No Excuses Series: Accepting Responsibility

One of the most important attributes in a leader is their ability to accept responsibility. I remember years ago I was working for a radio rep firm, a firm that represents local radio stations nationally. On one occasion I wrote a very unorthodox pitch to an advertiser about a radio station that was not highly ranked in their market. Of course every pitch had to be sent to the station’s general manager for his review. The GM did not find the humor in this particular proposal and proceeded to call my boss without ever commenting to me. Unbeknownst to me my boss told him I had done a good job for him in the past that I knew the client better than he did and that he reviewed the pitch and gave the ok…which he didn’t. After the fact I realized what it was then made my boss, Carl such a good boss. He instilled confidence not to be afraid to take a risk if it was thought out and calculated and that he always had my back.

Today when I hire people it is one of the first things I try to glean. I ask not only about their wins but about their losses and why. If they give every excuse in the book about why it wasn’t their fault it tells me that this is a person that doesn’t take responsibility. I would rather hear what they could have done better, why they failed and how they would learn and handle it differently the next time. If someone has not failed at something it means they are not risking enough, trying enough, exposing themselves enough. A person that accepts responsibility is a person worth giving responsibility to. By the way, that pitch I gave for the radio station got the single biggest buy the station had that year. I never even got a thank you from the general manager but my boss treated me and my wife to dinner.

Don’t be afraid to take a risk, don’t be afraid to fail but most of all when you do always take responsibility. I used to have a saying with my sales staff “sometimes you gain more from a defeat than a win, just don’t make a habit of it”


Bill Barnett
CEO