What's your story? Do you find yourself identifying more with the masked men of cartoon fame or are you as open as a guest on the Jerry Springer show? Personal leadership in organizations requires significant amounts of self-disclosure. Too little, and you're unlikely to rally anyone to your dream pursuits. Too much, and you're likely to create distance. Individuals create distinctive leadership by knowing and honoring their personal stories. These stories, and their accompanying beliefs and values, underlie every great leader and organization.

In corporate and other organizational settings, pressure exists to be right - all of the time. Many devote considerable time and effort to avoid attacks on personal competency. Personal leaders - those who are in touch with their stories - are as attentive to their feelings and emotions as they are to their cognitive processes and competencies. Distinctive leaders leverage genuine feelings and competence to create distinctive leadership.

Today's grueling pace and daunting tasks contribute to the primary reasons why distinctive leaders preserve their stories. These stories sustain personal missions and fuel drive for the long-haul aspects of leadership. As it's often been quipped, leaders are made, but they have to be born first. That quip supports the careful construction and understanding of what makes you uniquely qualified to lead.

If finding or identifying your story seems like a good opportunity for a snooze while waiting for the real work to come along, you'll miss opportunities for growth and leading. Personal commitment and stories create the repeatable experiences that galvanize stakeholder action for desirable results. Our advice, if you're short on understanding the story, is to create a haven or sanctuary for reflection. Leading others begins with beliefs and values that are truly personal.

Achieving greatness may require heroic effort. At times, leadership may be a solitary effort but the creation of strong teams and cultures is always a plural effort. Culture leaders in organizations understand four essential elements to developing partnerships for enduring positive organizations. Mastery of these four elements leads to strong responsibility bonds.

To forge mutually satisfying relationships, effective listening is essential. This listening is strategic - it relies on something richer than repeating phrases and head nods. When we truly hear others, we advance to common ground for organizational action. The advance paves the way for the second element of the responsibility partnership, pacing. Those of you who have ever participated in sports or who have ever watched an athletic event know about pacing - it can be everything. Too fast or too slow spells disaster. Pacing has a sweet spot in the responsibly partnership.

Success in responsibility partnering requires adaptation. Every organization, thankfully, has personalities. As soon as you interact with another person, you may realize that there are two sides to many issues. The seeds for growth spring from adaptation; it's rarely, if ever, my way or the high way. Adaptation leads to innovation in organizational cultures.

The fourth element in responsibility partnering is counter-intuitive: forget the answers. However, this fourth element naturally flows from the other principles. Dynamic environments are wellsprings for stress and disorder and yet they can generate great gains and learning. Combine your expertise with relentless open-mindedness to new ideas and approaches.

Partnerships are the foundation for progress. Partnerships built responsibly, and attended to with respect, win admiration and engender self-worth.

Culture is often taken for granted. If it's not taken for granted, it's often considered as a subject better suited for the classroom than the boardroom. Watch when the topic of culture - or cultural change - arises. Watch how quickly people pay attention, or alternatively, how quickly they lose interest. It's surprising because science now supports a reasoned conclusion that culture creates competitive advantage.

My intent is not to send you on a guilt trip. Rather, you're encouraged to accept your views about culture and its relevance to organizational outcomes. I'm confident that self-acceptance facilitates insights into change and into the unique culture of an organization.

However, to really "see" culture, the leader's stakes are great. He or she needs the confidence to honor others. Close proximity to culture often creates blindness or distortion as to the impact and effects of culture on decision-making. To produce fresh perspectives you may need to swim against the tides. As the leading social psychologist Kurt Lewin once observed, the best way to understand an organization is to attempt to change it.

Begin to transform and to alter your organization's culture by taking imaginary photographs and developing them for action. By stopping the action for a second you can develop actionable measures. These measures, ultimately and over time, provide bases for assessment and evaluation. Important outcomes for individuals, groups and teams, and for entire organizations can be gained by knowing how to total the sum of your improvements.

In the wake of continuing corporate scandal there is renewed discussion of ethics - the codes of right and wrong. This discussion should not be discounted but it falls short of the responsibility discussion. We can judge whether a crooked executive cooked the books; assessing his or her social responsibility to those who don't appear in the news is a deeper issue. In years past and even today, corporate polluters and sweat shop owners galvanized civic cries for responsibility - but in the thick of complex financial transactions, how do we call for responsible organizations? In the absence of easily observed transgressions, is organizational responsibility still relevant?

Organizations foster responsibility by encouraging authentic behavior at every level. Authentic behavior requires articulation and communication of values. Leaders need to distill essential values from the vast reservoirs of platitudes. Values require choices. Choices require inclusion and exclusion. Leaders set an example with by engaging with others authentically. Our choices create meaningful responsibility.

Responsibility means engagement with community. Responsible organizations extend their boundaries beyond customers, suppliers, and shareholders to include the communities they serve. Boundaries aren't managed by erecting fences around organizational perimeters but are managed by inviting, creating, and sustaining listening guideposts.

Responsible organizations are characterized by their commitment to diversity. Diversity extends long-term interests and promotes social responsibility. Organizations that are in the game of business and service recognize their responsibility to others and chart courses to create success through responsibility.