As good enough parents we model appropriate responsibility as our children grow.
Being appropriately responsible gives us energy. Taking on too much responsibility (worrying about everyone and everything else) drains our energy.
What about taking no responsibility?
Surely if we take on no responsibility we’ll have loads of energy because we’ll have nothing to do or worry about. But actually I don’t believe that that is the case.
Being irresponsible is also an energy drainer because, ultimately, it will probably cause us trouble. Also, we may feel emotionally upset that we are not being true to ourselves – the existential guilt that I referred to in an earlier post.
Appropriate responsibility involves taking responsibility for all our successes, but also taking responsibility for things that go wrong. And it means we take responsibility and not blame others, either explicitly or implicitly, for our own emotional state.
If we are good enough parents we judge what our child is capable of handling at a particular stage of development. We can take on too much responsibility (i.e. cleaning our 10 year old’s room – thereby letting him off the hook), or too little responsibility (i.e. leaving our 10 year old in charge of a toddler and a baby when we go out drinking for the night) – thereby burdening him with too much too soon.
In the first instance, a child may feel the beginnings of (unconscious) existential angst or guilt (that is, the guilt that we aren’t being true to ourselves as I just mentioned) as he has an unconscious need to be responsible anyway. In the second case, he will feel overburdened as he will have too much responsibility appropriate to his age.
As stated above, emotionally well parents will take responsibility for all their successes – and/or all their failures and it is the same in organisations.
How often have we heard people in an organisation that struggles to achieve its goals attributing blame not on themselves as individuals, but the organisation? (A good clue as to the willingness to acknowledge responsibility is to listen to someone complaining and observe whether he uses the terms they, or we when talking about the organisation of which he is a part).
In almost all cultures of the world the fundamental system in human society is the family, and I have already explained the rationale for considering it to be an appropriate context to assist hurt children.
A popular model of therapeutic intervention with a family (which is based on Systems Theory) is known as systemic family therapy. This is where the work with the family is done with an awareness of how each person’s behaviour affects everyone else and then the family as a whole.
A staff team in an organisation is also a system and many of the characteristics of families are transferable to staff teams. For instance there could be a caretaker, a clown, a hero, a scapegoat, etc. Almost always, these roles will be taken on unconsciously.
I believe that it gives us an energy boost if we become aware of, and then take responsibility for the roles we adopt.
Of course, the roles are usually not at all as pronounced as they would be in a family because a staff team will lack the privacy of a family. Also, a staff team will be governed by company rules, policies and procedures whereas a family will behave more in accordance with norms emanating from individual members’ different personalities, core beliefs, rituals, practices and responses to emotional experiences learned and handed down through many generations.
And, just like a family, the more the individuals take responsibility, the less pronounced the roles will be.