Taking responsibility is not about absorbing fault.
It is about claiming agency.
There is a difference.
Marginalized leaders are often conditioned in two extremes:
Over-responsibility for everything.
Powerlessness in the face of systems.
Neither is leadership.
Responsibility is the line between reaction and authority.
What Responsibility Is Not
It is not self-blame.
It is not carrying other people’s incompetence.
It is not accepting systemic injustice as your personal failure.
It is not martyrdom.
Over-responsibility leads to burnout.
Under-responsibility leads to stagnation.
Leadership requires calibrated ownership.
Liberation: Internal Responsibility
Taking responsibility begins internally.
I am responsible for my responses.
I am responsible for my boundaries.
I am responsible for the standards I tolerate.
I am responsible for interrupting my own survival patterns.
I may not be responsible for the bias in the room.
But I am responsible for how I choose to navigate it.
That is internal authority.
Visibility: External Responsibility
If I want influence, I must own visibility.
I am responsible for naming my impact.
I am responsible for initiating the hard conversation.
I am responsible for positioning my work clearly.
I am responsible for correcting misperceptions when they arise.
Silence is a decision.
Avoidance is a decision.
Leadership requires deliberate action.
Transformation: Systemic Responsibility
Responsibility scales.
If I see a broken norm and say nothing, I reinforce it.
If I hold power and fail to sponsor others, I maintain inequity.
If I benefit from a system and never challenge it, I sustain it.
Taking responsibility at this level means I use my influence intentionally.
Not recklessly.
Not performatively.
Strategically.
The Discipline of Responsibility
Taking responsibility means I stop waiting.
Waiting for permission.
Waiting for validation.
Waiting for the system to correct itself.
It means I assess what is within my control, what is within my influence, and what requires coalition.
Then I act accordingly.
The Bottom Line
Responsibility is not about control.
It is about ownership.
Ownership of my leadership.
Ownership of my choices.
Ownership of my impact.
When I take responsibility, I stop leading from reaction.
I lead from authority.
And authority used with discipline changes systems.
