Here is the full transcript of Renee St Jacques’ talk titled “3 Steps to Heal Your Relationships And Take Accountability” at TEDxFiesole conference.
In this TEDx talk, psychologist and executive coach Renee St Jacques explores the idea of “radical ownership,” a concept she developed to address the world’s challenges like division, racism, and climate collapse. She argues that the root of many problems lies in a failure to fully acknowledge and take responsibility for our actions, highlighting three crucial elements: awareness, acknowledgment, and action.
Through personal anecdotes, including family experiences and professional insights, she illustrates how avoiding accountability leads to negative impacts. The talk emphasizes the transformative power of radical ownership in both personal and global contexts, urging listeners to embrace accountability for a more harmonious and equitable future.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
You know how people say that psychologists go into psychology to deal with their own issues? Well, I’m one of those. Just as psychology gave me clarity and a path towards healing, I believe psychology can give us insights to help us heal our world today. I think I have a pretty unique vantage point because for a living, I listen to people’s problems and I listen to their pain.
Oftentimes, their pain is caused by other people excusing their actions even when it hurts. I’ve experienced it too. But beneath pain is always unmet need. And when I look at the world around us, brimming with horrible division, climate collapse, racism, inequity, and trauma, there seems to be something fundamentally missing.
The Need for Radical Ownership
I believe it’s ownership. Actually, I think the world needs radical ownership. A term I’ve come up with to capture my theory of our need to be accountable for our actions. Why do we need radical ownership?
I think the world is missing radical ownership in three ways or three A’s: Awareness, acknowledgement, and action. First awareness. Too often as humans, we are unaware of the ways that our choices can cause a negative impact despite our benign intentions.
Take little Min and Johnny. Min cries, “Mommy, mommy, Johnny hit me.” And Johnny says, “Well, that was an accident. I didn’t mean to hit you.” Sound familiar, parents? Well, Johnny thinks that because his intentions are good, he didn’t want to hurt Min, then his impact doesn’t matter. We’ve all experienced and done this.
Acknowledgement and Action
Second, acknowledgement. Instead of validating our impact, we defend our intentions instead, which of course makes the whole thing worse. And lastly, action. This all leads to greater negative impact because we aren’t willing to be accountable and take action to repair things. It is radical to go against our natural inclinations of defensiveness, avoidance, and inaction. But I truly believe that we cannot look forward to build a more sustainable, equitable, and harmonious future if we’re not willing to look inward.
My passion for this topic started at an early age when I, in a way, became a student of human behavior, observing hurtful patterns at play within my family. I remember it so vividly. My younger brother, sister, and I were out on our bikes in front of our home at the end of our street. As every car came past us, we would wave our arms frantically, desperately hopeful that one of them would be our dad.
But as every car passed us to their families, we stood there speechless. Dad wasn’t coming home early for dinner. Not yesterday and not today. Perhaps my dad had the good intentions of working late to provide, but to this day, I doubt he had the first A of radical ownership, the awareness to know that we were waiting, let alone how sad we felt. Harm is still there whether we want to see it or not. Intentions don’t negate impact.
The Power of Acknowledgement
But here’s what could have happened instead. Imagine for a moment the person who hurt you the most looking you in the eye and saying, “Despite my intentions, I really hurt you and that’s on me.” That would have been a game changer. We need radical ownership because we first need awareness and second, let me illustrate how we need acknowledgment of that impact without defensiveness.
After years of not coming home for dinner, my dad stopped coming home at all and eventually filed for divorce. I saw my mom struggle to come up with the money for our basic needs, often paying for things in coins. But my mom refused child support because she didn’t want us kids watching mom and dad fight over money. To make matters worse, my mom was out of work.
We had to survive somehow. And I remember at 13 years old, I was the one that I had to pick up the phone and through tears beg my dad for the money. But years later, when I tried to talk to my mom about those times, she said, “But I have to sacrifice so much.” Ouch. Too often as humans, me included, when we are confronted by the ways that we cause harm, we either avoid or we defend.
We don’t want to hear and see others. We want to be heard and seen first. We value right versus wrong arguments instead of setting those aside and saying, “Tell me more. I want to understand.” But I believe there is a better way. This could be a two-way street where I validate the good intentions of my mother and she acknowledges without defensiveness, the second A of radical ownership, what that was like for me.
When someone comes to us and says they were affected by our actions, we don’t have to agree, but we must acknowledge. We need radical ownership because we first need awareness, second, acknowledgment without defensiveness, and lastly, that brings me to the final A, action.
When I walked down the aisle on my wedding day, I walked alone. Despite a lifetime of his absence, I dreamt of the day that my dad would be there for me just this once. Shortly before the wedding, I received an email, “Renee, I won’t be able to make it. Proceed without me.” That was crushing, but I could finally see clearly.
I realized that my dad had never taken the action to repair the path, so there was never any healing, never any change. But this is one of the most powerful things about radical ownership, is that when we do take accountability and action, we break cycles of hurt and we forge new patterns of healing and change. So while the hurt still remained, I was determined not to repeat my father’s patterns in my own family.
Facing Personal Challenges
But despite all my preparation as a psychologist, the truth is, I was scared to become a mom. I knew that just like my mom and dad, I too would be imperfect. I too would deeply love my kids and unintentionally hurt them. I remember telling my kids at a young age, “If I ever hurt you, please tell mommy. That hurt matters and I want to take ownership.”
I remember my then five-year-old daughter coming to me and saying, “Mommy, you really hurt me and I felt really sad today,” referring to earlier when I had lost my patience with her. I was stunned. She was inviting me to take ownership. And I remember her then kissing me on the forehead and saying, “Mommy, I forgive you.” And tears of gratitude streaming down my face. When we take accountability and action, we are empowered as imperfect human beings to leave legacies of healing and change instead of unintentional harm.
Professional Insights and Conclusion
I care about healing and change so much, I made the decade-long career transition to become a psychologist. And now I leverage these learnings and my work building healthy teams and organizations. One of the highlights of my career so far was the transformation I saw in one CEO. When I first met her, her team was a mess. Trust decreased while gossip increased. At first, I saw her make a lot of excuses. Well, that isn’t true because when leaders do this, the consequences can be devastating. It can leave teams feeling so disillusioned, employees
leave the organization. But leadership requires ownership. This leader knew that she had to look in the mirror and see what she didn’t want to see.
She then issued a note to her team, “I can admit, I have not been doing the best job in cultivating a culture of trust here.” Then she started asking for feedback and making changes. The result was that trust improved and individuals started to feel psychologically safe. This kind of ownership is critical to building more impactful organizations where everyone feels they belong.
When we take a moment to zoom out, these concepts don’t just apply to relational dynamics, but I see unlimited ways that this applies in a world desperate for radical ownership. Indeed, behind every global problem is a question of accountability. With racial justice, who will take the first step in making reparations to move forward in healing? Or climate change, what level of ownership is required of each of us for our ecosystem to be restored?
Awareness, acknowledgement, and action. Today is an invitation to imagine a world where we are cycle breakers, breaking cycles of defensiveness, avoidance, and inaction, and unintentional harm. Building a more sustainable, equitable, harmonious future, healing where we’ve hurt. Because we make accountability for the well-being and prosperity of everyone a singular, unifying priority.
And it all starts with asking ourselves the question, “What would it look like for me to take radical ownership over my impact?” Thank you.