Responsibility
Be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
Response-ability: The ability to answer for one’s conduct and obligations. To be accountable, to be trustworthy. A moral obligation to do one’s duty.
Trustworthiness is established with internal and external customers by the level of responsibility shown to your job. If you say you are going to do something, you will be measured by your word and your responsiveness to execute precisely what you said you will do.
Trust compounds and grows every time you demonstrate your responsibility. Trust diminishes rapidly with unreliability. People unwittingly test one another on the principles and the values that sustain an ethical and moral society. Even dishonest people use these principles as measures of trust.
Teams must be responsible, reliable, and held accountable for their performance. Teams are not designed to be a forum for justification and excuses. If a goal has not been achieved, the first step is measurement and analysis to determine margins of error. Then the team can problem-solve to find solutions to reduce the margins of error and move forward with a re-implementation plan of the best alternatives.
Two Brothers and the Geese
Two sons work for their father on the family’s farm. The younger brother had been given more responsibility and reward, and one day the older brother asked his father to explain why.
The father said, “First, go to the Kelly farm and see if they have any geese for sale–we need to add to our stock.” The brother soon returned with an answer. “Yes, they have five geese to sell to us.”
“Good,” replied the father, “ask them the price.” The son returned with the answer. “They are ten dollars each.”
“Now ask if they can deliver tomorrow.” On his return he answered, “Yes, they can.”
The father asks the older brother to wait and listen, and then calls to the younger brother in a nearby field. “Go to the Davidson farm and see if they have any geese for sale–we need to add to our stock.”
The younger brother soon returns with the answer. “Yes, they have five geese for ten dollars each, or ten geese for eight dollars each; and they can deliver them tomorrow. I asked them to deliver the five unless they heard otherwise from us in the next hour. And I agreed that if we want the extra five geese we could buy them at six dollars each.”
The father turned to the older son, who nodded his head in appreciation. He now realized why his brother was given more responsibility and reward.
-Author Unknown
Understanding
When we focus on the strengths of others, we build trust and respect!
Everyone is an individual. In the workplace today, you will find people from different cultures, who think differently, have different values and rituals. In the United States, as with many countries around the world, an array of languages are spoken.
People from all over the world move to other countries to better their lives; therefore, culture shock is not uncommon. Many new immigrants find it difficult to adjust and connect with the new ways and let go of the old. People who are raised in different cultures are proud of their national heritage and go to great lengths to protect who they are, and that’s a good thing. They draw a sense of emotional security from their frames of reference–how they were raised.
Fostering the Value of Understanding
It is tolerance and understanding of differences that allow different cultures, religions, genders, and opinions to work together in harmony. By choosing to foster tolerance and understanding, you multiply the potential to find different and new solutions to everyday problems. Fostering tolerance and understanding leads to focusing on the strengths of one another, which in turn builds trust and respect–the basis of all good relationships. For all nationalities, a good attitude is more acceptable because it can contribute to faster assimilation, connection, and personal security.
Fostering understanding will also open the door to similarities. People are people, and good interpersonal communication is appreciated around the world. We are similar in many ways–we all want to be respected, we all want to maintain our dignity, we all prefer positive communication. Observing different cultural rituals and demonstrating the willingness to build a bridge of communication, cooperation, and collaboration will, without a doubt, create reciprocal behavior.
10 Tips for Fostering Understanding
1 Look for ways to connect and Synergize. “It’s you and me against the problem, not you and me against each other.”
2 Be aware: Observe different cultures and foster understanding by sharing your differences and similarities.
3 Be careful not to overpower people by intimidating them with size, voice, and personal space.
4 Slow down, talk less, and listen actively.
5 Be sensitive to gender differences.
6 Criticize actions–not people, genders, or cultures.
7 Avoid power plays, stereotyping, sexual comments, and personal innuendoes and jokes.
8 Be polite, courteous, and respectful.
9 Smile and relax while communicating.
10 Be inclusive, ask questions, and invite opinions.
A person who doesn’t stand for something will fall for anything.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
The First approach’d the Elephant,
And happening to fall
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, - “Ho! what have we here
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening the trunk to take
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And