Here are three reasons why mastering responsibility is a must for effective leadership:

1. Leaders respond

It’s what you do. Feeling a sense of ownership for a situation defines leadership. When you don’t feel a sense of ownership, you won’t respond resourcefully, hence you won’t be leading. When someone in leadership blames others, justifies his or her actions, or operates from shame or obligation, he/she has ceased to respond resourcefully. Being stuck — stopped — is the opposite of leading.

2. Others amplify the leader’s acts

Fair or foul, moral or immoral, supportive or conniving, a leader’s actions are scrutinized and amplified by and through followers. If you want followers or team members to take ownership, then you must master the practice of demonstrating ownership at all times — especially when things go wrong.

3. Followers won’t demonstrate greater responsibility than their leaders

It just makes sense — no level of an organization will demonstrate a higher level of responsibility-taking than the level to which it reports. This one principle suggests a number of decisions and expectations:

• you shouldn’t expect your followers as a whole to step up any higher than you do
• seek leadership mentors who are responsibility masters
• realize leadership is about far more than hitting metrics — it’s about owning all actions and consequences across the board

Step up, take ownership — of the good and the bad. If you want your employees or team members to take responsibility, you need to be the one demonstrating it first. Don’t be afraid to be honest about making mistakes. This creates an atmosphere for your followers that invites them to take responsibility for their part without having to fear ramifications. Being a fair leader who masters taking responsibility instead of blaming or shaming others will make you a more powerful leader than you think — give it a try!

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Find additional resources to master leadership or build a responsible team (or family) at The Leadership Gift to enjoy a more productive way to live and lead.

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

• I didn’t know that was my job!
• It’s not my fault; she did it!
• That’s just the way it is; there’s nothing I can do!
• Blame me; I’ll take the hit!
• I have to; otherwise I’ll get in trouble!
• Whatever!
• Yep, that’s my mess and here’s what I’m doing to clean it up…

Just for Fun

Match each of the seven phrases above to one of the seven positions on the Responsibility Process™ poster.

The only positive, productive response to problems in the workplace is taking Responsibility.

Responsibility Process™ Tips

First, if you want to expand your ability to respond to problems, listen for and catch yourself saying or even thinking those non-productive thoughts that everybody experiences when things go wrong.

Then, stop yourself from acting on those non-productive thoughts and tell yourself that there’s more for you to own about the situation.

Finally, examine your upset and the situation to find a new and expansive truth you can act on to move forward responsibly and resourcefully.

Reflection

Unproductive thoughts and disruptive actions can cost you dearly and cause a lot of avoidable stress at work. Which of the seven responses to upset lead to resourceful thinking and acting so that your productivity doesn’t suffer?

Want to learn more?

The Responsibility Process™ reveals how you internally explain and deal with upsets, large and small. Tap into the power of the Responsibility Process by listening to and owning your thoughts and words when you aren’t getting what you want. Download your own free Responsibility Process™ poster. And check out the Journey to Responsibility DVD-based workshop designs.

Give the video below time to load. It’s worth it. This short talk ranked 8th out of 150 presentations at the XP2010 international conference earlier this month in Trondheim, Norway.

Turn up your volume, you’ll like it…

Enjoy Sergey Dmetriev’s 7 minute rendition of the Responsibility Process and how to master it

A Russian born agile evangelist living and working in Oslo, Norway, Sergey even gives you an application game.

Follow Sergey on Twitter.

Interested in learning more? Register for a free Leadership Gift preview webinar.

Sergey did a great job didn’t he? Comment on your favorite part or slide…

Christopher,

I saw you speak at the Agile 2009 event in Chicago.  During your presentation, you mentioned a technique for “catching” yourself doing something other than taking Responsibility and it stuck in my head.  So, I decided to see how it would work on my 9 year old son.

My son is bright kid and often, when the class slows down, he gets into trouble.  We have spoken to him many times about how silly it is that he is getting into trouble, especially for the things he is doing and what the longer impact could be – Not being invited to birthday parties, etc…

Two nights ago, I explained the technique I remembered from your presentation.  I told him to keep 4 quarters in his right pocket and each time he was about to do something silly, but he caught himself before doing it and didn’t folow through, he should move a quarter to his left pocket.  If he didn’t catch himself, the quarter would stay.  I explained that if he could just catch himself and come home with his left pocket full, we would be very proud of him!

Here is the message I got this morning from his 3rd grade teacher:

“I wanted to let you know that [son's name] had a very good day yesterday.  I love the quarter idea that Todd came up with!  Even though [son's name] did not have any pockets and real quarters, he used imaginary quarters and it worked!  I am looking forward to another great day!”

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I look forward to learning more and putting it to good use with my entire family.

Todd Kamens
Managing Partner, Certified Scrum Master
Guidance Technology, Inc.
Sharon, MA
USA

Thank you Todd for sharing your win. Congratulations to your son, and to his wonderful, loving, patient, and creative parents.

No child is too young to begin learning how his or her Responsibility Process works. But first, you have to know and demonstrate it yourself.

“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.

The theme is using the Responsibility Process as a framework to take ownership and build environments of shared responsibility where quality issues can be addressed and overcome. It was a bit of a controversial topic. We received a lot of supportive feedback as well as some dissenting comments — often a sign of being on the edge.

Download the Presentation PDF | Go to the Replay

Do you struggle with quality?

In Agile software development, the whole team is responsible for quality, but there are many barriers to accomplishing that goal. When quality issues arise, teams often resort to a silo-based approach to finger-pointing and justifying, citing lack of control or time constraints as the root cause. Most development teams truly want to improve quality but they don’t know what to do, and often feel frustrated and powerless to change the status quo.

But there is a solution. Join Dr. Christopher Avery, expert on the Responsibility Process, and Zach Nies, VP of Products at Rally Software and an expert on Agile quality, as they reveal the secrets to achieving sterling software quality at your organization.

You will learn how to see common Quality problems in a new way and understand their causes. Many people only focus on process and technology to address these issues; we will talk about a 3rd component: you. You will learn:

• the relationship between quality and ownership
• the difference between accountability and ownership, and how this difference affects quality
• How the Responsibility Process can be used as a framework for people and interactions to continuously improve quality
• How to apply the Responsibility Process to your development team

Don’t miss the chance to re-energize your teams and unite them via the shared goal of delivering better quality software.

Download the Presentation PDF | Go to the Replay