Your Responsibility Talent: Commitment to Promises Made -- Season 3

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.


There is an emotional aspect to this executing theme. It is about
psychological commitment to the promises you make. It is about
fulfilling on an external to-do list. Responsibility is not just
about what you tell yourself you will do, but what you promise
others. Responsibility translates to others not just as an
executing strength, but as loyalty and integrity. It is the
commitment to doing not only what you say you are going to do, but
doing those things well. At its heart, Responsibility is a
conscientiousness on delivering what you say you will deliver. Not
only is it an obsession for doing things right, but it also is
about doing the right thing. Your impeccable ethics combine to
create your reputation that is utterly dependable. When others come
to you for help you have to be selective. Your willingness to
volunteer can sometimes lead you to take on more than you should,
or more than you can be excellent at.

The leadership aspect around Responsibility is not just about your
priorities, but your team’s priorities. Your Responsibility excels
at having your ear to the ground on what your team or organization
has promised, and being able to fulfill upon that promise.
Responsibility sorts based on what you have already committed to
delivering. In its best most mature form, Responsibility doesn’t
let you get distracted from what could take away from your
promises.

Make sure that you can put words to what leadership promise you are
making. Think about the extension of your Responsibility as being
not just how you fulfill your commitments, but what you get ahead
of. How can you tell people what to expect from you? What is the
emotional commitment you want to make to your followers? People
high in Responsibility tend to be self-starters. You might not need
a lot of external motivation. Because you don’t need people to
start you up, it is important to share with others what starts you.
If you can name and nurture what motivates you, then you can help
others know you better and authentically anticipate when you’re
going to execute.

You may prefer to do things on your own rather than delegating,
however, managers are finding that it’s not their job to just do it
all, but it is their job to lead others to do it all. Find
compelling reasons to share the burden of what you’re doing. Openly
discuss what your promises look like. Get to know the people on
your team, and what motivates them. This way when you’re delegating
you’re seeing it as a fulfillment of the value proposition you have
put out there for your followers.

Build trust with your Responsibility by acknowledging your
followers that do things right. There is a filter in Responsibility
for integrity, so when you notice this in other people, share that
lens that you have. It could be a behavior in someone that you
notice that you wish others had. Call that behavior out and tell
people that you notice it. Find a way to appreciate these gifts.
You can build stability by not trying to shoulder everything on
your own. It is easy for people high in Responsibility to keep
saying yes. Find a way to trust others who can also execute with
you and spread that responsibility around. That way as they are
following you they know there is not too much weight on your
shoulders. Compassion can be spread by checking in with those you
feel responsible for, and apologizing right away for any mistakes.
Finally, hope can be found in Responsibility by invoking ownership
rather than delegation. You can do this by asking your followers
what they feel most inclined to own. It is not so much about giving
others part of your job, but inspiring ownership in those that
follow you.

To learn more about Gallup's additional strengths resources, visit
the Gallup Strengths Center: http://on.gallup.com/1l04XVZ.
Gallup's Theme Thursday is a live Webcast that targets strengths
coaches and enthusiasts to provide a deeper context behind the
language of strengths by talking in-depth about each of the 34
Clifton StrengthsFinder themes.