Thoughts and ideas on people and technology.
November 25, 2024
“Sam did it!” You can hear the edge in the child’s voice as they attempt to shift blame for whatever minor misdeed they may-or-may-not have masterminded. In the court of humanity our feelings take wide precedence over objective justice. Even if there’s no fallout or formal punishment for that thing we did wrong, we really don’t like taking the blame.
Personal responsibility isn’t only about taking blame for the negative. As we’ll define it for the purposes of this article, it means taking ownership of decisions you make and the actions you take based on them. By extension you will also be taking ownership of the outcomes, both the successes and failures. Your mind is probably already imagining all sorts of scenarios this could apply to both at work and at home, but our focus will be mostly in the workplace.
Imagine working in a utopia where everyone perfectly executes personal responsibility. You would never have to worry about someone blaming you for the failure of their project, because it’s their project. You would know in advance that if your project is a success you’ll get 100% of the accolades, because it’s your project. With these two things alone, wouldn’t you feel a new level of motivation to give it your all? To take risks and innovate? You would have a new level of trust in your coworkers too. There would be no motive for micromanagement, for doing so would mean taking someone else’s responsibility upon yourself. Morale and productivity would skyrocket!
You can easily imagine the opposite as well; you may have thought of your own workplace in a negative light as soon as you read the title and clicked the link. Unfortunately in I.T. (being a panoptic presence in most organizations) we’re an easy target. “I can’t work, my computer’s broken, and I.T. hasn’t fixed it yet! They’re so slow, am-I-right?” “The file deleted itself; stupid computers!” “It’s not my fault that we didn’t deliver on time; the printer’s broken and it’s not my job to fix it!” *sigh* Enough gloom, let’s move on to how to make personal responsibility great again!
It's a simple concept; remind yourself that our decisions are ours, our actions are ours, and the results are ours. No exceptions. I’ll give you an example. When my wife and I are travelling somewhere it’s usually up to me to decide where to eat. I’m usually driving, and I’m also the head of our household, so it’s my decision. My decision, my actions, and most importantly, my results to own. If I choose a place and my wife doesn’t like the ambiance or menu or amount of cheese they put on everything, that’s on me. The weight can be heavy and feel unjust. But it isn’t unjust. It’s perfectly, objectively just. It’s my decision, my actions, and my results to own. There are upsides for both of us; I am now further motivated to pick someplace I know she’ll like and she gets to play “Passenger Princess”, and I get to bathe in the social bragging rights of being crowned “King of the Husbands” for being intuitive and attentive enough to know what she’d like and get it for her. It’s timeless and primordial: “Oh husband, you hunted and brought back a mammoth! I love mammoth steak! You are brave and strong and clearly the greatest of all husbands!” Her words would eco through our cave commune and all would look to us for hot tips to share on their relationship blog cave paintings.
You might still be thinking of your workplace and your coworkers who seem to want to blame you for everything that goes wrong. What can you do to get them on the personal responsibility train? The only way to do it is to lead by example. The moment you try to tell them or make them they’ll see it as an attack and blame you, which is exactly the problem you’re trying to avoid! You can’t suggest it, hint at it, or leave an anonymous note. You can’t have someone else talk to them about it or send this article and say, “I read this and thought it was interesting and thought you would think it’s interesting too.” This only way to teach others about personal responsibility is to show them. Which makes me writing this massively ironic. I take full responsibility for this!
My last tip is to make sure to celebrate the wins, both yours and other’s! This is especially true for others you’re trying to influence. Remember the accolades we imagined getting earlier and how much that would motivate you? That’s what you’re trying to instill in others. Positive reinforcement is much stronger than negative, so hand your praises out like candy!
Want to go against my recommendations and bring me into your workplace to talk about personal responsibility? You can find us at scalebright.ca.
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