How to be an Accountability Powerhouse | Defining Accountability and why it’s Important

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being powerhouse strong, what level of personal accountability do you take at work and even at home? Do you confront issues head-on, powerhouse, or do you skirt them off or even pass them on to someone else? Do you go face to face acknowledging a mistake, powerhouse, or do you blame someone else? Requiring accountability of yourself and those around you is absolutely critical to the success of your team, to your business, and to yourself. So today we're going to be talking about what accountability is and what it looks like, the impact of accountability or the lack thereof has on yourself and those around you. And lastly, we're going to talk about some key skills and traits you absolutely must work on and possess if you want to be a powerhouse leader. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms female corporate executives into powerhouse leaders by showing them how to shed the challenges and overwhelm, along with any fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity holding them back. I'm your host, Bernadette Boas of Follow Fire Coaching, bringing you powerhouse discussions each week to share tips, advice, and sometimes tough love so you create the riches in your work and life you deserve. Let's do this. What is accountability? Accountability is simply taking ownership of your actions, your words, the responsibilities that you're given, and the results that you achieve— good, bad, or indifferent. Stepping up and acknowledging the pros and cons, the dos, the don'ts, the lessons learned, the best practices, the good and the bad of the outcomes that you're receiving. It's really owning what it is you're given and ensuring that whatever the outcome is, you are upfront, honest, and take accountability for it. What does it look like when it comes to being at work? Well, first off, it's owning up to your mistakes. If you fail to follow through on something, if you kind of submit a report and the data is incorrect, if you initiate a project or a task for someone and it's not done the way that they communicate it to you, Accountability simply is saying, yes, I screwed up. You know, my life isn't going to end. I have a solution to addressing it. And you move on. It could be the fact that you are insecure and don't want to acknowledge a weakness that you might have, a skill that you might be lacking. And therefore you kind of skirt it or you avoid or you ignore whatever parts of whatever it is that you've been given responsibility for require that skill. And as opposed to just saying, you know, I, you know, I'm really not strong in Excel or PowerPoint, very simple examples, and therefore I may not be the best person for the job, or I need some help and instruction in order to be able to 'Uh, follow through on what it is you want me to do.' That's personal accountability, is owning up to that. It could be the fact that you kind of stretch the truth, or you're just not completely honest, or in some cases— and I've experienced it with clients— flat out lie. That's not personal accountability. All right, and then of course it's not following through on your responsibilities. And oftentimes this becomes a major issue for many managers and employees when it, when it looks like a manager verbally or in writing, such as email, which is a thorn in many people's sides when it comes to communication, sends a directive of what they need from somebody or a group of people. And the personal accountability can go two ways. The receiver takes that information that you provided, acts on it, delivers on it, and then you, you happen to say, or the, the sender happens to look at it and say, this isn't what I, I, you know, I needed, I wanted, I was expecting. Well, the accountability looks like, or lack thereof I should say, looks like the receiver, the person who was given the responsibility for that task, didn't ensure and didn't ask clarifying questions to ensure that they understand completely what it is that the sender was needing from them, and therefore came half-baked in following through on that, on that task. The sender, though, also has accountability that if they weren't clear and weren't— didn't fully explain what it was that they needed in that communication, then they actually also need to own up to taking accountability for that gap. So accountability, though, can fall one way or the other, or it can be on both sides of the equation. And it's important for people to then both acknowledge that there was a gap, that there was a misunderstanding, which is really important if you want to also kind of ensure that connection, ensure that relationship, ensure that leadership, ensure that trust, and ensure that integrity between both parties. So a lack of personal accountability can have very strong, powerful impacts on the people around you, or it could be detrimental, uh, to those around you. So again, in that situation where if neither took personal accountability and owned up to their role in that unfulfilled expectation, well, then there's a breakdown. There's a breakdown in trust, there's a breakdown in communication, there's a breakdown in reliability, there's a breakdown in that individual, in this case the sender, being able to influence appropriately the receiver. It'll break down loyalty. It'll break down confidence in one another. So personal accountability— if someone's not capable of stepping up and acknowledging their mistakes, their weaknesses, their insecurities or fears, or they're just pure oversight, And maybe purely it was just a simple oversight, and yet they have a difficult time acknowledging that. Well, it can have detrimental effects on whether or not you and them, and therefore the team and the business, will be successful. So personal accountability is absolutely critical for any leaders to really master, and I'm saying master. Because keep in mind, and I use this analogy a lot with my clients, I will often tell them, I want you to think about you as the leader and your employees almost like a parent and a child. Now, I'm not a parent, though I have some four-legged, four-legged children, and I have 22 nieces and nephews. But I definitely understand