The Death of Over-Responsibility

Admittedly, I'm hesitant to write this for fear of creating an excuse.  I'm a huge believer in responsibility and ownership at work.  One of my favorite phrases is "You cannot change what you do not own."      I think too many team members, through their own perception or fault of management,  don't feel a sense of ownership. 

That, however, is not what I'm writing about today.   I'm writing about the sense of over-responsibility, which can be just as injurious as feeling no responsibility or ownership whatsoever.

I have witnessed individuals who, through acculturation or personal evolution, feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility. . . or over-responsibility   Here are the burdens that this can create:

The individual is so over-indexed in responsibility that they believe that for something to be done right, they have to do themselves.   The rest of the  team, then, doesn't have much to do and they don't know what they can do that the individual hasn't already touched.   The extreme sense of over-responsibility is then balanced out (if you will) by the rest of the team disabled from feeling any sense of ownership whatsoever.

Or,  the sense of personal responsibility is so heavy that the professional  rebels against anything that has to do with ownership.   Consequently, the team itself is not responsible.

Third possible result. . .the over-responsibility is so weighty that the individual is loathe to make decisions for fear of making the wrong decisions.     The individual, and the team, becomes catatonic.
They collectively worry a lot, but cannot activate.

Here's the thing. . . responsibility is like everything else, there are  extremes at both ends.   Feeling no responsibility is a bad thing. . .feeling responsible for everything is a bad thing.    In the middle is the reality of the situation.     Our work, our teams, our families, our lives call us to be responsible for our actions and the well-being for others;    it does not require us to solve everything.

Within both our professional and personal lives there is a need for the reality of what we are called to own. . .and what truly should be someone else's ownership.  The realization of that makes us, and those who surround us, happier and more productive.

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My book "Courageous Questions, Confident Leaders" is available on Amazon Kindle.