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Success Secrets and Stories
Navigating the Fifth Level of the Responsibility Ladder of MBR - Responsible
Are you ready to climb to the top of the leadership responsibility ladder with us? Inspired by Dr. Durst's model, this episode promises to equip you with the action-oriented mindset that epitomize top-tier leadership. Join Greg and me as we delve into the responsible level of leadership, where swift action intersects with emotional intelligence, and a strong intellectual approach to problem-solving becomes second nature. We share personal anecdotes that illustrate the transformative power of self-awareness, creativity, and the relentless pursuit of self-actualization in leadership roles. Discover the resilience of leaders who face failure head-on, and how inner motivation, life balance, and robust relationships contribute to the success of organizations led by such individuals.
Understand the art of delegation, the essence of goal setting, and the critical role of feedback and recognition in nurturing trust and competency. We dissect the use of Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) for team members falling short. So, whether you're an aspiring leader or looking to refine your command skills, tune in for an episode that promises to challenge, inspire, and transform your leadership journey.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello everyone and welcome to our podcast success sequence and stories.
Speaker 1:I am your host, john Manolowski, and I'm here with my friend and co-host, greg Paul, greg, hey, everybody, yeah, and we're going to be talking about the highest level of the responsibility ladder. Yeah, yeah, it would be the responsible level. Dr Durst created this ladder to try to describe the different elements of managers and people who are in leadership. And there is the unconscious level, self-protective, conformance, achievement and responsible. And what was interesting is that there are characteristics that are in previous podcasts that talk about how people interact at those different levels. The responsible level is where he based his NBR program on and we're going to go through the elements that he used in one of his first descriptions called lifestyles, and it's the emotional responses, the intellectual functioning, the activity, involvement, self-discipline, relationships, physical state and spiritual dimensions. And in the previous discussions that we had we kind of avoided intellectual functioning and self-discipline and spiritual dimensions because there's more to that and Greg and I felt comfortable about talking about the things that you see on a performance review. But this is a little bit different the people who are at the responsible level. I think the elements that are associated with that are kind of important. So Greg and I are going to kind of tag team and describe what it is in terms of the responsible level that I think really does speak to how a good leader is supposed to conduct themselves and I've seen people who have done different performance levels that have shown those tendencies. And if I look at the people who I respected that were my leaders, a lot of what I'm going to be talking about and Greg's going to be talking about fall into those descriptions. They have these characteristics.
Speaker 1:So let's begin with the first category. The first category is the emotional response, and somebody who is at the responsible level has a short duration or trigger to action and they're stable and they're frequently positive emotions. That emotional response is that they're not going to basically delay, they're going to act on what needs to be addressed. There isn't going to be delay tactics and trying to find politically correct answers and really not trying to cut to the core of the question. Our people who understand that they're taking the responsibility for it and they're not going to try to finger point or blame that's a blame game is where it's counterproductive.
Speaker 1:People who are at the responsible level know that they need to get it done. What's interesting in terms of emotional response and I'm going to speak about myself and how I've applied it I'm responsible for my team and for me. If I have a problem, I need to move on it. I don't need to debate it. How do I get it fixed? That's what we're talking about. As far as emotional response the second category, greg I'm going to let you take intellectual functioning.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john. Intellectual functioning, the responsible level number five. One of the trademarks is being able to process data or information. Well, that means you're using your psyche, using your brain power, to sip through information and data and put it in a way that you can use it to make decisions. In that these people also have demonstrate expanded awareness. They're not one area of focus, they are across the board focus. They're able to look across the board, make sure that all the data is being looked at, all the possibilities are being considered. They project positivity and creativity. That's extremely important for a leader to do, especially if you're going to be responsible. They have some credibility. You've got to present positivity and show some creativity.
Speaker 2:Then, one that's really important preoccupation with self-accuration. A lot of people think about Maz-Law's needs, his hierarchy of needs, and you think about self-actualization. What is the meaning of self-actualization? You get that impression of yourself that you're comfortable with yourself and that you're firing at all cylinders. You're demonstrating, you're contributing, you're using every bit of brain power, etc. That you'd have to make the project work, move things along. Is that person's desire to use all of their abilities and be everything they can possibly be. This is something that Maz-Law made famous.
Speaker 1:And really what you've just said is listening skills. You really have to if you're going to expand your awareness. You're going to be creative. You need to be listening. There's creativity that are in your staff that if you haven't engaged and you haven't found ways to help them with their creativity, that's what you're supposed to be doing if you're a responsible manager encouraging that kind of interchange of ideas.
