Leadership Lesson via Lego's

Your results reflect your leadership. What you got may be what you asked for—just not how you imagined.

I asked my son to clean up the Lego’s on the floor.

He did!...

He made a designated Lego area, sign and all.

Mission accomplished!… just not my vision of mission accomplishment. I wanted them put away in a drawer, nowhere to be seen…or stepped on.

At the end of the day, as leaders, it’s on us to take responsibility for the results we get.

He didn’t get it wrong. I wasn’t clear, I didn’t check for shared understanding, and I didn’t consider how he’d interpret the task.

Misalignment between expectations and outcomes is rarely just about ability. Sometimes it’s because we have unrealistic expectations; sometimes it’s because we don’t communicate our expectations properly; sometimes it’s because we didn’t have an accurate assessment of someone’s abilities; sometimes it’s because we didn’t resource them well enough…

Taking responsibility and being at cause for our results means stepping back and asking: “What could I have done differently to set this up for success?”

It’s not about blame. It’s about ownership. And not stepping on Lego’s in the middle of the night.