Accountability & The Hawthorne Effect | Why Successful People Crave Accountability

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today I'm going to be discussing accountability. Now stick with me. This is a really, this is a really important topic, and and it extends well beyond maybe just your definition of accountability, though you'll understand what I'm talking about here, but I wanna dig a little deeper around the importance of accountability. Here's what I wanna chat around. In my time on this planet, specifically in business and in personal life, but over the course of my business career, what I've found and what many of you have probably also seen is that the most successful individuals are creating habits. But in addition to creating habits, the most successful individuals are also the most accountable individuals. What does that mean? What that means is those that are successful, they crave accountability. They crave others depending on them. They crave the competition. They want all eyes on them. They want to be held to a standard and they want to meet or exceed that standard. They have a strong desire not to hide, but to put it all out there for the world to see. I'm talking about this again because here at No Days Off, again, we're striving to get better every single day. And if you want to get better in life, if you want to get better in health or in business, You gotta have some degree of accountability, and it probably needs to apply in all areas, not just some. Now, why is this? Why is this? And I think it comes down to, uh, something that I recently learned about called the Hawthorne effect. And the Hawthorne effect refers to a phenomenon where individuals will modify their behavior or their performance in response to being observed or receiving special attention. See, the Hawthorne Effect suggests that individuals will change their behavior or their performance because they're aware that they're being observed, and they may feel motivated to up their performance or maybe even conform to expectations. And the setting— the effect can have, can occur in all different sorts of settings. It could be in workplace, it could be in education, it could be at home. Bottom line, this Hawthorne effect suggests that people will change their behavior or their performance when they're being watched. Now the reasons the Hawthorne effect can vary, some explanations for that: increased attention. The awareness of being observed makes people feel maybe more valued or more important. Which leads to increased motivation and just overall effort. In addition, maybe social pressure. Uh, individuals that may feel pressure to conform to the expectations of their peers or their coworkers or their industry at large, they want to present themselves in a favorable way. They want to avoid criticism. Lastly, and I could say for myself, The Hawthorne Effect, how it impacts me, it's the excitement, it's the novelty, the presence of somebody or somebody's watching me create kind of this environment, this stimulating competitive environment that wants me or forces me to want to perform at a super high level. So where am I going with all this? And I'll make this episode a little shorter than most. The focusing question, I think, for all of us should be, where am I missing accountability? And what would it look like if I introduced some accountability in terms of my performance and, and all that I'm doing, all that I'm achieving? The Hawthorne Effect specifically states, and it's been proven time and time again, that more eyes on you Knowing that people are watching you, knowing that people perform, you will in fact step up your game. Now let's look at it from the, from the inverse. Fewer eyes on you, the more, or I should say, the less people know about what you're aiming to achieve, the less transparency around your actions, the more you're hiding, the less likely you are to succeed. So the focus in question, Where do you need to introduce more accountability in your world? What steps could you take to create that accountability? And maybe the most powerful question, who could hold you accountable? In business, in health, in relationships, in pick any bucket in your world, right? That awareness. And this is a lesson we talked about several weeks ago on a podcast around wealth. Step 1 in wealth building, creating awareness around your financial world, that awareness is also a Hawthorne effect, right? You're the one observing in that particular case. Therefore, it's going to prompt you to take action. Same sort of thing here. That awareness, that creation of accountability prompts you to step up. So where do you need to introduce accountability in your world? What steps can you take? And who might be that person or organization or whatever it may be that could help you, that could aid you in this accountability. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining me at the No Days Off Podcast. Remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.