the dynamic. I was a child to my parents., right? So, and I see my brothers and sisters and friends with their children. And the expectation is that the parent models for that child what he or she wants from them. And that modeling could be good or it could be bad. And in the case of accountability, your people are watching you. Your people are looking to you, looking up to you. To really understand how it is that they need to behave and how it is that they need to perform and how it is that they need to take accountability. So if you as the leader are not taking accountability, if you are skirting the issue or skirting the truth, or you're not taking full responsibility, or you're blaming and passing it, passing the buck, well, that's going to be reflected in your people.. And so before you get mad at them for, you know, for skirting the issue or blaming someone else and not owning up to their mistakes or their responsibilities or lack thereof, then you really need to sit back and say, all right, so why— what is it and why is it that my people are behaving in this way? And could it have you know, something to do with me. Because one, as the leader, the buck stops with you, right? So if you're not stepping into that and owning that, then your people are not going to be. And again, they're looking to you to really understand how it is and why it is and what it is that they need to be doing. So you need to really ensure that personal accountability is focused on, on a daily basis. OK, now, as an executive coach, I will often— and spend a great deal of time, actually— having my clients do either one-on-one personal assessments, meaning they assess themselves. They assess themselves to gain understanding of their personality styles, of their behaviors, of their actions, of those things that motivate them, of those things that get in the way. Uh, and so it's a personal assessment. Then many of my clients will layer on 360 assessments, which then introduces, uh, it could be their employees, their peers, their, their managers, their customers, their third parties, whatever the case might be. And they are then asked to assess this individual, so they both have not only their self-assessment but they also have the perceptions and the impact, the engagement results of working with that individual. Now, in those, in those assessments, whether it's self or a 360, personal accountability always comes up. And what it, what it shows, at least in the assessments that I've done, and when I've looked over all of the assessments over the time that I've been doing them, It's— I often find that just 20% of those assessments come back with personal accountability being high. And when I say high, I'm even being generous because high is just over 50% on the scale. And so majority of individuals assess themselves, let alone others assess them, with below 50% of personal accountability. And yet, if you looked at and really understood the impact we just talked about, about how lack of personal accountability can have detrimental effects on your, your team, the business results you get, and yourself and your career, well, then you need to kind of step back and say, all right, what do I need to focus on? What is it that I need to master for myself and therefore model to my team members. Because on the flip side of the negative impacts we talked about, the positive impacts is also, you know, you're gaining that loyalty and that trust, and you're gaining that willingness for your team members to want to walk into a fire for you, walk through it for you. Because of the fact that if, you know, if they trust that you have their back, then they're gonna be willing to do just about anything for you. Patrick Lencioni, he is the master of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And he talks about how you need to gain the foundation of relationships. The foundations of a team is first trust. All right? And once you have trust with one another, from there you can then have healthy conflict. You can have those discussions that are absolutely vital and critical to a business, you know, but yet create a lot of conflict, create a lot of confrontation, create a lot of just uncomfortable discussions and decisions that need to be made. But because your foundation is built on trust, you can have those. From there, it's once you have that trust and you are able to deal with conflict in a very healthy manner, well, then you're gaining people's buy-in. Or commitment. You're getting people on board as a result of the fact that they can trust all the decisions, all the information, all the ideas that are coming up. And they've discussed and hammered out all the differences and disagreements and risks and whatnot in that healthy conflict. And so, people will buy in. Well, once you have all of that, well, then people will be accountable. People will step in and own what they want because they have— there's this foundation of trust that is, you know, that, that allows for disagreements or different opinions or new ideas without being shut down, that then allow them to buy in and commit. So accountability is just going to be a given at that point. Because what your people need from you is they need to have their own control on what it is that they're doing. They need to feel valued. They need to feel heard. And they just don't need to feel it. They need to be valued and heard. And they need to know that they're making a contribution. To do that, you as the leader have to give them control. You have to let go of your own desire and your own thinking that, oh well, I can do it, you know, better and quicker and, you know, more efficient than other people. Well, you're in a leadership role now. Your job is to develop and bring along the people that work for you. And so your job is not to be that micromanager controlling freak that, you know, thinks that you're the only one who could do something. You need to let go and you need to give control, give ownership over to your people because once they feel that, okay, they're giving me the directive, but then after that, they're allowing me to make the decisions and on the how, when, what to get it done. Now they might have given me parameters around when I need it done, what overall needs to get accomplished, but