Responsibility / Accountability ......... "Verantwoordelikheid / Verantwoordbaarheid"

We always have the power to choose how we interpret a given situation and the mindset we adopt in response.....

Responsibility is not the same as accountability. 
Responsibility is probably a good thing for companies and their cultures, but accountability is actually somewhat more problematic. 
Accountability is, of course, an idea very much in vogue these days. 
People in companies and even schoolchildren are supposed to be held accountable for their decisions and actions—what they do has consequences, and they must feel those consequences, be they positive or negative. 
There is a lot of evidence, however, that the growing emphasis on individual accountability—something, by the way, that is completely inconsistent with the lessons of the quality movement—hinders learning and even discovering mistakes... 


Some prin­ci­ples of trans­for­ma­tion to sup­port the change process from a 'Victim Mindset' to a 'Being Responsible Mindset' are.......

Accept­ing per­sonal responsibility
So much has already been writ­ten about this sub­ject. 

Yet I con­tinue to be amazed at how many peo­ple still think that respon­si­bil­ity = blame. 

One might even be tempted to won­der if malign­ing respon­si­bil­ity this way is not another tac­tic to make peo­ple think that being respon­si­ble is a bad thing and to be avoided at all costs, thus per­pet­u­at­ing the vic­tim con­scious­ness that keeps peo­ple pow­er­less....

Respon­si­bil­ity refers to....

 * A struc­ture of inter­pre­ta­tion by which I choose to stand 100 per­cent as the cause of what hap­pens in my life

 — no excep­tions

 — includ­ing my thoughts, feel­ings, actions, inter­pre­ta­tions and result­ing events.
* Author­ship. 

It is to be aware of cre­at­ing one’s self, one’s des­tiny, life predica­ments and out­comes and, if such be the case, one’s own suffering.
* It is not the truth, like a fact. 

It is a con­text from which one chooses to live. It starts with the will­ing­ness to come from a point of view that you are the cause of your own actions, no one can make you do any­thing.

You are the cause of what you have and what you are.

But you might won­der.....: 

Why ­choose to be 100 per­cent respon­si­ble? 

What’s the point? 

Why take on such a bur­den?

Isn’t that heap­ing a lot of weight on one’s shoul­ders? 

Isn’t it a set up for failure?

In a trans­formed under­stand­ing of respon­si­bil­ity we learn that it is not bur­den, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt.

In respon­si­bil­ity, there is no eval­u­a­tion of good or bad, right or wrong. 

There is sim­ply what hap­pens and the will­ing­ness to hold your­self account­able for how you respond.

(Ellis has been my 'chosen mentor' on this for many years, in coining it as 'Rational vs Irrational' thoughts/actions..)
Accept­ing per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity is to claim your­self as the uncon­tested author of your life. 

Even though much of what hap­pens in life is beyond our abil­ity to con­trol, what we do have is the abil­ity to choose how we’ll respond to what hap­pens. 

So if you want to have a say about who you are and what your life is for, respon­si­bil­ity is a require­ment. It is the foun­da­tional prin­ci­ple of trans­for­ma­tion. With­out it, all the rest are null and void.

Why choose to be 100% respon­si­ble? 

Because it is the key to access­ing your per­sonal power, free­dom, cre­ativ­ity, alive­ness and pas­sion.

You can’t be kind of, or some­what respon­si­ble. 

You either are or you’re not. 

No one else can make you be respon­si­ble, nor can you impose it on another.

 Respon­si­bil­ity is a gift you can only give to your­self, like a blessing.

All of us have had things hap­pen to us in ways that had us feel, either for a moment or per­haps for a life­time, that we were a vic­tim in that cir­cum­stance. 

Life isn’t always fair. 

Vic­tim events DO hap­pen......

Air­planes crash, earth­quakes hap­pen, peo­ple rob, steal, cheat and take advan­tage of others well-intentions. 

No one gets through life with­out many moments of feel­ing like what just hap­pened shouldn’t have hap­pened. Feel­ing like what just hap­pened wasn’t your fault, you didn’t deserve it, you weren’t to blame.

We all have sto­ries and bat­tle scars from the vic­tim wars we’ve waged, and we’ve gath­ered a lot of evi­dence to be right about our sto­ries. 

We enlist our friends in giv­ing sym­pa­thy or extra atten­tion because of what hap­pened to us. 

We use our vic­tim sto­ries as excuses for (fill in the blank…) not get­ting on with life, not tak­ing risks, not being in a rela­tion­ship, not trust­ing, not lov­ing our­selves, etc.

At the fac­tual level, all that may be true. 

But in between what hap­pens to us and the sto­ries we tell our­selves about it there is a tiny gap. 

Maybe it’s only a mil­lisec­ond. 

In that gap lies the pos­si­bil­ity that we can con­sciously choose our response.

 And in that choice lies all the power and free­dom human beings could pos­si­bly want.

Just ask Nel­son Man­dela or Vik­tor Frankl, both of whom suf­fered years of impris­on­ment and phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse at the hands of 'their masters'.

 Frankl was in a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp dur­ing WWII, Man­dela impris­oned for 26+ years in South Africa. 

Yet upon release, each spoke about how the power of choice helped them not only sur­vive what had hap­pened, but emerge from their expe­ri­ence, not angry and embit­tered or vic­tim­ized, but empow­ered to make a dif­fer­ence by help­ing oth­ers to see within them­selves the source of their own true power.

 Not everything is great about being responsible; it is, for instance, hard work and can feel burdensome. 
Feeling responsible also has many positive emotions and advantages associated with it, including feeling more powerful and more connected. 
The point  is not to have people necessarily come to believe one way of thinking is better than another. 
The objective is to have people recognize that each of us has a choice—or actually a series of choices—we make each day about how we approach the world and the problems and opportunities it presents to us.
We can be victimized or responsible.
 In a similar fashion, we can choose how we view opponents and rivals and we can choose what assumptions we make and hold about people and organizations and their capabilities and potential... 
Each choice has consequences—for how we feel and, more important, for what we do, the decisions we make, and how we act in the situations we confront.
This isn't to suggest that we should always make the best of bad situations--there are times in life when we truly are victims of circumstance, and trying to hold ourselves responsible is counterproductive. 
 But in almost all 'professional' situations we can choose to adopt a responsible mindset or a victim mindset--and that choice will have a significant effect on our ability to contribute to a desirable outcome. 
The respon­si­bil­ity to cre­ate a world that embod­ies the prin­ci­ples of trans­for­ma­tion is ours. 

If we accept that respon­si­bil­ity as a gift and a bless­ing instead of a bur­den, we can be empow­ered to move freely in the direc­tion of the promise of this time.

It is choice we make for our­selves to live in this way, or not.

The man­tle is there to be picked up. 

The choice to do so or not lies within each of us.
For if the  'Great Awak­en­ing' is to occur, it will be a team sport. 

And it begins in tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for invit­ing your­self to be on the team. 

Are you in?

"Therefore comfort one another with these words"
MARANATHA and SHALOM!
 1 Thessalonians 4:18