The title of this post may perhaps seem more fitting for an article (a fancy word for ramblings from a damaged brain) about the military or government instead of coming from someone in the private sector. I suppose I could try to come up with something from my days in the Air Force Auxiliary or try to sign this post "C/Captain," but that really isn't the point. Authority and responsibility present themselves in all circles of life; not always appropriately or sufficiently, but they are there. The church, the family, in an educational system, the workplace... the list goes on. I am kind of getting to the culmination of my point, so let me start over.
If you know me, you know that at some level, I analyze pretty much everything. Sometimes "over-analyze" would be more appropriate. There are people in this world that I respect and people that I do not respect. Both are earned, one positively and one negatively. (Stay with me, the two thoughts are connected.)
In a certain aspect of one of my jobs, when people ask what my part in it is, I tell them that I have all the responsibility, but none of the authority. It is just an easy way to me to say that I am the go-to guy for it and am heavily involved, hide my frustration, and laugh it off all in the same breath. And it works. So there is someone who hordes authority, but avoids responsibility like the plague.
So here I am stuck in my narrow little box of thinking that if the authority/responsibility relationship is dysfunctional, this is how it presents itself. It is the most common dysfunction, but by no means it is the only one.
Along came a day in recent weeks where I found myself saying, "well, I'm glad he/she is in charge!" No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than I stopped dead in my tracks and in my thought process and realized that I was committing the exact reciprocal offense that I had been begrudging for who knows how long. I was putting a superior on an equal level with myself and then trying to shove responsibility on him/her without also treating him/her with the respect due to someone in authority.
I must have been standing there dead in my tracks for quite a while, because these two realizations came together to form a concept. Authority and responsibility are opposite sides of the same coin. You can commit equal offenses by giving responsibility without an equal measure of authority as you can by taking authority without an equal measure of responsibility. If we give someone the responsibility of accomplishing a task, whatever it is or whatever circle of life it finds itself in, we must also give them equal authority to see it through, even if that means they have authority over us. If we don't give someone the tools to do the job assigned, there is no more fertile ground for frustration. If we take authority over something or someone, we need to assume just as much, if not more responsibility for that something or someone. If we do not, we will be viewed (and deservingly so) as arrogant and incapable.
Respect factors into this equation in multiple ways. Respect is earned by living up to the responsibility of our authority. The lack of respect is earned by failing to do so. Also, if we try to push responsibility on someone without either honoring the authority they already posses or giving them adequate authority, we will lose their respect, if ever we had it.
Going back to my different sides of the same coin analogy: On our coinage in this country, there is a surplus of imagery and symbolism. On one side of each coin is a profile view of a past president that is respected, mostly because they had a solid grasp on the responsibility that accompanied the authority of that office. On the other side of that coin is some kind of image that symbolizes a concept such as freedom or justice. The president on the one side knew that he had been given the authority to carry out his responsibility - to protect the concept on the other side. Next time you reach into your pocket and find some loose change, remind yourself to keep both the authority and responsibility in your life in equal measure.
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