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That's a tough question.
I think that having a sense of personal responsibility is one of the things that I want.
This is actually part of the content that I teach, as well.
One of the things that comes in with management is instilling a sense of responsibility in people
and the benefits that can make versus having a leader who sort of takes responsibility everything and then
ends up with a rather disengaged bunch of people working with them.
So part of what I teach is about how to do that.
And I try to do what I teach, as well.
I see it a lot in the context of the teamwork that I ask students to do in terms of
taking responsibility for the nature and the experience of their team.
If a team goes well, if they have a good experience,
I really want them to give themselves credit for the work that they did to help it be that way.
And not just say that they got lucky and had a good group of people.
Because it's true, there is some luck involved but I think it's much less than students,
and most people I think, seem to really realize.
And the same thing is true with problems that they might have in teams.
It's not unusual for a student to come to me saying that they have a team member who's really
dropping the ball or not performing well in whatever way.
And through conversation with the student or students, it, not always but often,
becomes clear that it's not really just that one person's fault,
that there's some dynamics in the group that are contributing to that problem.
I think of it as part of my job to try to help them see how they might be playing a role in enabling that person to be,
for lack of a better word, a slacker.
It's the same thing for me, like when I teach my class,
and if I get my evaluations back and those evaluations are saying something along the lines of,
some negative comments about the nature of some aspect of the class or about the way that I evaluate or something.
Well, I could look at that and just say,
"Well, it's a bad batch of students that quarter."
But that's more of a defensive reaction than anything.
So I try to look at it and say,
"Well what's my responsibility in having that be that way; what could I do differently?"
And that's how I think a lot of professors, a lot of managers, do that.
They're good at taking feedback, even if they don't like to hear it, and taking it seriously and saying,
"Well what's my responsibility for changing that."
And I do that to try to model that behavior; sometimes I'm really explicit with students about that.
I'll let them know how the class is the certain way as it is now because of changes I've made from the past,
due to feedback I've received from former classes.
So that they can see that I'm doing this for them.
And at the same time, asking them to do the same thing for themselves as they say, work through their team challenges.