"Relational Responsibility:" Understanding Your Obligation to Help Others Help You
Personal Responsibility is More Than Just Your Obligation to Consider What You Should Control—it’s Also an Obligation to Consider What You Should Communicate
Personal responsibility is about feeling accountable for one’s actions, decisions, and their consequences, and it involves taking ownership of how you manage your behavior and choices, including striving to meet commitments, and admitting your mistakes.
Personal responsibility is important—but it’s not enough. We also need “relational responsibility,” which is the (sometimes terrifying) obligation to share what’s on our mind. More specifically, it’s an intrinsic obligation to help those who are helping you.
Imagine, for example, you’re in an Uber on your way to the airport and you happen to remember that the normal route is closed today. Do you tell the driver so they can go a different way? I would hope so.
Or, what if you were trying to leave a store and two people were blocking the exit just having a casual conversation. Would you speak up, or somehow make sure they knew you were waiting on them to move? If I was one of those people, I would sure hope so.
Now, normally, when we think of personal responsibility, we think of the things I can do—the things directly under my control. “Surely,” we believe, “the boundary of my responsibility, i.e. what I can and cannot control, must end with myself.” That’s true.
But personal responsibility is more than an obligation to consider what you should control—it’s also an obligation to consider what you should communicate.
Said another way: we should take more than personal responsibility—we should also take some responsibility for providing feedback to the processes, systems, or environments that affect us. Our responsibility must be more than just personal (to ourselves)—it must also be relational (to others who are helping us).
The Trap of Personal Responsibility
When someone professes “personal responsibility” as a guiding principle, sometimes there’s an odd tendency for that person, when they get involved in a conflict, to blame and shame others for, “not taking enough personal responsibility for themselves.” It’s classic projection and here are some examples…
You hire someone to paint your house, but they didn’t ask you enough questions about when it needed to be completed, and now the project is taking longer than you thought. This kind of delay is exactly what you were afraid of and now you’re unhappy and you want them to take “responsibility” for failing to meet your expectations.
Or, you were on the phone with a friend and told them you only had a few minutes to chat before you had to jump into an important meeting. 10 mins have passed and they are still talking. Now, they’ve made you late for your meeting. You gave your friend a warning, and you just wish they’d take some “responsibility” for respecting your previous commitment.
In these examples, you feel like the other party failed to act responsibly (or satisfy your needs), even though you didn’t advocate for your needs when it could have changed things.
Afraid the painting might take too long? Well, did you mention that?
Concerned about missing meeting? What…were you physically unable to hang up the phone?
This denial of one’s own responsibility, on the basis that it happened to involve someone else, isn’t championing personal responsibility—it’s denying it. Whose house is it? Whose meeting was it? These are things you care about, which means you bear the burden of that care. You can’t escape it (though it’s understandable that we would all like to).
Now, if you did everything you could, and you advocated for yourself and stayed involved, then sure blame the other person. Obviously, other people can let you down. They can make agreements and fail to stick to them. Or you can continually and persistently advocate for yourself, only to have them ignore you. That’s on them.
But if you see someone about to drive off a cliff…and you’re in the back seat…and you don’t give them a heads-up…that’s on you.
Citizenship, Not Just Ownership
Rather than contrasting duties to others against our responsibility to ourselves as a zero-sum game (i.e. as if I could only either help myself or help others), instead it’s more accurate to think of relational responsibility as existing within personal responsibility. Or, as an extension of it.
Imagine you’re stuck in a meeting and the facilitator isn’t using the time well. What do you do? Well, you can sit there and suffer, or you can take some responsibility for your predicament. You can speak up and say something like, “We only have 10 mins left for this meeting, I think it would be wise if we left some time for the last agenda item…”
Sure, it’s the facilitator’s job to facilitate that system (i.e. the meeting), but you’re not just a customer of the system—you’re an integral part of that system too. You are sensing things that others likely are not, which means your needs matter, not just to you, but also to others, and the system itself.
Personal responsibility means more than feeling accountable for one’s individual actions, it also means feeling accountable for providing feedback or supporting those people or systems on which one relies.
Personal responsibility is more than just ownership, it’s also citizenship.
Trauma and The Fear of Confrontation
Of course, we don’t want to seem confrontational or rude. And for anyone who struggles with self-advocacy, your fear is perfectly understandable since people don’t always react positively to you getting involved in what they consider to be their business.
For most of us, speaking up about our own needs has only made things worse. Not all of the time, but in enough significant moments that the pain gets into our bones. As a result, we learn to be silent when we need to speak up.
And this whole thing becomes a cycle in which people aren’t expected to speak up, and if they do, it’s viewed as some sort of failure on the part of the other party.
Example 1
They may interpret it as you challenging their competence. A few years ago I had a tech issue that I was trying to understand, and the customer service over the phone person kept trying to assure me that they were sending me a new part and the part would fix my problem. I was actually curious how it would work, but the rep just kept saying, “Don’t worry, Sir. This will fix it.”
