The Thing about Responsibility

To me, being responsible is one of the most desirable character traits a person can have. What more could any parent, employer, pastor or teacher hope for in a person than to know that the things they have asked to be done actually get done on-time and without needing to be followed up on. 

I can't imagine living an irresponsible life, even though doing so isn't always fun.

So recently we had this great guy from Ontario, Canada come down and lead a Living in Your Strengths workshop. His name is Baha Habashy from Integrity+ Consulting.  What I learned from the workshop is that each of us have strengths and abilities that affect the way we see and live life. According to the Gallup Strengths Finder 2.0 test my second strongest strength is Responsibility, my first strength being Ideas. 

Here is what Gallup says about a person with a strong Responsibility "strength".

Your Responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. Your good name depends on it. If for some reason you cannot deliver, you automatically start to look for ways to make it up to the other person. Apologies are not enough. Excuses and rationalizations are totally unacceptable. You will not quite be able to live with yourself until you have made restitution. This conscientiousness, this near obsession for doing things right, and your impeccable ethics, combine to create your reputation: utterly dependable. When assigning new responsibilities, people will look to you first because they know it will get done. When people come to you for help—and they soon will—you must be selective. Your willingness to volunteer may sometimes lead you to take on more than you should.  © 2000, 2006-2012 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

So as I read this, I'm like, "Yeah, that's exactly the way everyone ought to be...utterly dependable." And then I realized that not everyone has that as a strength, or as Baha says, "Everyone has every one of the 34 defined strengths, most are just lesser strengths". Which means that there are a lot of people out there living responsibly weak lives.

So here's the truth about me. Irresponsibility in a person really irritates me. 

Yep...that's my sentiments exactly

I was having a "discussion" with one of my sons the other day on the subject of "being responsible" and I used the dreaded "you need to grow up" phrase. Cringe. The response I got back was from his heart. I could hear it in his voice. "I'm trying to, Dad". It was so plaintive, so honest that it actually startled me and stopped me dead in my tracks. ( I use this with my son's permission) 

I'm trying to? Suddenly it dawned on me that maybe my son doesn't know what growing up actually looks like. I mean, what defines being grown up and what does the process of getting there look like anyway? Does it mean he now has to shave? That he can get a drivers license? A girlfriend? Come and go as he pleases? What does growing up, this thing of becoming an adult look like? 

Well, from where I stand it looks an awful lot like being responsible. And I don't think it matters that this is my particular strength, Learning to be responsible, and all that entails, really is what growing up is all about. I'm pretty sure about this.

For me, maturity/responsibility came at an early age. At thirteen I bought my first chainsaw and went to work in the great Maine woods. My job was that of "yardman". This was back in the day when the mills only took 4' pulp wood. As the skidder drug the harvested trees into the wood lot, I would cut them into 4' lengths and, using a pulp hook, stack them into long, waist-high rows for the logging truck to load. It was a man's job; hard, back breaking work for very little money...and I loved it. I continued working all the way through high school learning various trades, doing my classes at night. For me, working hard, providing for my own needs and the needs of my family is a huge part of being a responsible adult. Maybe this is why I am passionate about bringing jobs to Honduras in order to help men and women who want to live a responsible adult life do so.

Then of course there are life decisions we all need to learn to make responsibly as we grow up. Some of these we learn how to make wisely and responsibly from our own mistakes, some we learn from other's mistakes. 

I love the saying shown above. For me, bottom-line, responsibility and maturity is about being willing to take the blame for one's own actions, wrong choices or mistakes. Bottom-line. But, this is all coming from a person who is "driven" genetically to live responsibly. 

What say you?