My friend and agile coaching colleague Yves Hanoulle emailed today asking a question about how to best translate The Responsibility Process™.

This supports our ongoing initiative to translate The Responsibility Process into all languages and make the free PDF poster download widely available.

His question is important so I’m posting the short Q&A here.

Yves was instrumental in early translations of the poster into French and Dutch. His Dutch translation is undergoing a collaborative review and challenge from some Belgian and Dutch ladies with excellent language skills (including agile change agent Mary Beijleveld) at SVB in Amsterdam where I recently presented a private session of The Leadership Gift workshop.

Yves asks:

The red words on the poster (Justify, Lay blame) are verbs while the green ones (Shame, Obligation) are not. Is this on purpose?

Yes, it is on purpose, and it is not specific to the grammatical usage of the words.

The red words represent mental states that most of us have been told by well-intended parents and teachers we should avoid since the associated actions are not attractive, useful, or resourceful.

The green words represent mental states that society generally approves as a way of taking responsibility. I disagree and now think of Shame and Obligation as false responsibility since these mental states represent limiting beliefs of lack (for Shame) and no choice (for Obligation).

Regarding your observation that some words — or phrases in the case of Lay Blame — are verbs and some are not, it was never a priority to the research team to have the positions match that way but rather to best communicate each mental position.

The words and phrases each describe a feeling state, which could also be called a position of mind or a mindset.

Share your thoughts with a comment below.

So much for the technical talk

Download the poster in English. Check our translations.