RESPONSE-ABILITY

Musing on… Responsibility 

What are you responsible for? You may think of your job responsibilities or roles you fill in your home community. And whatever you’re not responsible for, you may assume it was someone else’s responsibility. 

Think about a time when a project went awry or plans fell through. Do you have New Year's Resolutions that are already fading? Did you pause to reflect on your role, or did you instinctively look for someone to blame? This tendency to assign accountability or blame is deeply human. In fact, Oxford offers one definition of responsibility as “the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.” Either accountable or to name-shame-blame, are those really the two options? 

We can take another perspective on responsibility by breaking the word into two parts; response-ability can also be the ability to respond. I’m a firm believer that I can narrow almost everything to two controllable factors: my attitude and my response. Various laws of physics and biology guarantee that life will happen. (Taxes, too!) Whether I consciously choose my role in the outcome can have a remarkable impact on the outcome itself. 

When facing a challenge or an issue, the Conscious Leadership Group suggests asking questions like “what am I contributing to this problem?” or “what do I get from keeping this going?,” suggesting that there are benefits from not taking responsibility. But what if it’s really not my responsibility, you ask? Their framework also proposes that responsibility is not a pie to be divided, but rather each of us has 100% responsibility. Some coaching professionals might say, we are always at choice, or we always have the option to choose. Not taking action or not choosing is also a choice. Another choice is to consider whether you want to respond from trust or from control. 

Listening to a recent podcast, I was caught by the language of dopamine scientist Dr. Anna Lembke, who emphasized the importance of narrative, how we choose to speak about ourselves. “In my clinical experience, when people come into the room and they tell their life story in such a way that they're always the victim of other people and circumstance in the world, those are people who are, number 1, not doing well, and number 2, not going to do well going forward unless they change that narrative to acknowledge what they've contributed to the problem.”

When asked why it’s hard to overcome a challenge and take responsibility, she added: “We just hate to do it because when we do it, we feel shame and shame is an incredibly painful emotion. It's like a gut punch of an emotion that is associated with fear of abandonment, fear of being shunned by our tribe. We'd much rather paper that shame over with anger and resentment toward others.”

Choosing to shift from being passive to being response-able takes gut, and frameworks like the Conscious Leadership Group’s questions and Dr. Lembke’s insights offer tools to navigate this challenging shift. It’s worth noting that for many of the difference between what we “have to” do and what we “get to” do is more than a matter of rhetoric. The change in our internal narrative can also be a powerful shift in confidence and motivation.

The journey from victim (disempowered) to victor (empowered) is an honorable and challenging path, rewarded with vitality. Like choosing to do anything hard (NB: new = hard), the reward lies in the emotional journey and on the other side of it. Here’s where you might insert the cliche journey not destination quote.

Responsibility - the ability to respond - is often something we divide up and assume we’re pulling our weight. When there’s an “issue,” it’s worth examining what we’re contributing and what we could change to influence the outcome. There are always factors that we can control (and trust) and factors that we cannot control. If we want to change the outcome, knowing change invites discomfort, we need to exercise our ability to respond. If you’re grappling with a challenge, in the next section I’ll offer some prompts to support reflection and responsibility.

As you reflect on your ability to respond, ask yourself: Where can I take 100% responsibility in my life? What could change if I shifted my narrative from blame to empowerment? These are the seeds of transformation.

And What Else:

Explore these questions, and embrace the challenge to dig deeper, asking what else might be relevant to answer.

• Honor Yourself: What past hardships have I overcome by considering my ability to respond?

• Explore Curiously: What might I be contributing to a present challenge?

• Foster Trust: How would I describe this without placing any blame?

• Shift Perspectives: What thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors might need to change for me to be 100% response-able?

• Clarify Decisions: What’s the best possible outcome I’d like to work toward?

• Empower Action: What option(s) feel inspiring to pursue and stretch me to grow?

Nuggets of Work-Life

Every coaching session and workshop closes with acknowledging learnings, insights, and moments of celebration. Here are a few of my recent nuggets:

• Throughout the fall, several organizations engaged me to facilitate workshops that supported better working relationships. I deeply appreciated that the work was just as engaging and exciting to me as it was for the participants. One shared: “I had a lot of "aha" moments in my mind & learned a lot for my daily work life and also for me personally.” I regularly share feedback from clients on Instagram and LinkedIn, as well.

• Closing several client engagements also invites uncertainty to what the next big opportunities will be, and I’m enjoying the challenge of working both in and on the business. I’m outside of my comfort zone, in my zone of growth, and working toward my zone of genius.

• The “responsibility” inquiry has helped me switch from taking a passive to a proactive approach with my bookkeeping and accounting. That thing I’ve been putting off? (Tax advisory…!) Worth getting out of the way. Caveday is one of the tools that helps me prioritize what’s important, and we’re always welcoming new members.

Practice Makes … Space for More Practice

• A pastime: Over the holidays, I returned to practicing clarinet, which is a hobby I stopped more than 15 years ago. Here’s a snapshot of practice. When was the last time you picked up an old hobby?

• A recipe: Looking for something simple to spice up the winter blues? I recently discovered the Ghanaian dish jollof rice, via a local farmer’s market. A really friendly local vendor offers a pre-made sauce to cook with rice. Super easy and super tasty. For folks nowhere near Berlin, here’s a similar recipe to prepare the sauce yourself. What’s something new you can try that might be both inspiring and easy?

• A movement: In my co-working Caves, I’ve been leading breaks where I invite participants to inhale and expand their arms up and out, chin and chest up and forward, and exhale, enclosing their shoulders in a hug. A few rounds of implode-explode are a great 30-second mindful movement and breathing exercise to take a break from stationary postures.

Ways to Engage and Support

• I’d love you to connect me with HR managers or business leaders you know who might be interested in workshops to support engaging their team to make work “work” for more folks. Even exploratory conversations are great. Alongside individual coaching, I’ve facilitated workshops with teams from 3 to 30.

• I’m preparing to test the next iteration of my card deck, And What Else?. If you liked reflecting on the prompts above and have a reflective or journaling process you’d like to evolve, let me know to add to you the waiting list. 

• If you’d like to explore yoga or deepen your practice, I’m preparing to start teaching again. Let me know if you’d like to practice together, either online or in person (Berlin).

If you benefitted from reading this, feel free to share with a friend or reply and let me know what you are taking away. Stay tuned for next month’s newsletter on the topic of Facts.

In joy,
Stephen