they're allowing me to control getting there. Well, the next thing you know, you're finding people that are, you know, are basically saying, oh my gosh, yes, I feel very, very valued. I feel like, you know, my expertise is being leveraged because of the fact that, you know, they're allowing me to decide and to actually take the action and follow through, so forth and so on, to accomplish that task. That was assigned. Giving just control on very simple things, let alone the big things, which you also need to do, will help you gain that trust, which leads to the healthy conflict and commitment. But ultimately, based on our conversation today, will ensure that then they step up and they take responsibility. If you don't, if you don't give them that control, This is what it will look like. So going back to that scenario of the sender and the receiver, that scenario is gonna look like that receiver turns it in, turns the work in, it doesn't meet the expectation of the sender. And they start saying, they start blaming the sender. Well, you didn't give me the information. Well, you didn't tell me there was a deadline. Well, you didn't, you know, explain completely that X, Y, and Z needed to be involved. And so, you know, then there's gonna be this like tit for tat, cuz this, the sender's gonna say, which I would too, is, well, you know, you, you didn't ask me for any more details of what it is that I gave you. You know, you didn't look at it and understand what it was, what information you needed in order to then fully, fully take ownership and responsibility for this task. And so then it just becomes this very unproductive confrontation of tit for tat. And that's not what you're looking for. So we're going to now talk about what it is, what are those traits and the skills that you need as a leader in order to really ensure that personal accountability on your part as well as your team members' parts are secure. Are taken on, followed through on, and become just part of who they are and part, therefore, part of the team, part of the culture, and part of the, the results that you will get. Good, bad, or indifferent. Because personal accountability doesn't necessarily mean that your business results all of a sudden are wonderful. What it means is you're all in the same camp taking ownership and responsibility for whatever those results are. Obviously, I had already peppered in some of those skills and traits, but I want to kind of put them in a, put them in a sequence for you that, you know, kind of they layer on each other and ultimately get you where you want to go. And so you'll also notice that I'll be blending traits and skills together., in order to do that. All right. So the first thing that I will often share with my clients is your people. Again, even think about the parent-child. Your people need to have a clear idea, a clear vision on what it is you're wanting to accomplish, not only at the task level, but Initially, what is the purpose and the vision you have for the business you're responsible for, therefore the team that's going to help you achieve those goals and those objectives? What is that? And your first opportunity to really embed personal accountability is to— you have your, your clear vision and direction and purpose. For what it is that you're responsible for yourself. And then you're going and you're communicating and making sure they all are kind of bought in, just like we talked about, bought in on that vision, on that direction, on that plan that you have, on those goals that you're setting. Uh, and so having a clear vision and purpose and then communicating. Now, communication also goes beyond the initial of your vision and your purpose and goes into— you just need as a leader to always be clear with them. Now, are you going to get every I dotted and T crossed? No. It's their responsibility and therefore accountability to ask clarifying questions. But you need to ensure that you're just not kind of camped in your office or camped in your home office and you're not on a regular basis communicating. Now, I'm not even talking about just communicating out what the business goals, what the tasks, what the expectations you have are, so forth and so on. You even need to get into bed with them, uh, and not literally, but you need to get into bed with them, and you need to be talking with them and asking them what it is that they need. What do they need to be successful? What are the challenges that they're having? What do you, you know, what can you do to support them? So communication involves all the business aspects, but it also involves the people aspect. And that's, that's a huge miss for majority of leaders, at least the ones that I work with over the years. The majority of leaders is they're very, you know, task-oriented, goal-oriented. Not necessarily people-oriented. So if you want to build personal accountability, you need to get to know your people and understand what they need in order to be successful, because that will make you successful as well. A clear vision and purpose, then communicated in both business and personal, that all is going to lead to really building trust. Now, Building trust will also have to come out of other tenets, not just your clear vision and the communication that you give them, but also that modeling we were talking about. To build trust, people need to know you have their back. People need to know that you're giving them the truth. People need to know, let's say, in very difficult, trying times, which many people would say we're going through right now, They need you to have transparency with them. Now, there are situations and times when you can't give them 100%, but are you giving them even 80% of what it is you can give them to where they at least feel like you, you know, have control of the situation? We're talking a difficult situation that then will give them some sense of control and peace of mind to where then they don't go off and you know, self-sabotage themselves. So building trust with them on a daily basis, and it will come from the words that you use, the actions that you take, the behaviors that you, that you act on. It'll come from the communication. It'll come from the interaction. Every day, a leader has to pay attention to whether