Quotes about Accountability

Look at the word responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior.

While we do control our choice of action, we cannot control the consequences of our choices.

Look at the word responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

You can pretty well summarize the first three habits with the expression "make and keep a promise." And you can pretty well summarize the next three habits with the expression "involve others in the problem and work out the solution together.

Be Proactive. People are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than

Leadership can eventually become a choice not a position.

If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to.

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Consequences are governed by natural law. They are out in the Circle of Concern. We can decide to step in front of a fast-moving train, but we cannot decide what will happen when the train hits us.

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

On the maturity continuum, dependence is the paradigm of you—you take care of me; you come through for me; you didn't come through; I blame you for the results. Independence is the paradigm of I—I can do it; I am responsible; I am self-reliant; I can choose. Interdependence is the paradigm of we—we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together.

The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness.

Taking initiative means] recognizing our responsibility to make things happen