During this election season, I keep thinking about which candidates are authentic and take
ownership for their views, campaigns, speeches and beliefs. Are they just feeding us a line, i.e., pandering, or do they really believe what they are saying? What about in your workplace? Are you, your coworkers or leaders, if you have them, authentic and take responsibility for what does or doesn’t happen and for what they say and do?
We talk about people being authentic but what does that really mean? Authentic means to be real. I would also add that I think it’s about taking personal responsibility. Especially when we talk about it in the context of work or as I mentioned at the beginning, politics.
Personal responsibility is about owning what you do and say, whether good or bad, right or wrong. Responsibility means to be accountable, to be answerable, to take responsibility for something, and to own it, to make it real. In this context authenticity and personal responsibility go together.
At times you have taken responsibility for something but are you believable when you take responsibility. Are you congruent when owning it? Remember when you were a kid and your parents caught you doing something silly and made you apologize. It went something like, sooorry! It was insincere but you knew you had to say it to move on and not get punished. Was that really taking responsibility? Was that your authentic self?
There are the six elements that can help you to become authentic:
1) Values
2) Morals
3) Accountability
4) Trust
5) Leadership
6) Self Worth
When you own something, when you are real, it comes from all of these traits. We know sincerity when we hear it in your tone and see it in your body language. We make a distinction of whether we think it is real or not. It’s not often you can fool people.
An example of someone who took responsibility was Steve Harvey. A couple of weeks ago, he was announcing the winner of the Miss Universe pageant. He read the wrong name during the live broadcast. You could tell, immediately that he took ownership and responsibility for the error. He immediately apologized, was truly embarrassed and has since gone on a press apology tour. Each time he spoke about it, you could tell he truly meant it. It just showed. He was congruent in both his verbal and body language.
Now look at Donald Trump or many other politicians. No this isn’t a political statement. This isn’t about his or others views on anything. Politicians just tend to good subjects to show how not taking personal responsibility looks. Politicians typically make statements in which they later deny saying them. Even though they are captured on video. There are several examples of this on the internet. When asked about them, you can tell some of them just doesn’t seem to care about being held accountable or not. It shows in their language, body language and tone.
Back to you! When you take responsibility for something, think about how you truly want to react to it. Do you own what you do? Are you believable when you do own something? Is it truly from your core beliefs and your authentic self? If not, I would suggest practicing ownership. You can ask yourself the following questions: If I truly wanted to own this, what would I say to others? To myself? Does my response meet my value standards? In other words do I feel good about my response? Do I really feel like I own this? Is this what I truly stand for? If this were someone else, would I be ok with the response? How do you really feel about it and then come from that place?
Asking these questions and becoming a more authentic you will improve your leadership style, your relationships and increase your self worth. It really does feel great after the initial pain of owning up.
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