Speaker 1:I'll take the next category of activity involvement. I guess in the process of me explaining the previous integrated, enthusiastic, excited to be part of the process, committed to excellence and to be competent, resilient to failure, because if you do, you fail, if you don't do, you don't fail. So failure is part of the process of learning and I think everyone in some of the harder situations I've been in especially the caustic environment where the budget's better, the business itself is shaky. If there's a failure, they're all worried about losing their jobs instantly and you just can't operate that way. Failure is something that you try to manage and probably the only line I ever use towards failure is try not to do a repetitive failure. It's okay if you fail, but not the same thing over and over.
Speaker 2:Make the same mistake twice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just move on from the mistake. And how do we want to try to do it better? And freedom from excessive striving is a term that Dr Durst used to describe activity, involvement and understanding that life balance piece of it. Where does that piece of how you manage your process and how do you manage your life and your career and your job? That is all part of somebody who understands that there does need to be applications for all, not just one. Greg, I think you have the next one.
Speaker 2:Self-discipline underneath the number five responsible level. So, having inner motivation from choice and that's from deep inside. John and I talked about this a lot patience and endurance. This individual has to show patience because they are the leader and they've got to be able to be sustained that patience over the long haul. This makes a lot of sense, obviously, any manager, any leader that's really responsible, will have the ability to organize. They'll have the ability to plan and then implement that plan and then, finally, the really good manager that's really being responsible, will be flexible, because guess what? Things change. Right, sometimes it's changing. Well, what are we going to do now? We're going to stay the course? No, we might think about being adaptable and changing to a different course, and that's part of the responsibility of a responsible manager.
Speaker 1:And I think the next one in terms of relationship. So the responsible level has the capacity for intimacy, unconditional positive regard, ability to communicate and the ability to lead and follow. And I guess if I'm going to talk about relationships, it's that you're at least you're comfortable in your own skin and you understand how you're dealing with your family and you're dealing with your friends. It isn't artificial, it's genuine. And if you understand those words that it takes time and it takes a level of commitment in order to make those things work, and if you're in a responsible level, that isn't really a strain, it is a natural condition, it's a natural application, physical state. The responsible level is kind of interesting. You're taking responsibility for your health bottom line and you're not looking for somebody else to tell you whether you're healthy or not.
Speaker 1:You understand you know, there's that high energy element. You understand a little bit about your eating, your sleeping, how your body's reacting and you're doing the measurements. That you're not surprised that you have high blood pressure, that you're addressing it, those kind of things. That you're engaged in your physical health and usually you have rapid recovery, because it isn't happening by chance, it's happening by effort. You understand what's necessary in order to keep your health and I think that's the other part that helps in terms of having that responsible level. It falls into all these categories, greg, I think you got the next one.
Speaker 2:I do indeed, john. Spiritual dimension. So think about that responsible manager having high ethics and values. So I remember back in the old days with performance reviews, we used to have a question about how to rate somebody on ethics. Either five is high or one is low. Guess what? There's no scale. You're either ethical and you have values or you don't. So this is where the responsible manager demonstrates that level of high ethics and values, motivated by love.
Speaker 2:It may seem to be a little cheesy, but it's really not. It's something that you're really attached to. You want it to be successful. You've bought into the direction the company's going, or the project you've got going, or the assignment that you're leading, and you are emotionally attached to it. You're engaged in it.
Speaker 2:Dedication to the mission If you're not dedicated, your staff's not going to be dedicated and you have to show that from a responsibility level, what that dedication looks like making it a priority, answering questions, giving guidance, helping people get to the successful end. And we say this a lot about our kids fearless, little fear of death. But when you think about the death of a project or an assignment or a working situation, you're not spellbound because of, oh, this might fail. You have very little fear. It's going to fail because you're responsible, you've got the right team, you've got the right attributes, the team has the right attributes. You're going to be successful. You go in with that attitude. So you don't go in with the attitude of oh, what was us? We're not going to make it. You go in with the attitude yeah, we're pretty much going to make this happen.
Speaker 1:It's interesting to see that people are defeatists, people who are the unconscious and they've given up before they've started. Well, no one. You know we did that 30, you know we did that three years ago. We did that five years ago. It's just, yeah, trying to at least have an open mind and understanding, creativity and all those things kind of tie into the other High ethics, I think is one of those characteristics. I've lost jobs because of my ethical approach. I was asked to do things that I knew was not ethically correct. The executives that I was dealing with were not happy with my decisions and we're trying to tell me that. You know, if you want to be part of the team, which is code for look the other way. Yeah, I basically said nope, that's not the way it works. You can do what you want because you're an executive. I report to you, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to follow what you lead. I ethically will not. That usually doesn't help you in terms of promotability, but you still have to go ahead.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but it helps you sleep at night.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I mean, that's the bottom line. I have to be comfortable with the ethics and the approach that I've used for the job, especially since I'm expecting those things from others. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later, because delegation is a key element of the NBR process and we're going to get there. Dr Durst did a summary and tried to try to help describe the responsible level, and he used a few different individuals, like Maslow and the self-actualization person, or Carl Rogers as a fully functioning person, or Carl Jung as an individual, individuated person. Oh, thank you. And then we have Eric Burney as a winner. I like that one because it's really not that hard to pronounce and it's straight to the point.
