All Problems Are Leadership Problems

There was an important expression I learned when working in a previous startup many years ago. I was talking to the founder of the business about something going on with me and my team, and I was surprised when he took partial ownership over it. “All problems are leadership problems,” he told me. He continued to say that whatever conflict was occurring on my team was ultimately his responsibility in the end, even if that responsibility involved ensuring that I would properly address the issue.

I remember being surprised to hear this. It felt like a form of extreme ownership, and to be sure, it is. I believe in people being accountable for their own responsibilities. I suppose I had never looked at it in the sense that there can be shared culpability when things go wrong between the direct owner of the initiative and that person’s leader. But I can tell you unequivocally that I had a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for this individual for his desire to take ownership of situations that were mostly outside of his locus of control.

If you think about it, there is merit to the statement. Ultimately it is a leader who is responsible for everything that happens within his or her organization. When the leader hires bad people, those people make mistakes that ultimately fall upon the leader for poor hiring. When the leader creates a bad culture, that leads to churn and a never-ending cycle of hiring and ramping new employees. It also affects productivity. When a leader does a poor job of allocating resources, the team may not have what it needs to succeed. Through this lens, the leader is held accountable for everything that happens within their organization, because ultimately they do have a hand in the outcome even when it may not feel like they are directly involved.

The reason all problems are leadership problems is also because it is up to a leader to solve problems for their team. An example of this might be when there is a sudden change in market conditions. I actually experienced this recently in my current startup with the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank and the negative reverberations that had throughout the banking industry. In this scenario, the team is now “selling into the wind” because the market has created adverse conditions for the team. In this situation, it is up to a leader to act, and generally a leader can do one of three things.

First, they can decide to pivot the strategy. They can evaluate the current market and the odds of success and weigh an alternative strategy against both the short and long term potential outcomes to make an assessment on what to do. Second, they can decide to forge ahead but make adjustments to the team expectations so that everyone feels like they are being taken care of in light of unexpected headwinds. Some leaders may opt to do this so that the team stays motivated in what is otherwise a difficult time. Lastly, a leader could just do nothing and simply motivate their team through the tough time. In a place with an excellent culture, this last option will often be successful because the team is already “bought in” and ready to ride the emotional rollercoaster of the ups and downs, including the unforeseen externalities. 

What’s important in all of these scenarios is that the leader never points fingers at their team. The moment the leader decides to not own the problem is the same moment the entire team loses respect for the leader. And once respect is lost for the leader, everything falls flat. If the leader simply blames the market and tells the team to just keep trying their hardest, that is an absence of leadership. Even worse, if the leader in turn blames their boss for not being having properly resourced the team for such a scenario – even if that blame is fairly placed – the team loses confidence for the mere reason that it has now been openly declared that no one is properly advocating for them, and also because that advocate appears to be stubborn. I would dare say that even in this particular scenario, the leader of the team is still at fault for a reason I just mentioned: a good leader exerts their influence properly and obtains the resources they need for their team and they are prepared for all scenarios as a result. 

I often personally try to take this approach with customers. As sellers, we often have so much conviction in what we are offering to a customer that we may privately feel the buyer is stupid for not acting faster. When they reject us, we feel like they are missing out, and our instinct is to blame them for not getting it or just not caring enough. Ultimately, the onus falls upon the seller to show the buyer to have conviction and urgency in utilizing their solution. If I miss out on an opportunity, I will sometimes say something to the effect of “I believe it was a failing on my part to not have conveyed why you need this right now” and I seek feedback on what me and my team could have done better. Even if that feedback involves some product deficit, I still need to take ownership for the lost opportunity, because I either failed to qualify it properly earlier on in the sales process based on their professed need for something we do not offer, or I failed to adequately align our current solution to the client’s pain.

It is very attractive to other people when an individual takes ownership. No one likes stubborn people who blame others, or even worse, who blame you for their own failings. That is probably one of the core reasons why people scoff at the mention of politics or politicians. How many times have you seen a politician on the debate stage say something to the effect of “I made a mistake, and here is what I learned from it”? Many years ago when there was an incident on a United Airlines flight leading to a passenger being dragged off by security, United’s CEO came out with a statement blaming the passenger for what had happened. While there is nuance to that situation and some shared blame between the airline, the airport staff, and the unruly passenger, it was such a horrible look for the brand and it resulted in their stock tanking. Point being, when one of your customers is physically assaulted and the next day your response is to blame the passenger, most people do not even care about the facts, they just care that you appear to be insensitive and that you lack accountability. Because after all, what led to that entire problem in the first place was a logistical issue on behalf of the airline.

A more positive example of this might be Matthew Perry, the former “Friends” star who recently passed away. This was someone who throughout his life was very open about personal challenges he had, which is something we do not often see from Hollywood stars. I think this is one of the reasons his death affected so many people: he felt relatable to them. We do not relate to people who are perfect, and when people deny their own flaws, it is their attempt to appear perfect. But we absolutely relate to others who are flawed because we all are flawed ourselves. So when people we love and appreciate open up to us about their flaws, not only do we see a bit of ourselves in them, but we also particularly appreciate their ability to do something hard.

It can be hard for leaders to accept ownership when something far outside of their locus of control is negatively impacting the team. But if you are a leader and you are reading this article, here is my only advice: think purely about what outcome moves the team forward in the best direction possible and as quickly as possible. When you accept ownership and take a solutions-oriented approach to next steps, you enable others to see a path forward while still feeling good about themselves. But when you point fingers at the team and look backwards, the team feels morally deflated, frustrated with their leader for absolving themself of responsibility, and aimless about their own future. It’s very obvious which path you should take. It just takes a conscious decision to do it every time.