Executive Podcast #233: Can Leaders Teach Accountability?

I think we would all agree we want everyone on our team to be personally accountable to the team, the organization, and to themselves.

Teaching accountability is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader.

When we say “Accountability” we mean the willingness of the people you lead to accept responsibility for their actions and decisions and to be responsible for the results.

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results.

Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for joining. As we get started, I would love for you to share this episode, this content with your team, with your leader, with those that you serve with, and then have them listen to it and maybe come back together and have a conversation. Use it as a learning tool, but we’d love for you to share these podcasts. That’s what we do it for. It’s a value add, and we would love for you to do that.

If you want to download the Learner Guide to kind of facilitate those conversations, please go to maxwell leadership.com/podcast and you can download that there. Perry creates, along with the content, he creates that learner guide for you to be able to use.

Excited about today’s topic because this is something that we hear a lot from corporate America and the leaders and the teams that we work with. We begin through a discovery process as we coach and consult with different organizations, and without a shadow of a doubt besides the word communication and culture, we hear them say, “We need our team to be a little more accountable.” And so today’s topic is can leaders teach accountability? And this is something that I know you mentioned came straight out of a coaching call that you’re dealing with. And so if you’ll go ahead and name that individual and the organization and then talk a little bit about what drove this, that would be great.

Perry Holley:

Go way up.

Chris Goede:

That’s right. They’re like, “Was that you? Is that you?”

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

So hold them accountable to it, Perry. Tell them.

Perry Holley:

We got to introduce some shaming on our podcast.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Perry Holley:

No, this was actually a story was that the general manager on the call and said that they had come in to work, as she often does every morning, and that the front door was, half of it was locked, but the other half wasn’t locked. She was astonished. But this was not the first time this had happened. And she was certain that the processes, the procedures are there. Why is this not being followed? And so she quickly realized it. Instead of teaching the processes, she should have been teaching accountability to the individuals there. That got us is talking about, can you teach or coach accountability in people, or is it just something people have natural? I’m naturally accountable, I think. No, I think we are actually naturally not accountable. We don’t hold ourselves to a high standard sometimes, but can we help each other? Can we help the team to do that? So that’s where I was.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I like where we’re going. I think coaching or teaching accountability with yourself first, which we’ll talk a little bit about that, but then also your team is an extremely important responsibility as a leader. As we begin to talk about this topic, let’s talk about what we mean around accountability. And so when we do that, it’s the willingness of the people you lead to accept responsibility for their actions and decisions, and then to be responsible for the results, which I can’t wait until we talk a little bit about that. So let’s dive in.

Perry Holley:

Oh, that’s one of my favorite. So I came up, maybe many of us did, you’re like me, where we came up that accountability was who to blame when something… Who’s accountable for this? Who’s to blame when something didn’t go as planned? And like this general manager, she could’ve said, “Who’s the blame for this door not being locked appropriately?” And I find that to be negative and really ineffective.

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Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

I don’t know. And the teaching, I got years and years ago from the teaching of, called The Oz Principles, a book you can find, and Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Craig Hickman, the authors there, they had a terrific view. And the definition you read a minute ago was indicative of that. But it said that they looked at accountability as not something you blame someone, but they looked at it as is ownership. And so I teach this a lot when I’m talking to people on a coaching call.

First of all, I recommend the book. But the idea that, and the authors said four things. I take it to be four things. It’s a little statement, but I always remember it as four things. A personal choice to rise above the circumstances. And by the way, there are always circumstances. We called them excuses, but that they could have said on the door not being locked. I said, “Why was the door not locked? Well, it was late. They were running behind schedule. It was cold, it was rainy, they forgot, blah, blah, blah.” Circumstance, circumstance, circumstance, circumstance.

 So a personal choice, rise above the circumstances to demonstrate ownership. I love that. And I just ask my leaders, “What demonstrates ownership on your team when on a certain task? What demonstrates ownership?” So a personal choice, to rise above the circumstances, to demonstrate ownership, to drive, achieve the desired outcome.

Chris Goede:

That’s great.

