Radical Responsibility — The Guiding Principle You Didn’t Know You Needed
Before launching Roots in the Clouds I worked for an organization that was working to redesign workplace culture. We started the process by creating what we called collective commitments — a set of six operating agreements selected by the workforce that became a call to action for how we wanted to show up as individuals and as a collective.
The foundation for the collective commitments was a commitment to practice radical responsibility. We knew that this had to be one of our non-negotiable guiding principles — not just because it was a foundational element for everything we were doing as part of our commitment to promoting and developing inspired leadership.
But because it’s a foundational element for everything we do as humans.
You see, when things go wrong — particularly in a work environment — most people operate from a fixed mindset perspective. We tend to either blame others for mistakes, painting ourselves as victims and those around us as incompetent or bad people. Or we place the blame on our own shoulders, berating ourselves for our shortcomings.
Of course either response is deeply unhelpful, both in terms of our mental health, our resilience, connection to ourselves and others, and crucially, our ability to regain control of the situation and work towards finding a solution.
Which is where radical responsibility comes in.
Whether at work or in any other aspect of your life, you have a role in how you show up each and every day. When things go awry, you may not be able to control the situation, you may not be able to control other people, but you can control you. You are responsible to you.
When you approach mistakes, adversity, and those bad days at work with radical responsibility, you don’t just accept what’s happened — you take ownership of your reactions. You accept your part in it and actively choose to make yourself part of the solution.
And it works.
While others are still engaged in complaining about the situation, trying to figure out who to blame, or sitting in the corner beating themselves up for their mistake, you’re opening up a world of possibility for moving through the challenges you’re facing.
On a personal level, that’s hugely exciting.
Creating order from chaos and proving to yourself that you have the strength and the skill to overcome adversity is a valuable confidence booster. Transitioning from a culture of blame helps us move through our work life with more compassion both for ourselves and for our co-workers. And developing a habit of taking radical responsibility for your actions and reactions does wonders for our self-awareness.
At the organizational level, it could be an industry-wide game-changer.
Imagine an organization where every single person had made a commitment to taking radical responsibility. An organization where adversity and mistakes were met with an attitude of “okay, let’s think about how we can fix this” instead of “whose fault is it?” An organization brimming with people who are confident in their problem-solving skills, who know that they will be supported if they make a mistake, and who treat themselves and those around them with limitless compassion.
In any industry, that would be a welcome change, but for individuals working in high human impact (HHI) organizations that often have to deal with varying degrees of trauma, it would be truly revolutionary.
It starts with one person
Admittedly, getting every single person in your organization to embrace radical responsibility straight off the bad might sound completely unrealistic, but the good news is it only takes one.
When just one person starts taking radical responsibility — and models that — change begins to snowball throughout the organization. It creates a culture of psychological safety that creates momentum: when everyone around that one person sees that radical responsibility is possible, that it’s happening, that it’s welcomed, and that it’s so incredibly effective, it gives them permission to commit to it too.
And as the blame and shame culture begins to fade from HHI organizations, we can all show up more authentically, take responsibility for our part in things going wrong without fear of punishment, and, most importantly, start building more brave, equitable and inclusive spaces together.
If you’d like to see your organization commit to a culture of radical responsibility, I’d love to talk to you about how to make that happen. Get in touch now and let’s have that conversation.
