Why don’t our leaders take responsibility?

Yesterday a friend and I were musing on Trust, and particularly on why so many political leaders are unwilling to ever admit a mistake, particularly on how they have been handling public health in the pandemic.

If they chose to take responsibility, it would give them a “reset”, an opportunity to rebuild trust where they have lost it.

We had no answers to why they would choose to shirk responsibility over and over, to us it seemed so obvious a thing to do.

However, I do have one or two thoughts on trust, credibility, accountability, responsibility, wrapping up with the fact that the more trust we have the less transparency we need.

No answers as to why so many leaders fail to take responsibility, but, I hope, plenty of reasons for all of us to choose to take actions that build trust in those we care about.

Taking Responsibility

Yesterday I also spoke with Kathryn Sheridan on the latest WhatComesNextLive show. Authenticity is core to who Kathryn is and the work she does with leaders around Sustainability. I asked her for her thoughts around this issue of Trust among political leaders.

Kathryn’s response focussed on the fact that Trust is built on Credibility, which itself is built on three things:

• Transparency
• Accountability
• Responsibility