Perry Holley:

And I just think when I looked at that, it became my new definition, and I talk about it frequently to people, is stop yelling at people because they didn’t do something right. Find out why they’re not demonstrating ownership. Why are they letting circumstances get in the way? Why are we not rising above circumstances? It is my personal choice that no matter what happens, I own it to get the result. Now, what does that mean? That means I own it no matter what happens to get the result. I mean, it’s kind of clear to me to do that. So I thought maybe we talk about five or six things that would, maybe practical ways to do this.

Chris Goede:

I love it. That’s it.

Perry Holley:

Number one was setting clear expectations. If you’re not communicating what you expect from people, they’re going to be fuzzy on what you expect from people. Do they know their role and responsibility? Do they know what they do fits in? Do they know what, that they should be taking ownership of? I find when everybody knows what’s expected of them, you’re taking a large step toward being able to hold them accountable for ownership, that they know that’s mine. And I do that. If they’re not clear about what the expectations are, they may think, well, it’s somebody else’s job.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. If there’s even an ounce that it potentially could be somebody else’s job, probably human nature is to kind of let it go that way or say, “Hey, that’s not mine.” So I totally agree with you.

Perry Holley:

I know that leader. She told me that, on our next call after that, she said… And I love what we talked about, think about ownership, who owned it? So I went person by person, and she said, “What I came back with, everybody thought it was someone else’s job.” I thought he got it. I thought they got it. I thought somebody, and they didn’t get it. And then the door gets unlocked. And I thought, oh, it wasn’t clear.

Chris Goede:

Reminds me of the saying of, if you’re holding your hand out and you’re pointing your finger at somebody else, there’s three fingers or four, maybe four, depending on how you’re holding your thumb, pointing right back at you. And so we just will naturally do that if we’re not clear on the expectation.

It also makes me think about the gap. We talk about the disappointment gap, which is the definition of that is, hey, the difference between reality, right? So the door was unlocked, so that’s reality and what’s the expectations? Well, the leader’s going to be disappointed because maybe no one knew what the expectation was, their responsibilities. And then the team’s going to be disappointed because they let the leader down, but they didn’t know. So that gap right there is definitely our responsibility as leaders to make sure we’re doing that, communicating that and setting clear expectations.

Perry Holley:

And share with, I think you do a nice job of this on our team, but we’ve made some changes recently on how we’re knowing what each other’s doing and what expectations are on each person. Maybe you should share that.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. One of the things that I want to encourage our leaders to do is, some of us are naturally gifted at loving to hold people accountable. Some of us aren’t. You guys may be smiling right now, thinking about some that you’ve worked with and were like, oh, yeah, they had no problem keeping our team accountable.

On the other side, I sometimes will lean away from that at times. And so when that happens, you got to build a system or a structure or a process to help you lead through that. One of the things that we do, and you’ve mentioned this on previous sessions we’ve had here, is on a weekly basis, we’ve created a peer-to-peer accountability structure and a system, where it’s not just me holding an individual. It’s our team holding each other.

I like to say, “ndividual responsibility, collective pride.” And so we as a team are working together and we’re reporting on our individual responsibilities, but as a team, we’re being collective and we have pride about what we’re trying to do. And so we’re looking, we’re saying, “Hey, Chris, you mentioned that you were going to get this done or you were going to hit that number and didn’t, why? What can we do to help? What what’d we miss?” And so when you do that, again, leaders just, if you’re not comfortable doing it needs to happen in your culture, then set up a system or a process that helps you do that.

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Perry Holley:

Another one was, number two was lead by example, that you’ve got to model accountability for the team they’re watching. We’ve said it’s a leadership sport. Do you take responsibility for your actions? Do you take responsibility for the decisions for things you say you’ll do? I hear John talking about this, that he has an accountability partner. He said, “Because sometimes I need help doing the hard things.”

And I thought that’s where it comes down is I say, I’m going to do something, but then if there’s some circumstance, some excuse that I can make up for that, that keeps me from doing the hard thing, do I hold myself accountable? And if you come back to the team and say, on one week you say, I’m going to do some things. You come back to the next team meeting and you haven’t done them, it makes it look like you’re not accountable. You’re not matching your talk on that.

