On the 21st of October 2021, Halyna Hutchins was shot by Alec Baldwin on the set of the low-budget Western RUST. But who is ultimately responsible for the shooting and does that responsibility in any way diminish the accountability of the movie’s producers?
In the interview, Alec Baldwin speaks with ABC News reporter George Stephanopoulos about the tragic fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins and the wounding of Joel Souza on the set of his new movie Rust.
Baldwin speaks out about his role in the shooting and states that he does not feel guilty about what happened and knows that someone is responsible but that it is not him.
This case study highlights the difference between accountability and responsibility. As a leader, you can delegate responsibility for functions, activities, and even missions, but you ultimately retain accountability for the actions of those you lead and the outcome of their actions.
While you may not be directly responsible for what your followers do, you are accountable for their actions and it’s your responsibility to ensure they are qualified, competent, and experienced for the activities assigned to them. You are also responsible for setting the conditions that ensure the safe and successful performance of their duties.
As leaders, we need to trust that those we assign tasks will perform those tasks in a manner that is safe and according to any relevant standards and specifications. With the exception of deliberate negligent action or sabotage, the behaviour of our followers, how they perform their roles, is a direct reflection of their understanding of our expectations of them and how we allow them to act.
This is especially true of teams that are formed quickly for short durations of high intensity and dangerous work. The ability to build trust rapidly is underpinned by knowledge of individual team member’s skills and experience and shouldn’t be formed based on assumed competence. The degree of two-way trust that exists between a leader and their followers should be proportional to their familiarity with each other or based on objective evidence of their skills and experience and their reputation.
While it is more often than not appropriate and even necessary to employ “Mission Command” and allow our followers the autonomy to perform their roles based on their skills and experience, we retain the responsibility to maintain oversight and ensure all necessary checks and balances are in place and due dilligence is performed.
We are also responsible for ensuring our followers feel “psychologically safe” to speak out and express their concerns, knowing that they will be listened to and treated seriously. As leaders, we need to make decisions based on the best and most complete evidence available at the time. Too often when things go wrong, leaders have either dismissed concerns as they could not ‘see’ them as significant risks, or concerns are not raised by followers due to their fear of being ridiculed or seeming inexperienced or alarmist. Hindsight is a skill all leaders need to possess and to paraphrase the late Stephen Covey leaders need to always “start with the end in mind”.
Leaders can not do everything themselves and one of the hardest parts of developing into a good leader is letting go of the reigns and delegating non-leadership activities to your followers. But delegation does not mean abdication and while you can delegate responsibility and authority to your followers you can not delegate your overall accountability.
So is Alec Baldwin responsible for the death of Halyna Hutching and the wounding of Joel Souza or does responsibility rest with others who may have performed their roles in a negligent manner setting in place a sequence of events leading to the fatal shooting?
If Baldwin is not responsible for the shooting, is he still accountable through his role as a Producer of the film?
These are questions that will need to be deliberated over and answered during be court trial in early 2022.
