Responsible Leadership: Building Blocks of Individual, Organizational and Societal Behavior

Responsible leadership achieves the best results when high levels of individual, organizational and societal leadership responsibility coincide. How can one find one's responsible leadership identity in the midst of the changing and chaotic world? The building blocks can be found in psychologist Erik Erikson's way of resolving individual identity crises. The purpose of this paper is to adapt Erikson's model to individually, organizationally and societally responsible leadership and integrate them to achieve the best results. When working toward a responsible leader's identity, six areas of difficulty should be solved: (1) value basis, (2) self-image vs external image, (3) time perspective, (4) role experimentation, (5) anticipation of achievement, and (6) leader-follower relation. Responsibility and irresponsibility are contagious. Individuals, organizations and societies boost or repress responsible behavior: inspiring leaders pull others to higher ethical levels of behavior; greedy leaders push others back to lower levels of behavior. Be a responsible leader: care and dare. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.