate intention.
When I have the presence of mind to concentrate on thinking about my words before they spill from my mouth (no easy task!) I call everyone manager and try to stay away from the word leader, to convey this point - managers manage AND they lead. As we've spoken of here, managers manage with people more than process, and they lead by creating clarity.
Debbie Payne, coach and new friend over at David Zinger's Employee Engagement Network, expressed it this way within a conversation we had about the Role of the Manager Reconstructed:
Managers really need to understand that they manage budgets, manage projects, manage inventory. They need to lead people through other skills such as coaching, mentoring, teaching, listening. Leading and managing are different and yet intertwined. As we call people "managers" that is what they focus on. When we call the people at the top the "leaders" we somehow expect them to stop managing and start leading and it is impossible as both are valuable.
~ Debbie Payne, leadership development and organizational learning specialist, at The Role of the Manager Reconstructed
Debbie and I are actually in agreement. If I brought her sentiment in alignment with my language in the Role of the Manager Reconstructed here at MWAC, it would read this way:
Managers really need to understand that they may work with budgets, projects and inventory, however they lead people by making the importance of the work clear, and by using their skills with coaching, mentoring, teaching, listening [which is their true calling]. Leading and managing are different and yet intertwined. As we call people "managers" in our conventional organizational structures and culture however, they focus on the budgets, projects, and inventory etc. instead as that is the prevalent expectation. We further compound this reigning confusion when we call the people at the top the "leaders," and we somehow expect them to stop managing and start leading; that is impossible as both are valuable.
That quote atop this post within my 21 Core Beliefs of MWA can be found in context on pages 9 and 10 of my book under the subtitle of "Why focus on management?" and it deals with those "prevalent expectations" and assumptions that most managers find they are working within: The "leaders" are the men/women who out-rank them, and the "managers" are the ones in the trenches struggling to dot the i's and cross the t's and actually pull off getting the work of another leader's idea done. The way the system usually works, is that you get your turn at leading once you pay your dues with execution down the ranks first. ...Then, that other "leader" wonders why their direct reports feel they have been hung and left out to dry, while their boss moves on to other "leadership-type" things.
And in this conventional, and still largely prevalent context, (back to my quote...) it will require a great manager of people to actually inspire employees to get [that] job done.
The charismatic leader requirement then gets tricky for that manager-turned-leader too: When you are no longer directly "in charge" of them, it can take a lot for you to get the attention of employees back so you can inspire them --- they are heads down, working in the trenches with those hung-out-to-dry managers of theirs).
What a broken system. Wouldn't it be so much easier if one person did both things?
That one person is the great manager who both manages and leads in this reconstruction, and who accepts their responsibility for both management and leadership in the work they do every single day championing the Ho‘ohana of their people.
So this brings us to the good news:
While I accept that the prevailing organizational culture may be going against you many times, great managers are more than capable of leading (and creating clarity with) a better way individually.
They do this by clearly understanding for themselves first and foremost that when you define it as Kuleana, responsibility is what you accept more than what you are given. Again, it is a statement which implies, and rightly so, that responsibility is more about what you think it is, over and above what others might think.
At Say Leadership Coaching:
At Talking Story:
Photos found on Flickr: hands by batega, and Pipe Cleaner Muscle Man by Bob.Fornal
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