I’m going to make an exception to one of my practices: I normally refrain from publicly using the Leadership Gift to analyze current affairs. It would be so easy for me: every day some prominent journalist or blogger bellows, “When will [insert reviled public figure] stand up and take responsibility for this mess?!” and I could cite it and show how the person bellowing about responsibility is doing so from a mental position of blaming others.

I don’t usually comment on current affairs because I know and teach that the Responsibility Process is only effective when self-applied. People across all political and religious persuasions are avid consumers of the Leadership Gift Program for Leaders and I don’t want to politicize it or take sides by pointing out how public figures and journalists fall below the line. Using this platform to apply the Responsibility Process to the endless drama called the news would send the wrong message about how to practice responsibility. Already more than enough people believe they are experts about who should be called out on avoiding responsibility —  I don’t wish to join that chorus.

The JetBlue Steven Slater Incident Offers a Unique Window into Our Collective Mindset

I’m not interested in analyzing Steven Slater’s behavior, rather, I want to comment on the collective response – the overwhelming support he received from many people who identified with him. The situation with Slater presents a unique opportunity to show how the mindset of obligation is pervasive in our society and how applying the steps of the Responsibility Process would have helped here.

The truth is, most of us avoid rather than take responsibility as a way to cope with upset – and many become the news by doing so.

Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who used the public address system to curse at passengers and then deployed the emergency slide to exit the aircraft, has become a folk hero. Unhappy employees everywhere identify with his I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore stand against the alleged oppression. The media outlets and blogosphere are alive with celebrations of Slater’s actions.

In my view, that’s a telling and unfortunate celebration.

The Sad, Slow Burn of Obligation

The way I see it, people who are identifying with Steven Slater are acknowledging that they, too, are unhappily stuck in the mindset of Obligation, just as he was. It appears they presume

• they have to work in a situation they don’t want (presumably for the paycheck)
• they are trapped and have no other choice (for acceptable income)
• there is nothing they can do short of a satisfying but self-sabotaging “up yours” act like Slater’s

So Slater makes a flamboyant public display and interestingly, people everywhere identify with him and celebrate him. It feels good to join in the chorus and release some of that pent-up frustration. I know. I understand it. I’ve been there.

Applying the Responsibility Process to the Steven Slater Incident

Most people go to work day after day just to get a paycheck. And they pay the price — every unsatisfying moment of every day adds another toxic trace of resentment. And resentment is expensive, it saps your energy and resourcefulness. It leaves you thinking that brilliance is flipping off your employer and customers in a graphic display of I Quit.

Quit is a mental position we take when the pain of Shame or Obligation is unbearable. So we disengage, sometimes we quietly check out mentally from a valueless meeting we have to attend, or when the resentment builds up, we violently lash out and tell someone off. That’s the mental position of Quit in the Responsibility Process. We go there because we don’t know how to take ownership of the situation and produce the result we want, and because the pain of Shame or Obligation is unbearable.

If You Identify With Steven Slater, Think Again

The most responsible folks I know, including many who practice the Leadership Gift, did identify with Slater, yet they did not celebrate his actions. They remembered the point in their own life when they became aware of their sense of obligation but instead of quitting they had the tools to be aware of those feelings and used the tools to change course in a positive manner.

If you identify with Slater, please know this: the mindset of Obligation and the accompanying resentment are normal parts of being human. They just aren’t resourceful mindsets that help you to make things better. It is not my intention to make you feel bad, it is my intention to show you how powerful you are in either keeping yourself stuck or propelling yourself forward. The truth is we are far more powerful than we usually give ourselves credit for.

People stuck in Obligation is a multi-trillion dollar problem in our professional economy — you can start to change that for yourself, the people you lead, and the people you love by making Responsibility your preferred response to everything in your life.

You can learn more about how to do this with the help of the Responsibility Process.

In an upcoming post I’ll show you how to deal with Obligation so that you can transform have to into want to in all areas of your life.

The Responsibility Process shows us that the feelings of obligation are just a mindset. It is just one way of coping with a situation we don’t want. The good news is that you don’t have to stay in that mindset.

How to Release Feelings of “Have To”

To release yourself from obligation:

• Ask yourself: what are you doing that you don’t want to do but think you have to?
• How does that make you feel and act?
• Ask yourself what you want to get out of the situation
• Look to see what’s true that you’ve not been seeing
• What if you trusted your power and ability to respond resourcefully to move from obligation to responsibility, what might that look like?

