Theme Insights – Responsibility

Here’s the description of the Responsibility Theme from the Gallup Business Journal:

“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.”

One of the key challenges for people with high Responsibility is the ability to say “No” to tasks and responsibilities.  Taking on responsibility an delivering on their word would energise them, but taking on an excess of responsibilities would bring them down a dangerous spiral.

By taking on too much responsibilities, they would be unable to to deliver on all the tasks they had taken on to the degree of fulfilling their promise.  This would make them feel bad, and they may try to do everything they can to deliver, to the detriment of other important things in their lives.

I had a leader who had high responsibility who told me, “Alex, you know that I will try to take on and do everything myself as far as possible.  And when I ask you to do something, it means I really need help, and I need you to just do it.”  That’s a sign of overuse of the Responsibility Theme that led to overload. 

If you have high Responsibility, it might be useful for you to review all the things you are responsible for, prioritise and examine if you are able to deliver on all that you had committed yourself to.  And it may be good to get yourself released from some of these commitments (it won’t be easy for someone with high Responsibility to do, but ironically, that’s the responsible thing to do!), and also to check on your existing commitments before volunteering or taking on more.  Sometimes, one needs to learn how to say “no”. 


By Alex Wong

Alex is a Strengths Enthusiast who is both a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, and a Certified Strategic Strengths Coach. His passion is in helping people grow into the best versions of themselves by appreciating and growing their innate talents. In his spare time, Alex is a hobbyist magician and a volunteer at his church Sunday school. Top 5 StrengthsFinder 2.0 Themes: Empathy, Individualisation, Developer, Strategic, Learner

4 comments

  1. There is something to be said for an extension of this theme to the communities one calls home. As someone that has a pretty high Responsibility, there is something to be said for the eagle eye perspective that I can have in team situations so that things don’t fall in the cracks. This can be quite useful and powerful in some cases, as long as I’m not stretched too much. At the same time, another component here is to recognize the need for one to have input in the overall plans in order to take ownership and run something well versus just “doing one’s duty” that is acceptable but not exceptional. At times this can be a rather interesting theme though there is something to be said for how one combines this theme with others as Achievers with Responsibility may be quite different than say Activators with Responsibility to consider.

    1. Thank you JB! I love how you always bring more depth into the themes. Do you mind sharing what the rest of your dominant theme are here so that everyone else reading can also understand the strengths lens which you are wearing. 🙂

      The need “to have input in the overall plans in order to take ownership” is a beautiful insight! I’m reminded that getting someone to contribute increases ownership and hence responsibility as well.

      I’m curious about the following:
      What contributes to the eagle eye perspective that you have other than the responsibility theme? And how does the responsibility theme help you achieve this eagle eye perspective?

      What do you see Responsibility looks like when combined with (a) Achiever, and (b) Activator?

  2. This is me. Spot on. I like the advice that getting out of some of your commitments is actually the responsible thing to do. That’s truth!

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