or not they're building trust or they're draining trust from the people that work directly for them, but also those around them. And so again, I use the analogy of parent and child because I am sure if you have children, I am sure you're ensuring that what you're modeling to your children will make them the best individual they can be. Right? You ask a parent, what is it you want for your child? I just want them to be the best person they can be. But, and therefore, they take on the responsibility of modeling what it is they want of their children. The same for you as a leader. You need to model each and every day what it is you want from your people. All right? And it'll make them better people and better leaders as well. So there's a win-win for everybody. All right. So trust, and we talked about honesty. We talked about, you know, you know, the little white lie, but I also said, you know, if you flat out lie about something. Um, so honesty shows up, or lack thereof, shows up in a lot of different ways. And trust me when I say you will be called out on it. You may not be called out on it face to face, someone may not confront you, but it will show up in how they take responsibility or don't, how they show up in their role or they don't, and how they ultimately perform or they don't. All right, so honesty. The next one is conflict. We talked about that. Uh, conflict is a huge part of personal accountability because, again, personal accountability can be uncomfortable for many people. You know, if you are that headstrong, stubborn, proud person and you just absolutely refuse to admit when you're wrong or when you've made a mistake or when you've really screwed up, or when you just didn't do something you were supposed to do. Gosh, the, the effect of that, the impact of that, let alone if you're modeling that to your people, it'll be a hard turn for them to make to then kind of go back to that trust we were talking about, to then you know, really have any trust or even consider you with high integrity if you're not honest, and especially if you can't deal with conflict in a very healthy, productive, constructive way. And so personal accountability oftentimes creates conflict within somebody, but also there is conflict when it comes to personal accountability of someone needing to acknowledge that they're wrong. But if you have the trust built, then you can work through, um, anything that's coming out of that conflict that you have to take accountability for in a very productive way. All right, uh, and then the next one would be that commitment we talked about. Uh, you know, if you have trust for someone, if you are, um, building, um, and, and able to have healthy conflict with them Well, then you're going to be all in. And if you're not all in, you're going to have the— you're going to have the courage to address what it is that you feel uncomfortable about or you disagree with or you're adamant about because maybe it goes against your values and your morals. Hopefully not in a business environment, however. But the buy-in is much, is much easier. And then, of course, results. With all of that foundation being built, your people are going to— and yourself are going to be so loyal and devoted and committed to whatever it is that they were just given responsibility for to ensure they get results. Now again, it doesn't guarantee what the results are. They take ownership and personal accountability for the results that are that are made, good, bad, or indifferent. It could even be that they failed to do something or failed to meet that deadline or get the results. And yet they don't skirt, they don't avoid, they don't ignore, they don't blame. They take ownership and responsibility for it. And that's what you're looking for from your people. And then I like to throw in, when it comes to personal accountability, especially from the leader's perspective, is you need to take personal accountability for whether or not you're coaching and developing, problem-solving, and really supporting your people. Again, modeling what it is you want from them and modeling the fact that they too should be coaching and developing and, and problem-solving and helping with, with their people as well. And so I like to throw that in when it comes to personal accountability, because you ultimately also are accountable not only the business results that those people achieve, but the development of those people, the support of those people, the psychological safety of those people, the satisfaction of those people. You're responsible for, and you take ownership of that. So all these key skills and traits just kind of layer on and create this, you know, this awesome kind of powerhouse within your individuals, within your team, and within yourself that will ensure that you are successful, whether it's the business results or it's your own personal success. And so when you think about personal accountability, Don't get uncomfortable about it. You're a leader. You're responsible. You're— the buck stops with you. So don't look at it as, oh, I don't want to own up. I don't want to acknowledge. I don't want to take responsibility. You did the moment you became a leader. All right. So simply really assess yourself. Going back to the initial question that I asked is on a scale of 1 to 10, How would you— what level of personal accountability do you take at work and even at home to where you are a powerhouse leader? And if it happens to be, I would say, lower than 7 on that scale, then book a call with me. Go to coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall and let's discuss it. Personal accountability of yourself and your team members is absolutely critical to the success of all of you, of your team, of the business, and of yourself. And so you don't have to go it alone. Just book a call, coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall. Let's discuss it, and I'll give you some actionable powerhouse tips and strategies that you can be using, whether it's on a specific situation that you're dealing with or just in general. And go to sheddingthecorporatebitch.com for all of our previous episodes and share it with other powerhouse women just like you so they can find the show. Thanks for joining me this week. See you next time.