Chris Goede:

And we’ve all been there and I mean, I’ve had that where I’ve just showed up to too many meetings, be like, “I’m working on that. I’m working on that.” Mark Cole, our CEO, will say a lot of times he’s like, “Hey, this is the goal. This is where I’m going and I’m going to give it everything I got and one of the two things is going to happen. We’re going to accomplish the goal, or you’re going to see my body laying in the direction of that goal because I gave it everything I got.” And so he is leading by that example. And so we want to make sure that we’re doing that because leadership, you’re being watched all the time. It’s visual. And there’s nothing worse than a leader not following through and leading by examples of being accountable to what they promised or what they said.

You mentioned earlier to rise above the circumstances. We work with a lot of different organizations, and some ebb and flow with the economic times that we’re in right now. Some have been very, have prospered and are getting ready to transition into some struggles, and it’s been vice versa. But no matter what’s going on in the economy, the circumstances around, you can’t have excuses You’ve got to develop a plan. Then you’ve got to lead by example. And we got to make sure that everybody’s doing their best to rise above any and all of the circumstances.

Perry Holley:

I think number three, this was big for me, was providing feedback. If you want to train to accountability, you’ve got to let people know how they’re doing. And one thing I’ve found very effective was this whole idea of rising above the circumstances is we often are so good at telling people why we didn’t get something done. We’re not realizing that’s circumstances.

And that if you’ve taken, steal one from Jocko and Leif on extreme ownership saying, if you’re taking extreme ownership of something, it really doesn’t matter what happened. You own it. And that if I’m having to be fully accountable, I just can’t make these. So if I give people feedback is every time you don’t get something done, you’re telling me these reasons. And some of them are really good reasons, but they’re just reasons. And I want to know what’s your plan to get it done? And that’s where the feedback helps drive accountability in teaching people that you are paying attention and you need them. I can go around all day holding you accountable, you accountable. I’d rather you be holding you accountable. I don’t have time to, are we holding ourselves accountable?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. This’ll be a silly example, but I want to share it with you because I think it’s relevant to our conversation. We’re in studio here in Atlanta today, and we were scheduled to start at a certain time, and I received a text from our leaders, both Jake and Perry, basically saying, “Where are you? You’re 12 minutes late.” Well, what did I do immediately? “I was watching for your car in the parking lot.” I came up with all these good reasons in my mind. “You needed me to print something off,” or all these things. I’m trying to put it off on somebody else.

Perry Holley:

Oh my gosh.

Chris Goede:

At the end of the day, you’re providing feedback for me. And this is a silly example, but this is true, right? Of saying, “Hey, no, no, no, where you at?” And then we have this little saying around here, where we’re like, “It smells like late.”

Yeah, smells like an excuse. Or it smells like being late, or it smells like Jake waiting on us. And so even just having that realtime feedback.

Perry Holley:

That’s funny you said that.

Chris Goede:

It’s a silly example, but I immediately went into, “Well, I didn’t see your car in the parking lot. I thought you were running late.” None of that matters. I should have been down here at the time of what we started.

When it comes to feedback, too, I like to talk about, especially around accountability. And you mentioned this a little bit, do it regularly because I think the longer we wait from having conversations and holding people accountable, your team, that individual are going to get off track. And sometimes it may be too off track by the time you end up having an accountable conversation with them.

So here are a couple ways that I would just give you questions to be thinking about. Are you doing it the right way? Are you holding people accountable the right way? Are they meeting your expectations? If not, have a conversation with them about it. Are they performing as you think they should? If not have a conversation. How can they do better? What help do they need? So feedback is a fundamental need that every single person on your team needs. We need it as human beings. We need that in our personal and professional life.

Perry Holley:

Number four, and I was looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one because it’s a little, I thought odd, but I like it because we talk about it in self-awareness, the self-awareness teaching. I do. I found this one to be very helpful.

Number four, encourage self-reflection. And so if you’re encouraging your teams yourself, you should be having a time of couple minutes, really, of self-reflection every day. Are you encouraging that from others on your team? And what got me onto this was hearing a teaching that said, if you do practice self-reflection, it makes you more empathetic, more compassionate. And I like the idea that says, that my self-reflection is what went well today, what didn’t go well today? What could I have done better today? So I’m guessing tonight you’ll be at home and you’ll be self reflecting, saying, “How could I have gotten to the studio on time?”

