I Take Responsibility for That

Submitted by Katie on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 3:23pm

How many times have you seen a variation of this statement? It often appears in the PR statement after a disaster. I saw it the other day in a student’s post about a relationship disagreement. When I used to read it, I THOUGHT I knew what the person meant. Now, I don’t assume that the speaker really has any idea what taking responsibility means, since most people actually could say, “I take the blame for that.” Or, “I take the burden of this event on myself.” Many people mistake responsibility for blame and burden and also wipe their hands of the event immediately after this utterance. Mea culpa, over and out. Then on to do the same, similar or more escalated in future.

Taking responsibility involves facing and getting into complete harmony with what happened and my/your role in it. It requires inquiry, giving attention to the actions, decisions, attitudes and general unconsciousness that contributed to the situation. Since true responsibility claims creativity, as in, wow, look what I created (!), taking responsibility liberates your ability to make NEW connections between what you did and what happened. This is called getting smarter rather than recycling blame, burden, apology and inertia. When you’ve wondered how your actions allowed or fostered what happened, you can harness the liberated creative juice to make new, conscious choices that foster a different result. That’s qualitatively different than the apology and promises to do better that are not based on anything other than trying to make the thing go away.

We have compiled some questions that open the space for wonder in taking responsibility. Here’s one:

• What would you do differently in this situation to create what you want?

You can find others in the handout on our website called Being a Full Player.

Katie's blog
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