Strong sense of responsibility: friend or foe? (2024)

Jekaterina Kockina

Too strong sense of responsibility

I remember when I was writing my first CV my career advisor flagged that it was very important to mention your strong sense of responsibility as one of the key selling points. I thought that it was something I definitely had and was keen to demonstrate it to my future employers.

I believe every employer wants to have responsible employees. Companies want their employees to feel ownership of their project and hence – feel strong responsibility for it. This is a good thing, right?

Lately, I have started thinking about a strong sense of responsibility as a barrier to succeed as well as an important stress trigger. I call this phenomenon too strong sense of responsibility.

In general, we are all brought up to be responsible for our studies, work, brothers and sisters, friends, pets, our future and actions. Too strong sense of responsibility could be defined as the willingness (often uncontrollable!) to control outcomes of different situations, especially other people’s actions, thoughts and opinions – those that are out of our control! Undertaking this additional non-necessary responsibility can certainly bring frustration and stress at work and beyond.

Whatever out job is, things can and will get out of control. Moreover, there are situations that are always outside of our control. You can enjoy the responsibility, but you need to know exactly what you are responsible for. For example, in my world of recruitment candidates sometimes quit the process and companies close the positions – such situations are mostly outside of my control.

Also sometimes it could be useful to forget about your responsibilities… To achieve your weekly target, for example, is indeed your responsibility. And not meeting that target one week can be fairly frustrating. However, getting desperate in such situations is dangerous as it only doubles the frustration and distracts you from your next week’s goal.

Solution

In order to find the balance it may be useful to:

ANALISE – sit down and strictly analyse what aspects of your working week you are really responsible for – and then focus on that

START FRESH – If your last week’s results are not as great as you would like them to be – let go and start your next week with a blank page. Be responsible for the actions you can take TODAY, not YESTERDAY!

DON’T BE ALONE – communicate your worries to your managers and colleagues, ask for feedback and knowledge exchange. Create an action plan.

In my experience people with too strong sense of responsibility are also truly hard-working and ambitious. If they find the balance, I believe no goal is too difficult for them to achieve.

Does anybody think that they have too strong sense of responsibility?