It's my fault!

Welcome!

We teach children to take responsibility for their actions; when they hurt someone or break something. They must go and apologize or acknowledge the issue. Some adults have done away with this concept. Instead, they chose to completely blame others for the problems they encounter.

We cannot call ourselves adults if we have decided to do away with these early lessons. Being able to look at a situation and see your role in the events that transpired takes a lot of honesty and a lack of pride. This is not always an easy task but it is absolutely necessary.

It takes a big person to say, “Yes, my actions did cause or influence the following consequences.”

This is an important concept because accepting your role in an issue elevates a lot of problems. What I learned through my various leadership positions is it is better to get out in front of a problem rather than have the problem boil over and then be brought back to you. It is more productive to be conscious of an error and work to correct it; than ignore it or put it on someone else in hopes to save yourself from embarrassment, reprimand or criticism.

Secret #3 

Own your actions

Going forward you will find that major conflicts will be few and far between. Problems that might have snowballed had you avoided taking responsibility for them will be mere snowflakes in comparison to what they could have been.

For instance, if you are not a fan of conflict and ignoring an issue feels better, this may be a hard lesson for you to learn. However, once you learn it you will be able to take on bigger responsibilities. For example, you cannot be a manager or supervisor if you are unable to see your own errors and address them. You can’t be an effective leader of any group if you can’t see that the issues that arise aren’t always everyone else’s fault.

I learned this lesson at a fairly young age and was able to schedule, hire and fire without a supervisor’s permission at 19 years old. When you can accept your role in an incident or potential incident it further proves that you’re responsible and mature.

On the flipside taking responsibility for actions and continuing in error is not the idea. If you are always having to apologize for the same mistakes you need to do some self evaluation and figure out what you need to do to keep this from happening again. For example, if I’m constantly late to work but I come in and say “I apologize, I didn’t set my alarm, or got a late start.” That doesn’t make my employer say well at least she didn’t lie, blame on someone else, or deny that she was late. That makes my employer say, “Well I can’t rely on her, she’s never on time.” And that’s not the goal.

The goal is for you and I to be responsible, reliable adults in society. I want us to be adults that are making a difference and helping our communities.  In order to do that we must see what we are doing in our communities and own it.