A few weeks ago, in the New York Times, BP took out an advert headlined “Gulf of Mexico – Oil Spill Response”. It read like a lawyer’s statement, desperately trying to avoid any semblance of blame. It provoked outrage, culminating in President Obama attacking the company for trying to finger point their way out of the crisis. This initial lack of taking any responsibility has lead to BP being threatened with criminal proceedings and their shares have taken a 25% hit in value.
A new ad appeared in the New York times last week under the headline “We will make this right”, including sentences such as “Stopping the leak will be a major step but only a start. We know our responsibility goes much further” They seem to have got it (or more cynically want to be seen to have got it!). Absolving yourself of responsibility in a crisis like this just doesn’t work.
Whilst coaching and training, I meet many people who initially won’t take responsibility to solve their problems. I think we all do it to some extent. Quite often people will introduce me as the “person who is going to change things round here”. I have to pick them up on this straight away. I tell them that I am not going to change anything. At first they look slightly startled at this. I explain that in any consultancy, coaching or training work – I can only facilitate a process where THEY make the changes.
Many people try and absolve responsibility by blaming others for their problems. A common target is the boss. Sometimes a coaching client will say to me. “If only my boss would do some coaching rather than me, then we could fix this.” Whereas it could be true that the boss is a difficult person to deal with that’s the reality we are stuck with. We can’t change the boss but what we can do is change how we deal with them. Having this mindset is far more productive.
One useful exercise is to write a problem down as succinctly as possible on an index card. Then on another card write clearly what the current situation is and then on a further one write what you would like the future situation to be. Having done this write all the obstacles, one per an index card, that are stopping you move from the current reality to the future. The last step is to group all these obstacle cards into three piles, problems that arise from your environment, problems caused by other people and then lastly problems ultimately caused by you. What often occurs is the realisation that many of the obstacles we face are ultimately caused by ourselves.
Taking responsibility is a good thing, but it must be down with a sense of realism of what is in your control. Stephen Covey in his excellent, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” talks about the importance of understanding what is and what is not in your control. For example you might worry about green issues, but you can’t control global CO2 emissions. However you could control your household waster and energy consumption. Take responsibility only for those areas that you can control or at least have a significant influence on.
As with all these things there is a balance to be had between taking responsibility for too much and not taking responsibility for anything. One thing Covey suggests is watching your language for a few days. Are you constantly blaming others, the environment, the government, etc for what happens in your life? Successful people realise that much of where we are in our work lives can be blamed on only one person – ourselves.
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