Personal Accountability
Copyright 2005 Kathy Paauw
Just after graduating from college, the first full-time job I
got was as an administrative assistant for a higher education
institution. Although I was not passionate about the work
itself, I gave it my best effort. It paid the bills during our
first four years of marriage while my husband was in medical
school.
Several support staff in the organization perpetually played the
victim role; they frequently held a "pity party" to air their
grievances about work conditions and to pontificate about how
unfair life was. A few co-workers invested a lot of their energy
in trying to "look" busy so they could deflect as much work as
possible. Because my desk was generally orderly and was not
piled high with papers, the woman I shared an office used to
advise me: "You should pull files from the drawers and stack
them on your desk so you'll look busy. Then they won't keep
giving you more work!" My reply to her: "But that's why I am
here, is to work! Why would I want to deflect work if I am all
caught up?" She really thought I was an odd one! I think she
also felt a little threatened by ability to be so
productive...as if my productivity would make her look bad. I
wasn't there to compete with her. I was simply there to work.
Some of my co-workers carried a sense of entitlement, and they
frequently asked really lousy "victim" questions like these: Why
does this always happen to me? When is someone going to give me
a break? When are they going to fix this problem? My co-workers
never stopped to ask how they might be part of the problem...or
part of the solution.
John Miller, author of The Question Behind the Question (QBQ),
suggests that this victim mentality comes as a result of asking
poor questions. If you have not read this short book, I highly
recommend it. I'll share a story to illustrate some of the
powerful points the author makes about QBQ.
A few years ago I received a phone call from an administrative
assistant (I'll call her Carol) who had found my website while
doing some online research about how to increase personal
productivity. She was calling with questions about some
productivity tools she had read about on my website. By the end
of our conversation, she was very eager to get the Paper Tiger
and a tickler file system - both were productivity tools I'd
recommended. The next step was to get purchase approval from her
employer, a non-profit organization.
A few days later I got an email from Carol, informing me that
there was a budget freeze in her organization. Not only was she
unable to make any purchases, but she was also told that she
could not implement the Paper Tiger system during work hours.
Her organization had been forced to lay off support staff during
a recent budget crunch and Carol's responsibilities had
increased, so her boss did not want her taking time away from
her "work" to learn and set up a new system.
To my surprise, Carol was determined to forge ahead, despite
these challenges. I could tell that she was passionate about her
organization's mission. She knew how important it was to be more
productive so she could handle the additional responsibilities
she had recently inherited. I was amazed to learn that Carol had
decided to spend her own money to purchase the necessary tools
and to work after hours to get everything set up.
As I thought back to my years working as an administrative
assistant, I couldn't help thinking of the support staff I'd
worked with 20+ years ago. Put in Carol's circumstances, they
would have asked questions like these: Why do I have to do
everything? When are they going to provide me with more help?
Why can't they at least pay for products that would help make my
work easier?
It's understandable why someone would think this way, especially
when feeling frustrated, unsupported and overwhelmed. Still,
these are lousy questions to be asking. Our society is full of
victim thinking. How can we possibly make progress when we're so
busy playing the victim? These negative questions don't solve
any problems! Nothing positive or productive comes from asking
them. These questions also imply that someone else is
responsible for the problems and the solutions. What ever
happened to personal accountability?
Carol generated additional choices by asking better, more
personally accountable "I" questions rather than victim-like
"they" questions: What can I do to increase my personal
productivity? What can I do to develop myself? What can I do to
support our organization's mission?
Curious about what happened with Carol? After she implemented
the Paper Tiger software and the tickler file system with her
own funds and on her own time, her productivity went way up. Her
supervisor could not believe how quickly she could retrieve
information and how consistently she was meeting deadlines,
despite her additional responsibilities.
Three months after Carol's initial purchase of these tools, I
received a request for multiple network copies of the Paper
Tiger software and several more tickler file systems, as well as
a request for some of my time to help with implementation of
these tools. This time it was paid for by her organization,
despite the budget freeze.
About a year after Carol's employer implemented the software and
tickler files, I called to ask how things were going. Someone
else answered Carol's direct line, and I was told she no longer
worked at that extension; Carol had been promoted to a
management position! When we connected, Carol told me about some
incredible transformations that had taken place in her
organization since they had implemented the productivity tools
that she had started out with on her own.
Instead of blaming, complaining and spending energy trying to
deflect additional work, Carol had asked the QBQ: What can I do?
Then she designed her own solutions and took action. She took
personal accountability rather than becoming a victim. And Carol
did what she did because she chose to, not because she had to.
Remember to check your self-talk: I should..., I gotta..., and I
have to... represent victim language; I choose to... is
empowering and builds on personal accountability.