3 Keys to Mastering Responsibility

Far too many good, motivated, hard-working people get stuck in jobs they don’t want, projects gone bad, work problems and careers they don’t enjoy. It happens to individual contributors and it happens to leaders.

We recently spoke with Christopher Avery, the CEO of Partnerwerks, Inc., at Agile Day Atlanta, who shared the three keys to mastering responsibility and achieving much greater happiness, freedom and choice for yourself and for your team.

VersionOne: Why is mastering responsibility so important?

Christopher: I think the main reason we should be talking about mastering responsibility is because we know that leadership is innate in all of us. It has to do with the mental process we call The Responsibility Process® by which we can take 100% ownership for our lives, situations and challenges.

The reason that we should be talking about mastering responsibility is to simply help people who may have an inkling that their lives could be better and they could do something about it.

The other reason we should be talking about mastering responsibility is that people who practice this process, start enjoying greater fulfillment, lower stress, and higher engagement. They start applying this to self-leadership in their own lives, as well as use the tools to create better teams, better organizations, better cultures, and respond much more successfully to change.

The third reason is that the research on The Responsibility Process is only three decades old and not widely known.

VersionOne: Is the outcome of The Responsibility Process that people discover their passion and end up with a renewed focus on what they’re currently doing?

Christopher: Part of the process of taking responsibility has to do with understanding your own inspirations, desires, dreams, and your own definition of who you are when you’re most fulfilled. The other is true also. You may simply find profound acceptance in the life that you have.

One is an acceptance that what you’re trying to do or be isn’t who you are. The other is an acceptance that it is exactly who you are

The Responsibility Process is a framework for how we process thoughts about stuff going wrong in our lives. If we get good at the framework, then we can use it as a GPS to steer us towards greater fulfillment. If we’re not good at this framework, then we end up getting stuck.

VersionOne: What problems are typically driving people to contact you to find out about the responsibility process?

Christopher: The majority of the people who contact us are in a leadership positions who are feeling somewhat trapped and they don’t know how to get un-trapped.

The have the responsibility process in them. My process is to simply recondition them on how to think when they’re experiencing a problem, so they will get stuck in those mental states less often and for shorter times. They’re able to think more clearly about what they want and what the next steps should be.