What is your Definition of Responsibility?

I asked Selina*, a project architect, what she did to position herself for promotion. She answered that she “took on more and more responsibility”. 

But how did she do this? It wasn’t as if there were new projects and lots of diverse experience on offer.  

When it comes to wanting more responsibility, like Selina, you might be one of the first to put your hand up. And, if you look around your office, you can probably think of someone who does his or her best to avoid responsibility. We are hardwired to do both; we like to take responsibility when things are going well, but we avoid it when things aren’t. 

What is self-leadership?

The responsibility Selina is talking about is self-leadership. It was about how she responded when faced with problems and challenges.

Christopher Avery, the ‘Responsibility Process guy’, says: “Responsibility can be observed, taught and learned.” He created the Responsibility Process model to show us how we get stuck in our thinking. 

The Responsibility Process

The Responsibility Process** shows the six sequential mental states that keep us from taking responsibility when faced with a challenge. If we want to be successful, then we must spend as much time as possible above the line seen in the image here, as this is where we feel more empowered and resourceful. 

Cause and Effect

As outlined above, when things are going well it’s easy for us to take responsibility (and the credit too), but when things are going wrong, we start to feel anxious and frustrated. We ask “how did this happen to me?” and Avery says our minds go on a cause and effect search for answers. These thoughts keep us well below the line, and in doing so we can waste a lot of mental energy. If we can recognise when we are in one of the six states preventing responsibility, then we are on the way to mastering our thoughts and stepping up our self-leadership.

So here are the six coping states that keep us from taking responsibility.

Denial: 

Simply put, we ignore the existence of the problem. 

“What problem?”

Once we get past this and acknowledge we have a problem, our brain goes into the Lay Blame state, then our minds work sequentially upwards through the other states, often getting stuck along the way.  

Lay Blame: 

We hold others at fault for causing the problem. In this state, we give away our power because we think someone else has to change to make the problem go away.  

“It’s their fault.” 

Justify:

We look to external conditions or circumstances that are out of our control and use them as an excuse for things being the way they are. We tell ourselves something “out there” must change before our problem can be solved. 

“It’s the way things are done around here.”

Shame:

Once we have exhausted looking externally, we turn our thoughts internally. Our inner critic comes out and we blame ourselves and put ourselves down. When we think we lack something to solve the problem, we become trapped with no resources to do so.  

“I’m such a dummy.” 

Don’t confuse self-blame or shame for taking responsibility though. Society often praises us for ‘owning our problems’ - by putting ourselves down. We are not powerful here; we don’t have options or choices and are shutting ourselves down.

Obligation:

We all have obligations and commitments, but if we don’t like it or want it, we tell ourselves we have no choice; that there is nothing we can do. In this state, we have a real lack of ownership about our commitment. This is pseudo-responsibility. Society says we are responsible, but our internal state is one of feeling trapped.  

“I have to [go to this meeting] but I don’t want to.”

Quit:

When we feel so much frustration from the Shame and Obligation states, we want to escape entirely and give up. 

“If I don’t look at this, then it will magically disappear.” 

Responsibility: 

When we are free of these mind traps, we can move up into the state of responsibility. Instead of coping with feelings of upset and frustration, we now have the power and the mental resources to find and resolve the real problem. 

“I have the power and ability to solve this.” 

We are all human, and we all experience the self-talk of blame or shame; there is nothing wrong with us. We are instinctively taking ourselves through a hardwired process of figuring out why we don’t have what we want. 

“Taking responsibility is a step-wise process of refusing to act on a series of irresponsible thoughts that your mind offers up.” – Christopher Avery

The thing is, no growth happens below the line. We talk about problems, but we don’t solve problems. 

Selina’s challenge was gaining a promotion. To get there, she acted in a state of responsibility. To think like Salina, try recognising your mental state and moving it along. Instead of asking yourself “what’s wrong with me?” ask yourself “what do I want?” and go on from there to develop your self-leadership.

* Not her real name.

**Christopher Avery’s website offers a free Responsibility Process poster for your office HERE.