Catching Yourself is Key

I applied these steps recently when I “had to” push some urgent work aside and accompany my sons to their activities. I caught myself grumbling internally and growling at them. When I caught myself, I stopped.

I forgave myself for being human and silently asked myself what I wanted. The answer came immediately: I had signed up for this activity (in more ways than one!) and I wanted to be a dad at that moment and enjoy my sons. The resentment vanished and I was much more responsive and available — instead of feeling badly about my obligation, I decided to live in the moment and enjoy it fully.

That was a quick release. Sometimes it’s not so easy and can take a lot longer, but the process is the same — keep intending to take responsibility, keep asking yourself what you want, and keep looking to see what’s true. The clarity will come to you if you take those actions. Your natural Responsibility Process™ works that way, flawlessly, time after time.

You can have it the way you want it — more importantly, you can want it the way you have it!

“Obligation is indeed a long way from responsibility.”
Tom DeMarco, speaking at the Cutter Summit, May 10, 2006

Learn more about Christopher Avery’s Responsibility Process

“What about the person who is too responsible?”

One such question landed recently after I co-presented a webinar with Zach Nies (VP Products, Rally Software) called The Best Kept Secret of Agile Software Quality. Our message was that quality is a 3-legged stool of process, technology, and people. Most organizations attempt to understand and improve process and technology, but don’t adequately understand how to address the people leg of the stool. That’s where the Responsibility Process helps. The Responsibility Process is a great framework for developing teams and environments of true shared responsibility where people will voluntarily confront and overcome silos and other barriers to quality.

Here’s the question I received later that day: How do we best manage “responsibility throttling”?  At some point, if an individual takes on too much responsibility, his/her effectiveness is compromised.  Is this topic covered in any of your publications?

Great question. And I love the term “throttling.”And most of us realize that over-committing and under-committing are both problems.

There are three conditions worth considering

1. The individual who takes on too much
2. The teammate or leader of an individual who takes on too much
3. The leader who assigns too much and does not get push back

A previous post looked at the first condition. This post will tackle the second condition. I’ll address the third condition in a subsequent post.

I wrote back:

Please don’t ever think of throttling responsibility

What you refer to as taking on too much isn’t responsible at all. It is most likely a mindset of Obligation and is a knee-jerk reaction to “feeling bad if I don’t do something” (which is the mindset of Shame).

This pattern is a common anxiousness that something won’t be addressed, so “I have to” take it on. Remember, we graduate upward from island to island. Someone with too much on his or her plate in our society gets to brag and complain about their importance — a coping mechanism.

No one can take on too much true responsibility — if you are clear that responsibility is defined as owning your power and ability to create, choose, and attract. The most responsible people I know learn how much they can pile on their plates and still be effective. And the most responsible leaders I know understand how to set clear priorities and move everything else aside so their colleagues have breathing room.

I’ve sat in executive meetings in agile organizations and seen a highly responsible CEO test the executives as to whether the action items they signed up to for the coming month and quarter could be accomplished in a sustainable fashion. It was a beautiful thing to watch such dialog. Such leaders believe that one of the worst things they can do is allow their reports to over-commit. The next week I was in a board room with a Senior VP who was piling more and more and more onto his folks to prove he could drive accountability. Guess which organization is thriving?

So what is a well-intentioned leader to do?

First, I recommend you increase your own study and practice of responsibility as taught by the Responsibility Process and the Keys to Responsibility. This will help you acquire a much clearer perspective of your own and others behavior so you will see that you want to encourage true responsibility but perhaps throttle acts of Shame and Obligation — or simply biting off more than can be chewed.

Second, apply the Responsibility Process as a framework for leadership, growth and change to support the agile principles and values of people and interactions, few clear priorities, sustainable pace, continuous learning and improvement. It’s a powerful combination.

Third, and most specifically, create a focused feedback loop for the person who takes on too much so he or she can begin to see what you see in their behavior. Help him to understand the idea of a few clear priorities and sustainable pace.

Let me know your thoughts.

“What about the person who is too responsible?”

What a great question. Read this if you take on too much, or if you know someone who does. Three conditions are worth considering:

• If you are the individual who takes on too much
• If you are the teammate or leader of someone who takes on too much
• If you have a leader who commits employees to too much

This post will tackle the first condition. Subsequent posts will address the other conditions.

The question usually rolls out like a plea for help: What does the Responsibility Process say about someone who takes on too much? I think I’m too responsible because I take on more and more even though I can’t handle more.