Speaker 1:People at this level, this responsible level, show functioning at a high level of adaptability and creativity. The ultimate goal of an organization is to have as many people operating on this level as possible. They're engaged. Managers are effective at this level with the undue stress evident in the achievement levels or some of the other levels we talked about on the ladder. They can make decisions and lead effectively. They provide effective feedback to staff members, which is really, really important. Their acknowledgement of positive performance and there is the key, too, is providing constructive feedback for negative performances. If the only thing you ever talk about to your staff is the negative performance problems, you've lost the opportunity of being a responsible leader. You have to talk about the positive and the negative, and sometimes they're different people. That's the way it works, but you can't concentrate on just the negative, because then that affects the ability in the team. As other point is, rather than blaming others or the circumstances when they experience failure, they assume responsibility and therefore are much more resilient. Their activities are directed to exhibit far more energy than the other levels to accomplish their activities. Since managers at the responsible level can communicate very well, they tend to have a very positive relationship with their staff members as well as with their own supervisors. This ability manifests itself in their personal lives and maintain a very healthy balance of work, love and play. In short, managers at this level, the responsibility level, have a strong sense of who they are, what they need to do and why they are doing it. I think the bottom line for me is I wanted to try to push to be that level, because it's really trying to find a balance between doing the job and helping people to advance and develop people by giving them this guideline of how to manage others.
Speaker 1:Whenever somebody asks me what are you talking about for management responsibility? What is so unique about responsibility? I keep on going back to what Dr Durst opened up his book, and it was the first quote that he gave in his classroom seminar. It was from Admiral Hyman Rickover.
Speaker 1:This responsibility is a unique concept. It can only reside and adhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You can disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it. I have never heard words more appropriately defined to responsibility than those words.
Speaker 1:The element that he's talking about is as an Admiral. He was making decisions during a nuclear age of submarines and knew that he owned whatever he was doing for the defense of the country and making decisions that were going to affect his naval forces in the world. He knew the sense of responsibility that's associated with it and owned it. That's leadership he had to delegate to other people in order to accomplish it. He didn't do everything that was associated with a nuclear submarine, but I'll put money on it. His team not only helped and developed the future of submarines. They were also the ones that replaced him when he moved on, because he taught them the elements of responsibility and how to delegate and how to review whether people are competent or not, and how communication is the key for him and his staff. All those things fell into how he conducted himself as a military leader. They don't understand communication. Nobody does, and that is the heart of leadership.
Speaker 1:I've talked about a bunch of things. I like the idea of Dr Durst Love to talk about some of the other influences and some of the other training that he had, and he quoted Buddha, which was kind of fun. A fool is his own enemy. Seeking wealth, he destroys himself. One of the men who is without passion, hatred, illusion and design. What you give him will be given back to you, and more a Buddha. But the simplistic answer is if the person is capable and is managing themselves, they are going to be productive. That really is what I get from the Buddha quote.
Speaker 1:So when Dr Durst rolled in from being the cause to the MBR process there's four key elements of the NBR process he created this wonderful symbol and it showed four arrows that went into a circle, creating this imagery. The first arrow is motivation to accept responsibility. The second arrow is delegation, the third arrow is goal setting and the fourth arrow is feedback and recognition. If you see the loop there that's associated with it, it makes perfect sense as you're applying it. But I can tell you, the arrow that is hardest to implement, and the one that takes the most time in order to make sure that it's being applied correctly, is delegation.
Speaker 1:You have to give up your authority and delegate a piece of yourself to another person, to another manager, to another director. If that relationship in terms of delegation is to work, you must develop trust or help that person with the professional competencies to understand what that relationship means. If that person is not trustworthy or competent, you need to either decide that training is more training is required or you need the firearm. You need to remove them from the team. There is no fun in that process. But organizations that have bad delegation teams. They have members who really don't get or want the responsibility, that, the trust they want to hide from all the things that are associated that we talked about being responsible, the people who are unconscious, the people who are conformist, that are just trying to get their check and run out the door If you're expecting them to pick up your trust and an element of your authority and represent you to others. It's not going to happen. You can try to train it.
