4 SIMPLE STEPS TO REACH YOUR POTENTIAL

State of Accountability

I think for a lot of individuals and organizations, the word accountability has a negative implication. It is typically associated with being in trouble. In a litigious and politically charged society, being accountable is getting “stuck with the bill.” Whoever is held accountable means they are responsible and deserve punishment. 

People understandably want to avoid punishment. This translates into frequently putting the blame on others or circumstances when things go wrong. They may even be partially correct, something or someone else could be at fault. Most likely many factors contributed to the failure. 

Avoiding accountability makes logical sense. Who wants to stand up and take responsibility when the stakes for doing so are so high? Is this an effective way to operate? Is it a better way to live? Even with so many factors encouraging this mentality, I think there are some devastating effects.

It can be like having a second full time job avoiding accountability. Spending time thinking of all the circumstances or other people that may have contributed to not getting the results they were responsible for or wanted. All the ways that they can avoid responsibility so they aren’t held accountable. 

When someone focuses too much on the things they can’t control, they fall into a victim mentality. They view themselves as powerless to change their situation. According to The Oz Principle, a book that explores victim mentality in organizations, written by Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman, there are 6 basic stages to identify if someone is avoiding accountability and stuck in the victim cycle: 

1. Ignore/Deny. A typical beginning point is the ignore and deny stage where people pretend not to know that there is a problem, remain unaware that the problem affects them or choose to deny the problem altogether.
2. It’s Not My Job. This stage reflects an awareness that something needs to be done to get the result, coupled with an acute avoidance of getting involved.
3. Finger-Pointing. In this stage people deny their own responsibility for poor results and seek to shift the blame to others.
4. Confusion/Tell Me What to Do. At this stage, people cite confusion as a way of alleviating themselves of their accountability.
5. Cover Your Tail. People continue to seek imagined protection by crafting elaborate and precise stories as to why they couldn’t possibly be blamed for something that might go wrong.
6. Wait and See. People remain mired in the victim cycle when they choose to “wait and see” if things will get better. In such a climate, however, problems can only get worse.

How much time are people spending worrying about avoiding accountability instead of being proactive and finding ways to solve the problem in front of them? If culture encourages individuals to place blame on others, those individuals will eventually be blind to their own mistakes. If taking responsibility is risky, people will do it less and less. How much is this mentality hurting people’s ability to grow and develop?

Taking Responsibility to Grow

People tend not to struggle so much with the things they are good at. They may have a skill, knowledge, or experience advantage over some situations. Either way, some things just don’t give them much resistance. A simplified example is riding a bike. When someone first learns how to ride a bike, it is difficult. Frustration accompanies physical pain from continually crashing. The desire to quit can be tempting. However, once the skill is mastered, it isn’t something most think about anymore. It becomes second nature. 

Everyday people go through life barely noticing the things they don’t struggle with, even if at one point in time the struggle seemed insurmountable. However, there are also times that they face challenges they don’t know how to handle. These situations are front and center in their mind. They are front and center because they aren’t coasting through them like they do in other areas of their life. They don’t coast through circumstances that they haven’t mastered. They haven’t mastered them because they haven’t developed the skills needed to do so. 

This is where struggle and failure show up. This is life’s organic way of showing each person what they need to work on. If someone avoids the path of responsibility because they may fail, they lose their opportunity to struggle and grow. When someone avoids accountability to failure, they lose the opportunity to receive feedback necessary for improvement. If someone is stuck in the victim cycle, it becomes impossible for them to see their own faults. Impossible to grow.

According to The Oz Principle, the definition of accountability is: A personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results. 

Someone who embraces this definition doesn’t mean they aren’t dealing with unfair or tough circumstances. It doesn’t mean that they need to take responsibility for something someone else did. It doesn’t even mean that they ignore all of the uncontrollable circumstances that are hurting them. It means that they make a choice to rise above it and focus on what they can control. 

They have a realization that only through their actions, can they change their results. They challenge themselves by owning difficult situations and earning the knowledge to solve whatever problem is in front of them. By taking this path they don’t care whose fault it is, they step up and take responsibility, solving difficult problems and growing along the way. 

Reach Your Potential - 4 Simple Steps

The authors of the Oz Principle give 4 simple steps to ensure someone stays out of the victim cycle - See it, Own it, Solve it, Do it. These 4 steps are a mindset and strategy. It is helpful for someone to review these steps before they encounter a difficult situation to prepare themselves ahead of time.

• Have the courage to SEE it. Request feedback. Have the courage to see the situation objectively. 
• Find the heart to OWN it. Even if unfair, what is your part of fixing the problem?
• Obtain the wisdom to SOLVE it. When you own your circumstances, you now put yourself in a position to learn how to solve it. In the process you gain wisdom. 
• Exercise the means to DO it. Measure progress to hold yourself accountable.

There is no doubt this is a more difficult way to live. It is counter to what society encourages. It is not a comfortable path. However, I believe part of living a meaningful life is finding value in our struggles. Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl believed;

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Our struggles help us understand ourselves, which isn’t easy. It means looking at the things we aren’t good at and finding out we aren’t as good as we think we are. However, if we embrace struggle, we will most likely find out that we are stronger than we think we are. Imagine if someone lived their whole life avoiding difficult opportunities and never learning what they were capable of.

How else do we find out our potential than if we embrace the areas of life that we aren’t good at? If we are willing to do so, eventually we will earn the knowledge to master that situation. If we master THAT situation then maybe we can master a more difficult situation. We know what situations we haven’t mastered because those are the times we struggle and fail.

If we embrace the idea of accountability and responsibility we will organically master more situations in our lives than if we avoided them. Instead of avoiding or retreating from difficult situations we will use them as callings to help us fulfill our potential. We will finish our life, knowing what we were made of and learning who we are. 

I think that is meaningful.