An essential tool for managers
Understand your actions and how to take responsibility
Several years ago, I came across a framework that has become one of my most powerful tools when building teams and leading others. It’s an asset not only to managers, but to anyone.
Whenever I teach anybody this framework, there’s always this eye-opening moment when people in the audience recognize their behaviours and understand why they act in a certain way.
The wifi is down in the office. What do you do?
Imagine this situation. You are in the office. Everybody is busy working. Suddenly, slack is down. You can’t send/receive any eMails. You can’t access the files on the server. What do you do?
The Responsibility Process describes how you act
Do you frantically hit “reconnect”? Do you ask your colleagues, if they also have trouble? Do you go to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee because you can’t work anyway? Your behaviour depends on the degree of responsibility you show in this situation. The author of “the responsibility process”, Christopher Avery, defines responsibility in the following way:
Responsibility is defined as owning the ability and power to create, choose, and attract. The Responsibility Process starts with the understanding that you are creating, choosing, and attracting things in your life. The question is whether or not you are willing to own it, especially when things don’t seem right. (Christopher Avery)
Enough theory. Let’s look at the different stages of this process. And use the example of the situation above.
Understand the different stages in order to reach responsibility
- Lay blame: “Oh these IT colleagues again. Things never work in this company. They screwed up again.”
- Justify: You justify the current situation with excuses.“The wifi is down. I can’t do anything about it. Let’s grab a coffee” (Fun fact: Next time the wifi is down in your company, pay attention to how many people suddenly gather around the coffee machine)
- Shame: You feel guilty about it and blame yourself. “I’ve probably done something wrong and that’s why it’s not working on my computer”
- Obligation: You feel obliged to do something about it, even if you don’t want to. “I should talk to the IT helpdesk. I should figure out how to connect to the other wifi”
- Responsibility: You own the ability and power to act. You choose what to do about it because you want it. “I’ll just turn on my personal hotspot and continue working”
We all experience these stages. Depending on our degree of responsibility, we either stay stuck in one stage or manage to climb up the ladder to reach responsibility.
But in order to reach responsibility, we move through all stages (but might move very quickly from one stage to the next).
So, in the above example, it might feel like this: “Damn IT. Wifi not working again. Or is it just me who has this problem? Well, what should I do? I know what: I’ll use my personal hotspot to get wifi access again. Yeah! Back online!”
There’s nothing wrong with you if you find yourself in a certain stage!
This is really significant. What I want you to take away from this article: Experiencing these stages is normal. And even if you show “responsible” behaviour in one situation, it does not mean you will always show it in all other situations.
I want to raise awareness for these stages and nudge you to think about: What could I do to reach the next stage?
How I use this framework
Personally, I find it helpful in 2 ways:
- Use it for your own development. Reflect on your behaviour and think about ways to become more responsible.
- Educate your team. This is a very powerful way to create ownership with your team members.
Kilian Hughes is a manager and leadership coach in the field of User Experience (UX), building up and leading teams since 2016.
For full transparency: I didn’t come up with this framework myself, but it was designed by Christopher Avery.
Literature: https://responsibility.com/responsibility-process/
