#2 Ownership

Can you take too much ownership of a workplace task, responsibility, or outcome?

Yes! But you can take too little, too. So how wide is the ownership "Goldilocks Zone"?

A while back, I found myself in my first management role, working in a separate city from my leadership team in an organisation that thought HR was a plague (it was the early 2000s).

Needing to hire and performance review my own team, I developed a rudimentary management 'framework' to guide me in interviews and reviews. It was based on the things I believed to be valued by my leaders, the organisation's culture and by me. They were traits that I saw as key ingredients in my professional success.

The framework included three areas: Initiative (what internal motivation and desire do/will they have?), Ownership (what pride do/will they take in their work?) and Communication (how well do/will they convey their needs and views?).

I subsequently had to add Professionalism (how do/will they behave in the work context?) and Team Contribution (what do/will they contribute to make the team stronger?), when a specific performance review of a poor communicating non-team player (who was, otherwise, a star) helped me see these were missing from the framework.

A few years later, I was brave enough to add a sixth and vital measure, Fun (what spirit of joy do/will they contribute and derive from the work?), when I realised how important this component is in a healthy and productive work place.

Ownership, however, was always something I considered of paramount importance with no necessary upper limit. After all, if you don't take total, unlimited ownership of something, how can you put your best into it?

That is, up until a conversation (with a mature graduate I hired in 2004) helped me contemplate a third level of ownership, in addition my simple, binary 'low' and 'high', and that was 'too high'.

During that conversation with (let's call him) Tim, in response to my penchant for ownership, he observed "...but there's healthy ownership and unhealthy ownership!".

That comment struck me, and has stuck with me all these years (I even remember the café and table we were at!) because, here was someone, 15 years my junior, deftly teaching me something (about myself).

To be successful at work, you need to take great ownership of your role and?responsibilities, that's obvious. But enter the territory of unhealthy ownership and your professional performance, your personal needs, your health or your relationships could suffer.

Over-the-top ownership also prevents others from expanding and presents a poor role modelling example.

Ownership has since become quite the online buzzword, with many sites offering many opinions on how to "encourage employees to take ownership", "cultivate an ownership mindset" or "help your employees take ownership of their work".

There are not so many (if any) offering the deft, cautionary advice I received, other than the myriad quotations on 'pride' ranging from Sophocles ~500BC to Shakespeare. There is, however, an interesting dearth of contemporary quotations on the topic!

The simplest remains the best: Pride comes before a fall.

Check you're operating in the Goldilocks zone of ownership at work. Not too little (i.e. low) and not too much (i.e. too high) - just right (i.e. high). Are you providing opportunities for others through positive role modelling, active delegation and a healthy work/life balance? Are you as proud of your achievements outside work as you are inside? If not, it may be time to redistribute your ownership between the two.

#52professionalreflections #Ownership #mentoradvice