Because I can be a little slow, it took me years to figure out that the very best response from me was a probing question. I now reply with “Why do you take on too much?” I now predict with better than 90% accuracy what the leader will say: No one else stepped up and I felt bad it wasn’t going to get done, so I had to do something.

The Responsibility Process always leaves clues

That’s what is so cool about the Responsibility Process. It is reflected in our language so if we know what to listen for, we can learn so much about ourselves and others.

So, why can I predict that response with 90% accuracy? First, the Responsibility Process teaches that taking on too much isn’t responsible at all. How does it teach that? Because in the mental position of Responsibility you feel freedom rather than overwhelm. You are taking charge of your life and moving forward. And I never hear someone who has taken on too much sound like they feel really really good about it.

So, even though they use the term responsible, I look somewhere else on the chart for a better answer. Remember, all 7 positions in the Responsibility Process represent a different definition-in-use of responsibility. But 6 of those positions aren’t really owning it at all. For example, the phrase “my broken leg from skiing is his responsibility” may use the term responsibility but the mindset is one of Lay Blame. So when I hear the phrase “too much responsibility” I listen for the mindset rather than the word.

Someone who feels that they have to take something on is not operating in the mindset of Responsibility.

It looks much more like Obligation to me

But, you say, she does not have to take it on. Agreed. The thought of “have to” is a mindset, an unconscious choice based on an assumption of being trapped. When you do it to yourself you only think you have to. The truth is you don’t have to do anything. We choose to for whatever reason.

Here’s the second reason I can predict the response above with 90% accuracy. The Responsibility Process also teaches that each of us tends to be more conditioned toward one of the positions of irresponsibility than the others. If you are the kind of person who takes on too much, each time you take on an extra load you probably think you are doing the right thing. It’s the weight of the whole load together that feels like you are overly responsible.

But look at the answer to my probing question “Why?” They say “I felt bad” (that’s Shame) “so I had to” (that’s Obligation).

Remember, you graduate from a lower position in the Responsibility Process to a higher position when, for whatever reason, you refuse to hang out in that lower position around an upset. So, I’ve learned that about 90% of the time when someone tells me they are overly responsible, they are really Obligating themselves to something in order to avoid feeling Shame that it won’t get done.

It’s a common and recognizable pattern.

You can never have too much true responsibility

I mentioned above that taking on too much isn’t responsible at all. While it may seem like the right thing to do at the time, the truth is that you will remain overwhelmed and many things (for which others may be counting on you) will go undone. It can be seen as selfish—taking opportunity off the table for others, then doing nothing with it.

But the real reason is that there is no such thing as too much real responsibility. As you learn to own more and more of your life, you own more of your choices. And then you own more of your relationship to the universe around you. And when you do that you feel a part of everything—you interact with everything.

So taking on more is not the same as feeling a part of more. Yes, reduce your Obligation, and increase your true Response-Ability.

Takeaways

If you have a tendency to take on too much or coach people with such a tendency, here are some takeaways from this post:

• Remember the keys to Responsibility are Intention, Awareness, and Confront. Read the post again to see how it is reminding you of your true intention, making you aware of your mindset, and inviting you too confront what is really true.
• Listen to your reasons for taking on something. If your reason is to avoid feeling bad then ask yourself this: How I can let go of feeling bad without piling more on my plate?
• Remember, you are free to choose. Yes is a choice. No is a choice.
• You can also play to your own conscientiousness by asking yourself Is it better to take something on that you know probably won’t ever get done than to not take it on in the first place? After meditating on that question for awhile you may find your answer changing.

Top Story On John McCain Run Out Of Obligation | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

It’s an hilarious spoof on the mindset of “obligation” in the Responsibility Process™. It truly portrays what miserable performance we give in the mindset of obligation.

Obligation is one of the landing places in the mind’s Responsibility Process™. The Responsibility Process is a recent discovery in normal psychology (the psychology of normal people like you and me) that shows how we respond when things aren’t quite right in our worlds.

If you are living any part of your life in obligation (your job for instance, or some aspect of a relationship) and want out, the first thing to do is to understand there is life beyond obligation. You don’t have to stay stuck in Obligation. This site has tons of resources to help. Try following some threads on this blog, download some of the pdfs and mp3s, join the Responsibility eTips list, and check out the store. We’re here to support you in learning how your Responsibility Process works so you can overcome an challenge, achieve your dreams, and have a better life.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…