“Great…” I said. “But I’m just curious why this failing part in particular would cause the issue I’m having…and if you don’t know, that’s fine…I’ve just spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and would love to know…do you have any insight into that?”
Each time I asked, he provided no answer and kept repeating, “Sir…sir…this will fix it…you don’t have to worry at all.” Eventually, I gave up. No matter what I actually said, even though I was just asking for information, all he seemed to hear was, “I don’t trust you.”
Example 2
Or, maybe they feel like you’re overstepping your role. They said they were going to bring the beverages to the party if you brought the food, but when you realized you never told them about a specific kind of beer some people had requested, you just went ahead and made a stop on the way there and brought it yourself. Even though you were just taking care of your own needs, and were doing the exact opposite of blaming them, the “beverage person” nonetheless feels like you declared war on their integrity. The fact that you brought drinks too signifies (to them) your lack of trust.
Example 3
Or, and this literally just happened to me the other day, I was waiting to turn left and I had to wait for the car in front of me to turn left first. I had to wait for them to find a gap in the cross traffic, and I waited and waited. Gaps came and went. Then, as the next gap approached, I beeped my horn. Maybe they didn’t realize that they could turn or weren’t really paying enough attention.
And how did they respond to this polite nudge? The driver glared at me in their side mirror, said some angry words, and then intentionally didn’t move. “I’ll get him,” I imagine they thought. “Now, we’ll BOTH have to wait.”
Experiences like this make it understandable why we might avoid feeling the relational responsibility to provide feedback or call attention to something the other person is doing. It’s understandable, sure, but ultimately not justifiable.
Asking a question, bringing some beer, or beeping your horn are all reasonable actions. The person who freaks because someone is advocating for their needs, taking care of themselves, or reminding them to pay attention, is the one in the wrong.
I’ll take some blame if I was provoking or antagonizing someone, however, if I’m speaking cleanly, but the person listening has dirty ears (i.e. projecting their own shit onto me), that’s on them.
Then Feedback Loops Get Replaced By Unhealthy Cycles
And when we play these kind of games with each other, it tends to become a self-perpetuating and unhealthy cycle.
First, it starts when we just throw all of the responsibility for taking care of our own needs to the other person (a service provider, boss, expert, etc.). Sure, they are expected to do certain things, but you’ll need to pay attention too. Your own need, meaning the simple fact that you have one, automatically requires your stewardship.
It’s really great when you don’t have to pay much attention, and you can really trust things get done, but if it’s important to you, it’s a new relationship, or the situation is complex enough, then you have to mind your business even when someone else is doing it.
But then, the second thing happens. Since the interactions are often lacking the necessary feedback, your expectations aren’t being met. You notice this, or suspect it, but your don’t speak up. And you don’t say anything because you’re afraid to. And rather than speak up, you tell yourself a story about how, “it’s not that big of a deal,” or, “I’m probably over-thinking this…” Or, you tell yourself a story like, “I’m sure they’re already thinking about this…” or, “I don’t want to bother them…” Either way, the feedback is not really happening.
Finally, either you finally get fed up bottling up your concerns, or the project ends with your dissatisfaction, and then you just let loose on them. You tell them all the things they did wrong and how they need to take some responsibility.
Understandably, this is like giving someone a basket of spoiled fruit, and they’re not likely to be very receptive.
The information would have been nice earlier, or at any previous time, but sure, now that it’s all over, or now that you’re so annoyed or triggered that you can’t speak about it dispassionately. They are defensive and confused. The interaction doesn’t go well.
And…here’s the kicker…what’s the lesson you learn from all of this? Exactly the wrong one. Rather than seeing how your fear or discomfort and your lack of relational responsibility contributed to the problem, instead, you think to yourself something like, “See…this is exactly why I shouldn’t bring up stuff like this. It just creates problems.” And the cycle continues.
Conclusion
The point of all of this is we need to take responsibility for more than just our individual actions. Personal responsibility is the foundation, but when fully realized, that responsibility doesn’t end at the edge of our individual actions.
We also need to take responsibility for providing feedback and opinions and advocating for our own needs, to those people, systems, and environments on which we rely.
We are responsible for helping others help us, because they can’t do it alone. Only we know what we think and feel. And only we can tell them.
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But Don’t Take My Word For It
I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter I do not preserve myself.
-Jose Ortega Gasset
Responsibility is a heavy responsibility, man. - Cheech Marin
The Relational Golden Rule: What do you need from me to help you come through for me? -Terry Real
Every man is not only responsible for what he does, but for what everyone else does. - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Help me, help you… -Jerry Maguire
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. -Edmund Burke
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. -Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Do not set yourself on fire in order to keep others warm. -Anonymous