When Responsibility Becomes Assumed Instead of Practiced

It is widely believed that responsibility has to be followed by action in order to be truly proven. However, in today's world, this principle is becoming a bigger issue day by day. As most people present themselves as something they are not, responsible workers, parents, friends, etc., without any specific act. On the other hand, in organizations and communities, underestimating your title or role has become equally common.

How responsibility shifts from action to assumption

How did it all happen? It doesn't matter if we are looking into business and organization rules or relationships, it all begins the same.

Firstly, the boundaries are set, and responsibilities are fairly shared. There is always someone responsible for guiding others and in charge of supervising things going their way.

What then tends to happen is that you start overlooking things, certain details, and you assume the main task is covered. That same pattern can be observed in other aspects of your lives (e.g., relationships), where you basically expect someone to know what you need or how you feel or what you’re thinking. All that, even though all these things change over time.

Gradually, repetition replaces awareness.

People’s minds wander during almost 50% of waking hours. Task performance significantly declines when attention drifts. – Harvard University

Attention span declines, and little details you’ve once carefully checked become automatic activities. So you’re not really checking anymore. If someone were to ask you, “Did you check this?”, you’d know that you’ve done it, but you wouldn’t remember you ACTUALLY doing it, as if you were on autopilot. Basically, what happens is you consequently stop paying attention to what's happening around you.

And if you were on ‘autopilot’, did you really pay attention? That is the question you should be asking yourself. And, as you can surely imagine, this could easily cause issues.

Why shared responsibility often means no responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility reduces intervention/oversight in group settings, this is especially noticeable when roles are loosely defined. – U.S. Department of Justice

After the mentioned shift has happened, it's no longer clear who should take responsibility.

What was initially fairly shared has fallen apart, and all that exists just in theory. In reality, there is no one to supervise or respond to others' needs at this point, or to direct in the right way.

This rarely comes from one single decision. Usually, the main culprit here is patterns.

The comfort of familiarity

An environment without any change will naturally pull people into their comfort zone. Familiarity becomes an obstacle instead of being a supportive companion in life. 

Getting used to the same activities and receiving the same amount of attention will most certainly reduce your desire to show up and do better.

(False) sense of control

People often get a false sense of security, which they draw from policies/structures that provide them with a sense of control. But it’s all an illusion. That’s because there are rules, sure, but that doesn’t guarantee oversight.

Responsibility here is assigned through titles/discussions without any consistent follow-through. So what ends up happening is that, from the worker’s standpoint, rules begin to be perceived more like enforcement than something that’s meant to give control and security. And when there’s enforcement, there’s also resistance.

And the titles? They slowly begin to replace real accountability. But, in everyday life, regulations are more than needed, as much as the people who implement them.

Why people hesitate to step in

How many times have you said things like 'that's not onto me' or 'what if I'm wrong', that was fear talking. Fear of social consequences and uncertainty are the primary reasons why people fail to intervene when they recognize/notice a problem exists. – National Library of Medicine (NIH)

Overwhelming intrusive thoughts convince us that stepping in is socially risky, due to potential disagreement. Unfortunately, not only does that affect our emotional system, but it also leads to loss of responsibility.

What gets lost when responsibility isn't actively practiced

When responsibility is assumed, many things are bound to have a downfall. And all the early signs (e.g., skipped steps, checklists left unchecked, overlooked details, reassigned/delegated tasks, delayed responses, no follow-through, ‘someone else will handle it’-type of thinking, etc.) are super easy to miss.

And then, as more and more time passes, they start piling up into something bigger. Naturally, this will affect your work, your relationships, your mental health, and that isn’t good.

Patterns mentioned earlier perfectly describe an unaware society. Checklists that are never actually checked, despite being equally important for further management. Authority may be present, but through their actions, they seem careless, which really looks like society is living in an illusion of safety.

Checklist-based protocols greatly reduce errors. Breakdowns typically occur because of assumed task completion (not lack of rules). – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

This is how systems begin to progressively fail. Health care systems or concerns raised about safety at youth organizations could be easily overlooked as nothing serious at the beginning. In these types (high-trust + high-responsibility, shared-oversight, duty-of-care, authority-by-role, etc.) of environments, early warning signs are much easier to dismiss when responsibility is assumed rather than actively practiced.

While consequences are most noticeable in big organizations, the same ones appear in people's everyday lives.

Conclusion

As people tend to overlook and get distracted, things might slip right out of our hands. The good news is you shouldn't be scared of that as long as you keep track of your duties over time.

Not waiting for others to fix things up becomes crucial as you learn to master your roles and responsibilities.