Taking Responsibility For Your Actions &
Building On Your Good
(Or Not-So-Good) Results
Taking responsibility for your actions...regardless of the results produced...allows you to continue to get better at everything that you do.'I Could Not Have Done This Without...'
This is prudent...it avoids the unproductive process of making excuses and pointing fingers of blame at scapegoats, whether deserving or not.
On the other hand, when we succeed, the tendency is to recognize the contributions of others...'I couldn't have done this without...'
Once again it's prudent to recognize the contributions of others regardless of how much...or little...they actually contributed to our success.
Certainly from the perspective of getting along with others, these two approaches are sound and unlikely to cause problems for others.
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Innocent Deceptions
However from the perspective of continuous improvement, they are little more than innocent deceptions.
More often than not, when things go wrong for you, other people play a role...sometimes a huge one ..in making them go wrong.
On the other hand, when things go right for you...it's likely because you have done most of the hard work yourself...even orchestrating and coordinating the work of others.
However, taking responsibility for your actions, regardless of whether things go terribly wrong or successfully right is more than accepting the blame or sharing the aclaim.
In fact, it offers the opportunity to get better at everything you do.
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Taking Responsibility For Your Actions That Produce Unsatisfactory Results
In one respect, taking responsibility for your actions that generate disappointing results is easy.No one else wants to have anything to do with things that do not work out well.
But don't take the responsibility just to end the blame game.
What has happened has happened...you can't change that.
By taking taking responsibility, you also assume control for the response to what happened. And the best response is to determine how the disappointing results came about.
In identifying what happened, you will want to identify the following three issues:
- What did you know...or should you have known...in making your decisions?
- Why did you make the decisions that you did?
- How could your decision-making and actions have been better?
But don't stop there. The next step is to do whatever it takes to prevent similar situations from arising that might generate similarly disappointing results:
At this point, consider these issues:
- How can you generate or obtain better information to make different decisions?
- What specifically must you do in order to improve your decision making and actions?
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Taking Responsibility For Your Actions That Achieve Desired Results
Taking responsibility for your actions that generate successful outcomes can be more challenging.As well as the tendency to recognize the contributions of others, many of us deflect our achievements to such factors as luck, chance, being in the right place at the right time...or some other happy circumstance.
Believe any or all of those factors of you wish.
But simply believing them without acting to recreate the circumstances that gave rise to your achievement will not guarantee a repeat of your success.
Success is a journey: the achievement of one set of goals is the starting point for a plan pursuing even better results and goals.
Before starting your journey, your personal definition of achievement is one of the first things to be considered. This defiinition will set the standards by which you can measure your achievements along the way.
When taking responsibility for your actions that generate successful outcomes, you are in fact preparing your path to better results.
In effect, the decisions and actions that you took in achieving your desired results is your own continuous improvement model.
By applying the relevant continuous improvement strategies to how you achieved your desired results, you can repeat your successful outcome.
And what's better, by building on your past successes, your future successes will come more easily and produce better results.
Taking responsibility for your actions...regardless of the results produced...allows you to continue to get better at everything that you do.
Is that not better than accepting the blame...or any short-lived acclaim?
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