There is undoubtedly a strong relationship between responsibility and leadership. Bear Bryant once said something about this issue. He was the coach of many great football teams at the University of Alabama, and until his record was broken recently, he had the greatest number of victories of any coach in the history of the game.
Bryant said that it was impossible for any of his players to make a mistake during a football game. Any and all mistakes were his, because as coach, he was solely and completely responsible for preparing his athletes to play error-free football.
By saying this, Bryant was truly accepting a leadership role, and he was embracing the special kind of responsibility that comes with it. As a leader, you’ve got to be responsible for preparing your subordinates for the challenges they’ll face–and if the result is not positive, you’ve got to accept responsibility for not having prepared them adequately. Maybe this seems like a harsh standard to live up to, but that’s just the way it is. If you can’t handle responsibility and leadership, at least admit it to yourself, and don’t let other people start depending on you. Choose the standard by which you want to live, and follow through on it.
During the time of the Roman Empire, there was a unique perspective toward this kind of decision making. The world was brutal in those days to say the least; anything could happen, from plagues to revolutions to Barbarian invasions. Even for the upper classes, it was a challenge just to survive. Yet certain people attempted to do more than merely survive. There was a tradition whereby people attempted to create themselves and their characters exactly in the way that an artist would create a painting or a sculpture. And like a work of art, these people looked upon their minds and their characters as things of beauty that would live on after their deaths in the memories of their friends and families.
People who chose to live their lives this way were not monks or ascetics or in any way removed from life in the everyday world. They were just very serious about building strong character.
In fact, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurilius was a well-known example of this type of person, and his journal is a powerful example of everything that’s involved in building character and leadership. Much of it was written in military camps while the Emperor was leading the Roman armies against Barbarian tribes in what is now Germany.
The writings of this ancient emperor and of other people from the same period reflect a conscious choice to live according to certain standards of responsibility and character. This kind of clear decision about how to improve your inner self is something that we rarely witness today.
Most people want to be good, they want to be ethical and moral and successful in every way. They want to fulfill their potential, but they think it’s something that will just happen by itself. They don’t see that there should be a conscious decision to take responsibility for one’s life, for what one does and becomes.
There’s an old saying that goes, “I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke and saw that life was duty.” If you want to really be in control of your life, and if you want other people to be able to depend on you and look to you for leadership, you must wake up from the dream that somebody else will handle the responsibility. You must accept the responsibility of leading both yourself and others. No one else can do it for you. And if you develop the skills of a highly effective leader, no one else can do it as well as you, either.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn