What responsibility reveals about us

Responsibility is one way young people begin to discover what leadership asks of them.

We tend to think of responsibility as something we give to people when we believe they are ready for it. We trust someone with a project, a team, a decision or an outcome. With young people, it may be the captaincy of a sports team, responsibility for a group project or a formal leadership position at school.

But being trusted with responsibility does something else too. It creates situations in which young people begin to discover how they respond when others rely on them, when a decision is theirs to make or when something doesn't go according to plan.

That is a significant part of preparing future leaders: not simply learning how to carry out a responsibility but beginning to understand yourself while you carry it.

I see this play out repeatedly in my work with young people. Two young people can be given exactly the same responsibility and experience it very differently. One may become more thoughtful because other people are relying on them. Another may become so concerned about getting things wrong that making any decision becomes difficult. Someone else may enjoy being responsible but find it surprisingly hard to step back and let others contribute.

I suspect most adults would recognise something of themselves in at least one of those responses.

When things don't go as planned

It is relatively easy to feel capable when everything is working. The more revealing moments often come when it isn't.

A learner organises an event, and something goes wrong. A team doesn't respond in the way its captain expected. A group project becomes difficult because people cannot agree. Suddenly, the responsibility is no longer simply about completing what was expected.

How the young person responds begins to tell them something about themselves. They may discover that they become controlling under pressure or retreat from disagreement. They may assume that being responsible means having all the answers. When something goes wrong, their first instinct may be to understand what happened or to work out whose fault it was.

I have seen young people carry significant responsibility extremely well and still struggle with some of these things. I have also seen someone who seems hesitant at first discover capabilities they didn't know they had.

This is why I don't see responsibility as something we give young people only once their development has happened. The responsibility itself can become part of that development.

The things we become good at

Human beings become practised at the behaviours we repeat, including the ones that don't necessarily serve us well.

A young person can become very good at avoiding difficult conversations. Someone who likes control can learn that taking over gets the job done quickly. The exceptionally dependable learner may become so good at meeting expectations that very few people notice how uncomfortable they are doing anything where they might fail.

Adults do this too. We can become highly competent at behaviours that have helped us succeed while remaining largely unaware of what those behaviours cost us, or the people around us.

This is where experience becomes particularly valuable when we are prepared to examine it. Not because every experience needs to become a lesson, but because responsibility gives us a very real context in which to notice ourselves.

Learning to see our own part

Reflection is a word that can easily become more complicated than it needs to be. I don't mean completing an exercise about what went well and what could have gone better. I mean looking back at something that happened and being willing to consider our own part in it.

Perhaps I stopped listening when I became frustrated. Perhaps I dismissed an idea too quickly. Perhaps I was so intent on making sure everything went well that I left no room for anyone else to take ownership. Those realisations can be uncomfortable, but they give us somewhere to go next.

Self-awareness is often discussed as though it is something we either possess or don't. I see it as something that continues to develop as experience gives us new information about ourselves.

Responsibility gives us plenty of that information.

The preparation happens here too

My doctoral research examined the preparation of future leaders and leadership self-identity formation in a different context from my work with young people. What connects the two for me is the importance of what happens before someone is expected to lead.

Young people are already forming ideas about themselves in relation to others. They are discovering how they respond to disagreement, what happens when they have influence and how they behave when an outcome rests partly in their hands.

Giving them genuine responsibility makes some of that visible. It also gives them the chance to try again.

Someone who recognises that they took over can make room for another person next time. Someone who avoided a difficult conversation can decide to have it. Someone who believed they needed all the answers can discover that asking for help does not make them less capable.

That is development happening in real situations rather than in theory. What responsibility continues to teach us One thing I value about working with young people is how often it brings me back to questions that remain relevant long after adolescence. A bigger title does not automatically make us better listeners. Managing more people does not necessarily make us more aware of our effect on them. Experience can deepen our judgement, but it can also make familiar ways of behaving feel unquestionably right.

That is what makes responsibility interesting to me at any age. It doesn't only test what we can do. At times, it exposes the habits, assumptions and responses we might otherwise have had no reason to question.

For a young person, having the opportunity to discover those things early matters. They are already learning what happens when other people rely on them, when their decisions affect someone else and when they have to decide what to do after getting something wrong.

And perhaps that doesn't change as much as we imagine when we become adults. The responsibilities may change, and the consequences may grow, but they still reveal things about us. The question is whether we are still paying attention.