I (and many others) write a lot about the responsibilities of the leader, and what we should be doing to better the lot of our teams and our companies.
What I see a lot less written about is the responsibility of that team, of employees to the company.
But if you are paid for work, you have an obligation to deliver that work. Contractually and morally. And if we’re expecting the boss to be an excellent boss, then we should expect any employee to be an excellent employee.
If we’re on the one hand telling managers they need to be servant leaders, and on the other, telling employees that they need to put themselves first, we are building dysfunctional companies and societies.
Yet that’s what I see here on LinkedIn, All the time. And it’s immature and irresponsible.
Everyone, from CEO to intern, has both rights and responsibilities.
And those responsibilities are messy. Because we are responsible to all our stakeholders – our fellow team members (including our bosses or reports), our customers, the environment we extract from, our communities, our investors, our suppliers.
Which is where clarity of purpose and values comes in. Because if our company is clear about what it is here to do, and what we can and should all expect of each other, it helps us all live up to our responsibilities.
Which, incidentally, then translates to respecting each other’s rights.
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