For the next several months the DES newsletter will contain leadership ideas developed in the book Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell. The book uses stories to illustrate leadership concepts. Although the book is designed to assist those in management positions improve and develop leadership skills, the concepts illustrated should be broadly interpreted and can be used by everyone. Please take time to consider how the ideas presented could be beneficial to you. 

Thank you, Greg Pulte for preparing these each month.

Be a Driver (Accept Responsibility):

• Until you accept total responsibility - no matter what – you will not be able to put plans in place to accomplish your goals.
• Transitioning from manager to leader requires that you make different decisions.

What does it mean to be a driver?

Think back upon how you felt when you were first learning to drive a car. The thought of being able to drive where you wanted and when you wanted in a brand new automobile filled you with excitement. Perhaps you saved your money in order to enroll in a Drivers Education course, or you, like many of us, begged your parents to pay for Driving School for your 16th birthday.

Perhaps you have known someone or you have experienced this yourself; what happened when you got behind the wheel for the first time after getting your drivers license? The excitement took over and you zipped away speeding in your parent’s car. How many times has it happened that a person new to driving has an accident immediately after receiving their driver’s license? It happens more often than one might think. The main reason accidents frequently occur just after receiving a drivers license stems from the failure to understand the difference in responsibilities between being the driver and being a passenger.

The driver who has the accident fails to realize that he is no longer a passenger. Passengers are free to do a lot of things the driver can’t do. As a driver, your focus needs to be on the road and not on the distractions. As a driver, you no longer have the right to ‘mess around’ – like listening to loud music and gawking at people as you drive by even though it seems okay to do that as a passenger.

The same principle applies when you become a leader. You are no longer a passenger, you become the driver. Your responsibilities increase when you become a leader, but you lose some of the rights and freedoms you may have previously enjoyed. For example, if you want to become a successful leader, you do not have the right to join ‘pity parties’ and talk about upper management. You also lose the right to blame others for problems within the department when you become a manager and a leader. You become the person responsible for everything that happens in your department. You even lose the right to some of your time because you are responsible for other people’s time as well as your own.  

Accepting responsibility necessitates adjustments. If it is raining you leave the house earlier or call and change the meeting time. The rain itself does not make you late; the rain just forces you to make different decisions.

The opposite of accepting responsibility is to find someone or something to blame, a real leader spends his time fixing problems instead of finding who or what to blame.

A final recommendation is to write down positive steps to take. When you write things down, you commit to doing them. If you simply tell yourself what you want to do, there is really no commitment to getting it done.