Practicing what you preach is not always the easiest thing to do. Therefore I have turned the concept around and this time concentrating on preaching what I practice. People seeing my attempts up close can be the judges to the outcome. Nevertheless being conscious regarding what I am doing, is an impactful part of leadership. How can you know to lead anyone if you do not know them? And how can you ever imagine to know others, if you are not able to evaluate who you are and what you are doing? Therefore consciousness is not only important for you as a person for your interests but also for the purpose of being well prepared for leadership. 

The concept

✨ I recently got acquainted with concepts introduced by Chapman, Dethmer, and Klemp in "The 15 commitments of Conscious Leadership". Amongst other points I was turning my interest in the topic of personal responsibility and the concept often heard where people confuse taking responsibility with admitting being wrong, making a mistake, and feeling guilty. Interestingly it is very overlooked how taking or showing responsibility is a scale where you move up and down based on your actions, words, and attitude. Imagine the scale to have a middle line where being above the line means being open, curious, and committed to learning and being below the line highlighting being closed, defensive, and committed to being right. Looking at taking responsibility, and keeping the scale in mind, you can see that you can be open and curious without admitting fault, as well as admitting to having made a mistake does not exclude the possibility for you still being strongly defensive.  Therefore I am working on letting go of the need to be always right.  Always right - what a tiring thing. Letting go of the need to always have an answer and to always have the last say or to be right or think that my thoughts are the only right ones. By pursuing to be always right I am not only taking away a possibility from others to think, propose, have an impact but by pursuing to be always right I am taking away my own possibility to learn. If a person is motivated of proving to everyone, including themselves, that they are right, then this creates a vicious cycle and ends up losing their personal responsibility. 

The roles

✨ Second connected concept to taking responsibility and your location on the scale turns its attention to 3 different roles people tend to take when they are below the line. 

The victim. When I’m a victim, I’m living as though I’m “the effect of” people, circumstances, and conditions.  I locate the cause of my experience as something or someone outside of me. I’m upset because a supplier didn’t deliver or the markets are down or there is bad traffic. It could also be that I’m happy, but the cause of my happiness is the circumstances outside of me. Victims never take full responsibility for their lives.

The villain. Villains blame. They blame others, the collective, and themselves. They move through life finding fault. Villains believe something is wrong and their goal is to figure out who caused it.

The hero. Heroes seek temporary relief.  The keyword is temporary.  They don’t want to bring ultimate resolution to an issue because if they did, they would be out of a job. Heroes over-function and often take more responsibility than is theirs. They do this at the expense of others, the team, and themselves.

When we are above the line, the victim moves to the creator, the villain moves to the challenger and the hero becomes the coach. As nothing is permanent, then just because you currently most often find yourself to be located below the line in any of the 3 roles, does not keep you from moving above the line. 

Should or should not be

✨ From all the concepts to debate on, my favorite is the view of the world. Most people believe that there is a way the world should be, and a way the world should not be. Recently I have seen myself fall deep into thought trying to understand why do we assume the world is supposed to be in a particular way? We talk about that we should meet our quarterly targets in the same way as talking that milk should not be spilled? Isn't this a great opportunity to challenge this view by opting to think that things are the way the world just shows up? There are reasons the targets were not met, or why the milk was spilled. Let's accept that life does not always turn out like we assume it should. From this change of view we could gain not being anxious and wasting our time to force the world to fit our beliefs. Focusing on how things were supposed to be is basically blaming. Blaming yourself is no better than blaming others or circumstances. Focusing on blame is at the end of the day equal to not taking responsibility. I pursue not put the focus on blame, as that just concentrates on the ways things should or should not be. What if the biggest questions are not:

• How can we fix this?

• How can we keep this from happening? 

What if the main question is "what can we learn from this?" "I wonder what is this here to teach me?"