Speaker 1:I've tried. I've had a manager that I gave him the books on MBR. I tried to train him. I worked for years on how this leadership element of it is different than how it's been taught and applied in the past. I mean he needs to modify that.
Speaker 1:After a year I felt that I had done everything I could to help him make that transition and he just didn't get it. And it wasn't for the lack of trying. He was trying, but it was just not part of who he was and what he wanted to do. He had different priorities. He had different ways of interpreting information Okay, but it was my job then to let him go. I could have made that decision 12 months before I actually did, but I wanted to make sure that he had every opportunity to learn from me and understand why he was failing and give him examples of how that thought process needs to change. You shouldn't need 12 months to make that decision. There's these things called a PIP. Greg, I think you've used the PIP program and maybe you can talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure thing, john. Yes, pip stands for Performance Improvement Plan and abused it quite a few times. And I'm going to tell you a couple of things. First, there's a notion that says until you fired an employee, you really aren't a manager, because that is so, so difficult and gut-wrenching to do. But I also will say to those sports enthusiasts something that Mike Tyson said everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And I'm here to tell you there's a soberness, there's an awakening, when you have an employee that's just not doing what they have to do, because all my employees are great, they should all do what they're supposed to do. That's why they're here. Well, guess what? In the real world, that doesn't always happen.
Speaker 2:And so you come up with a performance improvement plan and it's just as the title sounds. You want to improve the performance. The goal is to help them get where they need to be. But it's all supposed to get their attention, because you're also telling them your job is in jeopardy, you're not performing at the level we need. We think you, from the time we hired you have the capability to be successful, but right now you're not. You're not on the right path.
Speaker 2:So with that PIP, with that performance improvement plan. You get their attention and you work. Your goal is to help them get where they need to go. But guess what? You're the manager. There's only so much you can do. There's a whole lot that employee has to do and so you can't walk away from this level of responsibility. If a person needs additional training, that's fine, but if the management employee doesn't deal with these, doesn't address the situation, then that management employee is probably in a job in jeopardy situation because that's part of their responsibility. Again, it's tough, it can be gut wrenching, but you really put a negative cast on the rest of the organization if you allow that poor performer to continue to perform.
Speaker 1:And you're affecting the other people that report in that department by not addressing that manager and accepting their incompetence or their indifference or whatever it is that's holding them back. You're basically affecting others and that's not fair to them. So, like in my case when I had that one individual that was struggling, I was managing around them, I was co-managing maybe you want to use that term making sure that the things were still getting done that should have been done, and the advancements and the dismissals and putting in the right programs and setting up the right schedules. Those things are still being accomplished. But I was trying to do that, helping this manager to see what it was that needed to change. I said he would have, in terms of a PIP, a better understanding of where the disparity is at.
Speaker 1:Well, anyway, that gives you at least an understanding of the responsible level and, as you can tell, I'm kind of passionate and Greg is passionate about people who are capable of doing this work and we try to help over the years to get to this level and we're looking for these characteristics and any organization is looking for these characteristics within leadership.
Speaker 1:I would also offer that when you're interviewing, you should hear some of these words in an interview for the next organization that you're going to work for, if none of these words like ethics and mission and communication and feedback none of those words actually are being applied, ask questions. You want to make sure if you're going to make a decision, a career decision. Some of what we're talking about is a responsible organization, because there are those organizations that are just sleepwalking they call them cash cows and they're making their money and they stop realizing innovation because there's money that's coming in and sometimes that's not the organization you want to tie yourself to Be aware, I guess, is my point. These descriptions are helpful in an organization for the individual and especially if you're looking to make a move and not make a misstep. What is involved in terms of that analysis? So, greg, what are we going to be talking about in our next podcast?
Speaker 2:So, john, next time on our podcast we'll have a discussion of the NBR process, of those responsible levels that we've been discussing over the last so many episodes. We'll talk about the responsible leaders approach to basic management style, use of authority and goal setting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another application is exactly so it's trying to bring. We've brought you at least a lot of the concepts that Dr Durst talked about in being the cause. Now we're going to bring little sampleings and pieces of the NBR process and I think that's the important part that we're going to be talking about next. So, if you like what you've heard, there is the music. My book is available on Amazoncom and Lulucom building your leadership toolbox Success secrets and stories. Podcasts is on what you're listening to and other popular formats. Thank you, dr Durst's book and NBR program is available at successgrowthacademycom and the music has been brought to you by my grandson. So, yeah, I love that music. Well, thanks, greg.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john, as always. Next time. Next time yeah.