Leaders, how do you cultivate contagious shared ownership?

/ mkessenburg
I want leaders to flourish in terms of passionate purpose. My deep hope is that leaders are experiencing…
1. Decision-making that is guided by and aligned with the purpose statements.
2. Contagious shared ownership for school improvement and mission achievement (see Construct: Responsibility, p. 14).
3. An inspiring board that rigorously monitors the implementation of the purpose statements.

This blog post addresses #2 above.

Contagious. When you think of the word contagious, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of a sickness, one that spreads quickly, like a cold or COVID. What comes to mind for me is laughter, particularly 1 little boy’s contagious laughter. Every time I watch the above video, I smile, laugh, and feel better—he’s just consistently contagious, inspiringly infectious! 

Leaders, one of my hopes for you is that you will experience contagiousness. I deeply hope you consistently experience contagious shared ownership for mission achievement. That when you’re around others at school, you feel better—like I feel better after watching the video of the boy’s contagious laughter. (Couldn’t resist—here’s another video of contagious laughter, this time of babies in honor of my 2 grandsons.)

As a leader, I want to flourish. So, I don’t want to go it alone, feel lonely, and underachieve the mission. Instead, I want to consistently experience contagious shared ownership of the mission because I want …

  • Increased community.
  • Increased collaboration.
  • Increased focus on group results.
  • Clarified parameters for decision-making: Does doing this help us achieve the mission? With what benefit and at what cost?
  • Increased achievement of the mission.

Bottom line? Experiencing contagious shared ownership of the mission results in increased experience of passionate purpose—which helps me flourish!

So you might be wondering, “How do I cultivate contagious shared ownership?” For me, I’ve found it helpful to start with myself, model contagious shared ownership, and then infect others. Let me explain:

Photo by Setyaki Irham on Unsplash

Step 1: Start with myself. How? By making sure that I’m fully infected, that I deeply own the mission, that I’m so excited about the mission that I want to model it and infect others with it. Things that help me do this include:

  • Memorizing the mission—makes it easier to talk about it, which makes it easier to own.
  • Reflecting on questions: What’s the significance of the mission? If we achieve it, what happens? What excites/concerns me about achieving the mission? What helps/hinders me from focusing on the mission? What will I do to further “own” the mission?
  • Clarifying my thinking about key words in the mission. For example, if my mission is “Equipping students as cross-cultural leaders who impact the world for Jesus,” I brainstorm on the following terms: equipping, students, cross-cultural leaders, impact, world, for Jesus. 
  • Writing out what I think helps me clarify and deepen my thinking and my ownership of what I’m thinking.
  • Using it. For example, using it to guide my decisions by asking myself, “How will this help me/us achieve our mission?”

Step 2: Model contagious shared ownership by…

  • Showing excitement about the mission, actual excitement (like the 2 videos showed actual laughter).
  • Animatedly and passionately talking about the mission and reciting it in casual conversation.
  • Asking thought-provoking questions and then listening intently to responses: How do you feel about the mission? Where do you see our mission being achieved? What could I do to deepen schoolwide ownership?
  • Noticing and then affirming examples of mission achievement.
  • Explaining how a given decision impacts mission achievement.

Step 3: Inspiringly infect others with contagious shared ownership by…

  • Consistently and systematically modeling contagious shared ownership (see above).
  • Using an opening routine for meetings that includes a review of the mission. 
  • Providing monthly training on the mission that is engaging and that results in staff being able to recite it, explain each word in it, and understand how their work directly contributes to mission achievement.
  • Focusing annual reports on the mission and its achievement.
  • Celebrating examples of mission achievement. How? By inviting staff members to share during meetings!

(For additional examples, please see What happens when Christian organizations are not deeply unified?).

How do you celebrate mission achievement? Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

How about you? When you think of the word contagious, what comes to mind? What are the benefits of experiencing contagious shared ownership of the mission? How do you cultivate contagious shared ownership?

Here are some posts related to flourishing in terms of passionate purpose:

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. Bonus! Here’s a list of 10 quotations from things I’ve read that contain a form of the word passion:

  1. “How do I/we demonstrate a passion for the mission and flourishing of our school?” (Leadership for Flourishing Schools, p. 18)
  2. “Flourishing cultures nourish cohesive teams that effectively engage in passionate, open dialogue. Because they function so well together, these teams accomplish more than what any one individual can do on their own” (Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, loc 380). 
  3. “Inspiration is all about helping people find their inner drive—their inner spark—and ignite it into a blaze of genuine excitement and passion. To inspire rather than require. To breathe life into rather than to suffocate or extinguish” (Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others, loc 658).
  4. “You have to be genuine at all times and be consistent in your message across every channel you choose. The same passion, the same message, the same vision. And you can achieve this only when you constantly revisit your vision, and the North Star you’ve created for the team. It’s crucial to keep the message aligned and true” (The E5 Movement: Leadership through the Rule of Five, loc 1096).
  5. “Top performers do what they’re best at when they’re at their best—they work in their area of principal gifting and passion when their energy is at its highest” (At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor, loc 399).
  6. “If you want to make a difference, look around. Notice what needs your attention. Tap into your passion and your purpose, and find a way to contribute, to create impact, to play bigger and better. Imagine the impact of starting right now” (Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact, loc 4300).
  7. “Real transformation happens when people take responsibility for their own lives and begin to live intentionally in every area. When they begin recovering their passion and start seeing progress, their lives change” (Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want, loc 1790).
  8. “What does it take for a chief executive to inspire a leadership team with a vision, to get members to focus intently and passionately on what is special about the enterprise?” (Senior Leadership: What It Takes to Make Them Great, p. 197)
  9. “And so my question is this: If we hate meetings, can we be making good decisions and successfully leading our organizations? I don’t think so. There is simply no substitute for a good meeting—a dynamic, passionate, and focused engagement—when it comes to extracting the collective wisdom of a team. The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity” (Death by Meeting, loc 397).
  10. “…tolerate discord. Encourage your direct reports to air their ideological differences with passion” (The 5 Temptations of a CEO, p. 117).