1st Leadership Step: Take Responsibility!
“Leaders are not those who do nothing but those who accept responsibility to go first.”
I am reading a book by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks entitled Lessons in Leadership. I have found, through the years, that Jewish writers often shed new light on the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. After all, they have studied and protected it for several millennia. Sacks first shows from the book of Genesis that men and women have always demonstrated a failure to take responsibility.
As you will remember, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they became ashamed and hid themselves from God. This is an ineffective way of dealing with sin or problems as God knows all things. Yet God pursued them and drew them into a conversation about their sin. But rather than taking responsibility for what he did, Adam shifted the blame to his wife saying, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree, and I ate.”. God then turned to the woman and asked her, “What is this that you have done?” and she replied, “The serpent deceived me.” Neither of them accepted personal responsibility for the mistake or the consequences; they insisted that the situation and problem are not their fault. They deny personal responsibility and say, “It wasn’t me.”1
We see a similar but slightly different reaction later in Genesis. After the first sibling rivalry ends in Cain murdering Abel, the Lord says to Cain, “Where is your brother?” and Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He doesn’t say “It wasn’t me” or “It’s not my fault” but he denies moral responsibility. Adam and Eve denied personal responsibility, but Cain denied moral responsibility. In essence, he said, “Why should I be concerned with the welfare of anyone but myself.”
But God in the scriptures calls us to take personal responsibility for our behavior and to take moral responsibility for others and for the problems people cause. This is where leadership is different than the responses of most people. God wants us to embrace that we ARE our brother’s keeper. Certainly, leaders must take responsibility first for themselves and then for the welfare of others in the group. We all share in humanity, and leaders are those who lead the way in resolving issues and situations in which a community, church, nation, or family finds themselves.
Leaders take responsibility and take action as needed. Most people will take a bystander’s approach to a problem. They will say, “This is not my problem, and I am not going to get involved.” They may criticize others and cast blame on others but will not do anything to correct or change what is needed. A leader will speak up, and assume that he or she can do something about a situation that is wrong. And a leader will take action, starting with their own actions, or lead out in calling for everyone to take action.
Edmund Burke famously said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Leaders are not those who do nothing but those who accept responsibility to go first. Leaders know that the buck stops with them; they must act, they must go first, and they must speak. And they must rally support for systemic or corporate change when it is needed.