Chris Goede:

How could I have not let Perry and Jake down?

Perry Holley:

Yeah, yeah. No, I’m kidding. But we tend to give ourselves a lot of credit. We say, “I had a great day. I didn’t do anything. I killed it. I rock on. I’m the guy.” And then we’d self-reflect and say, “Really, I was 10 minutes late for this. I dropped the ball on that. I could…” And once you start calling it out, self-reflecting that you realize you didn’t have that 100% outstanding day. There are some areas for improvement. You start to get, in reality, is that I need to hold myself more accountable on these challenges where I’m struggling. That’s okay. As we’re all growing and learning, we have to have a mindset that says, “I can do better, but if I’m not reflecting on it and calling it out in my own life, it’s going to be difficult for me to hold myself accountable.”

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I think as… I love this because I have not heard this talked about a lot when it comes to accountability, but I think there’s some gold right here in how this process could happen. So here’s where my mind goes. Anytime someone brings me an idea or a thought or maybe a demand, I probably don’t own it as much as if I go, “m, I could have done a better job at that certain situation or whatever that was in order to accomplish that goal.” I all of a sudden own it.

And you talked earlier in the session about the word ownership, and I absolutely love that. And I think if we say, “Hey, we want you to begin reflecting on certain projects, certain tasks, whatever, and then come back and tell me what you learned. What are you thinking? Where are you at?” And then let them lead that conversation, more than likely, unless they have no self-awareness, more than likely they’re going to be like, “I probably could have done that. I missed it here.” And then you’re like, “You can add on to that a little bit where appropriate.” I didn’t say pile on, just add a comment on and say, “Yeah, that probably would’ve been a little bit different.” I think that approach, I think that’s phenomenal. I think it ties right in with feedback, and I think it helps them own that when it comes to the accountability.

I also thought about this example, you know, you either own a house or you’re renting a house or a place to live. The approach that we take is much different between the two. Matter of fact, because you own a house, you are always doing projects at your house and thinking about it and reflecting, and what if I did this here and what if I put that there? Whereas if you were just renting a house, it’d be like you’re making that monthly rent payment, but you’re not necessarily thinking about, how do I enhance? You know what I’m saying? So even just that illustration between the two around that is that, get yourself first, put your team to a place where they’re owning, in essence, from a mindset what they’re working on and that accountability will follow.

Perry Holley:

I’m thinking about how you treat your car and a rental car.

Chris Goede:

Oh, that’s great. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Perry Holley:

All right, number five, and wrap it up. Provide training and development for your team. A lot of accountability challenges are faced by people because they are struggling with their work somehow. So are you equipping and developing? Are you insisting that people grow in their abilities at their job? We don’t want one of the circumstances to be, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. And so I think for that, it could also include coaching and mentoring from you or maybe from somebody else on the team. Just anything you can do to make people better at what they do increases their ability to really own, take ownership and rise above the circumstances to get the job done.

Chris Goede:

When you are helping them become more competent, they will become more engaged. We talk a lot about the fact that now more than ever, people are staying inside organizations because of the training and development that they’re receiving versus jumping ship. It’s the one of the top three or four reasons on why people are accepting jobs, why they’re staying at jobs. So it’s no different when it comes to accountability. It’s like the more we’re investing in our people, the more ownership that they’re going to take for certain projects, for certain tasks, and they’re going to be able to drive that engagement.

Here’s what I would say as we wrap up. You absolutely. Back to Perry’s title of Can Leaders Teach Accountability? You absolutely can teach accountability. Starts with yourself first. It’s the law of the lid when it comes to accountability. Start with yourself self first, but then continue to take some of these principles that we shared with you and think about building them into your leadership and your team so that accountability will begin to show up.

Perry Holley:

Very good. Well, thank you, Chris. As a reminder, if you would like to download The Learner Guide, which has some of the notes from today’s podcast there for you, you can get that. You can also leave us a comment or a question. You can also learn more about our offerings. We love hearing from you, so please don’t hesitate to drop us a note, and we are very grateful that you’d spend this time with us today. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.