One may be tempted to ask what the fuss about responsibility is and what is there to talk about.
You will be amazed to know that being responsible plays a vital role in one’s life because RESPONSIBILITY helps us to plan, take control/ charge of your duties both at the workplace and even in the family. Do you know that Responsibility is also a virtue? Be that as it may, what is Responsibility all about?
Responsibility as a duty or obligation means being able to satisfactorily perform or complete a task (assigned by someone, or created by one’s own promise or circumstances), that one must fulfil, and which has a consequent penalty for failure.
On the other hand , Responsibility as a virtue denotes an uncommon excellence in the exercise of skills of moral judgement and action particularly, as it helps in the understanding of ones notion of social responsibility thereby making a socially responsible person to appreciate the particular moral problematics of his/ her time and circumstance, and directs his/her actions in order to respond morally to them.
Having defined Responsibility as a duty, obligation and virtue, l will like to split it into two parts. Today we will look at Responsibility as a duty or obligation and the following week, we will conclude by looking at Responsibility as a Virtue.
Let me begin by asking what is so important about being responsible and why is responsibility as an act or obligation important? Remember that one of the definitions given above for responsibility is “being able to complete a task that one promised to do”, so what is means that when you do what you have promised, people will see you as a responsible and reliable person. This will boost a person’s self-esteem and self-worth and of course for an employee you will soon find out that carrying out this given tasks and assignments could ultimately lead to a raise and promotions for you/ team at the workplace and this automatically gives you/ team ownership of a particular job and the sense that you/ team are contributing to the success of the organization.
Looking at the quote in the box above which to me could be likened to a sense of responsibility, apart from you/ team feeling like you are contributing to the success of the organization, one could also say that the sense of responsibility is very important because it gives us a sense of self-happiness, security and danger which are all part of human being’s totality. Believe you me, a strong sense of responsibility affects how one carries out life and how one makes an effort and undertakings to achieve all the desires in life.
Another aspect of the importance of responsibility is taking responsibility for your life by acknowledging that your life is your responsibility. It is always said that no one knows you better than yourself hence no one can live your life for you. You are in charge and no matter how hard you try to blame others for the events of your life, each event is the result of the choices you made and are making.
The beauty in and danger in not taking responsibility is that when people know that you’re responsible for the wrongdoing or poor choice, and rather than take responsibility of your wrong doing you result to blaming others, they will lose all respect for you and if this happens frequently, you’ll never gain the respect of those people and others again.
Besides, as earlier highlighted while defining Responsibility, we said that there are usually consequences when one fails to complete one’s task and so also, there are rewards when one succeeds in keeping to the promise. In the light of this therefore, one may ask why Responsibility is important for success. The answer is not far –fetched because what it does is that it puts one in the focus and gives one the ability to set clear attainable goals and then helps one to manage oneself to the successful completion of these goals. Also, Personal Responsibility helps one to sort out how well they accept responsibility for their own actions–whether they are successful or not.
ln other words, responsibility helps one to achieve his/her goals and objectives in any aspect of one’s life . lt also allows one to create principles and morals that help one to lead one’s life. So as a business owner or manager, you may have multiple responsibilities, including legal ones, such as paying taxes, as well as moral responsibilities which may be individualistic which means that one needs to be accountable for doing what is right. Thus, if one is able to be this responsible then one is sure to be more reliable, to gain other people’s trust and also to gain confidence in one’s self.
So my call today is that we take up the challenge to be more responsible and accountable for every action and inaction that we take in every spheres of our lives no matter the consequences.
In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission performed or neglected in accordance with one’s moral obligations. Deciding what (if anything) counts as “morally obligatory” is a principal concern of ethics.
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