MBA Application Leadership Qualities - Personal Responsibility

Personal responsibility does not come that often when you think about leadership qualities. It is always about “My Team didn’t perform well”, “We lacked coordination”, “Our communication was poor.” You can make all the excuses you want but if you are leading a team, the failure is because of one person – “You.” The team has given you the authority to lead. So how do you go about explaining failure as a leader in your essay?

1) Own It

As you might have read in our previous article about Trust as a leadership quality – as much as team members love to have autonomy in making decisions, real leaders own up their mistakes. Lack of communication and coordination arises when leaders don’t set up processes to do so.

2) Lessons Learned

Once you own the mistake, it becomes easier as a leader to look back and analyze what went wrong. Every failure has a lesson hidden in it. Find out the root cause of the failure, and if you have learned the lesson, explain how that failure has been useful to you as a leader.

3) Respect

When you take personal responsibility for the team, and credit them for the success, you earn respect as a leader. No money, power talks, or extra vacation can make your team members work hard for you more than this. When they know that you are taking responsibility for the team beyond what anyone is willing to do, they will not let you down.

Did you take personal responsibility for the team? If so then your leadership essay will have authenticity.