About self-responsibility at workplace and insanity

Self-responsibility can be defined as the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management. 

Whether in personal life or at the workplace, when something goes wrong or it doesn't go the way we want, most of us try and find excuses or to find the people guilty for the situation. There will always be someone else or a certain context we can blame and if we can’t find anything rational, then we choose to think that we had bad luck. 

This way we move on and doing the same things we did before because we are convinced the problem was somewhere outside of us or out of our control. We hope that the people around us will do things right next time, we wait for a better context or for the good luck to come. Taking the responsibility for our actions and for our lives is not the most comfortable way, but is for sure the way to change those things in our lives that we are not happy with.

The best thing about realizing that we are responsible for what is going on in our lives is that, this implies the fact that have also the power to do something in order to change the things we don’t like. We don’t need to wait for others to do things better or for a turn of good luck. We can do something right away and it’s up to us to decide what or how we will do it.

In the workplace environment, avoiding responsibility can be easily recognized whenever we hear statements like: “We could have finished the project on time if the Accounting would've given us the right calculations” or “The meeting would have been much more successful if we had a better agenda.” Each of these statements exemplifies what it means to place blame on another member of the team, rather than working to solve the problem as a collective unit. Moreover, individuals tend also to place the blame on others for their under-performance. Affirmations like “I could have reached my objectives if I had a better training” or “I could work more effectively if my colleagues would be more organized” are examples of situations where self-responsibility is avoided. This attitude will only create unnecessary animosity among coworkers and managers and will definitely have a negative impact on the performance and motivation of the employees.

If we are honest to ourselves, we will be able to recognize all the situations in which we are shifting the responsibility for our professional mistakes or failures on external factors. This is the first step in taking personal responsibility. 

The next step is to think about what our role in that specific situation was and what we could have done differently or better. Although every one of us has different tasks to accomplish, there is always something everyone can be doing to have a more positive and progressive impact on the workplace as whole. 

The link towards positive change is to take action in order to avoid future failure or mistakes. If we are not sure exactly what would be the most important or the best thing to do, we should at least try to do something different until we will find out what is that thing that brings us where we want.

         

            Acknowledging our part of “guilt” will make us learn and act differently in the future. Otherwise, we will do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. 
This is what Albert Einstein called Insanity. 

Self-presentation in interviews - Practical Tips

Tell us something about yourself. 

This is maybe one of the more underestimated interview parts of all. Everyone thinks it’s such an easy task to talk about ourselves and most candidates don't prepare at all for this. Talking about ourselves it sounds easy because we know very well what we have done and what our responsibilities were. However, in an interview we might discover that things are not so simple. If we don't prepare in advance, we will end up saying things that are not so relevant for the employer, that don't make too much sense or we will talk too much about the less important things.


It happens to me quite often, when I talk to candidates prior to the interviews, to hear "Self presentation, yes...I know what to say...I have been to many interviews before". My question 'Were those interviews successful?' makes them wonder and be quiet for a while.

Having a good self-presentation will help us to draw the attention of the interviewer(s) to the best of our strengths and away from your weaknesses. Ideally we should prepare a tailor -made presentation for each and every interview. If this seems too much, one option would be to write our highlights into bullet points and adapt it to the type of job we are applying for.

Usually approximately 2 minutes should be enough for the self-presentation. Here are the main points that should be included in the speech:

• personal background,
• educational background,
• achievements in our past or current employment;
• one or two examples of projects/responsibilities/achievements relevant for job we are applying
• our future career goals and how the job we are interviewing for would fit into our plans;
• summarization on why we are at the interview (explain how the job and our expertise would contribute both to the company and our career goals in the most satisfying manner).

Self-presentations should be prepared in advanced and before going to the interview we should ask ourselves:
Is the presentation interesting, overall?
Am I able to present the highlights of my achievements and strengths accurately?
Am I matching my skills to the needs of the vacancy the interview is for?
Am I confident when I am speaking?
Is my style of speaking clear and loud enough, fast/slow enough?

After having our presentation ready, it comes one of the essential parts: practice.  We should be careful to maintain a continuous flow, have a confident tone but not being too loud or arrogant and exclude the breaks of ‘aaaaa’/ ‘hmmmmm’ from our speech.  

What also always helps is to be critical to ourselves and after every interview to think about the way we presented ourselves. Recognizing the moments where we could have said things in a better way will help us to improve from one interview to another.

And remember that having many interviews doesn't necessarily mean that we are also good at it.