Before You Hold Anyone Accountable, Start Here

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Welcome to the Leadership is Feminine podcast. I'm Chris Plackey. I am your host and I'm so glad that you're here. I want to talk to you this week. And this may actually end up being a little bit of a series, but after my Pet Sitting Adventures in Pet Sitting, which. Thank you. I got a lot of feedback on those podcast episodes. Please always remember we'd love for you to share your thoughts by writing a review. I love when I get the personal emails. Those are fantastic. So thank you for those too. It's also really fabulous when you write us a review. It helps boost the podcast. It helps more people see it. So if you are enjoying what you're listening to, please just take three minutes and jot your thoughts down with a rating on whichever podcast player that you use. But regardless, I was what I was talking to you about in those episodes, right. Was one of the key elements was this gap really in accountability. And you know, having done what I do with my clients for as long as I have, of course there's really nothing you're going to bring to me that's going to make me want to run away or freak out or, or, or not know how to sort of at least help you brainstorm a solution. But I can also tell you that there's just sort of a, I don't know if I would say that there's like a common theme. You know, like when I talked about a couple months ago, we talked about self trust, self worth, that there's this sort of common like hum. Right. That I see in so many of my clients. Women who are incredibly successful, you know, have made a lot of money, live really lovely lives. They still, still sort of have this undercurrent, this hum of, of, of a lack of self trust. And ultimately what I believe I'm here to help my clients do is to help you live the best version of your life. To, to thrive, to really maximize whatever it is that you're committed to, to do it in a way that feels amazing. And so one of the other kind of common threads that I see is related to accountability. And I do think in many ways you could really call me an accountability coach. I know that I sort of sit under the veil of life and leadership, but I think more so what I really help my clients learn is accountability and express is accountability in the way that they live their lives and keeping their own commitments to themselves. What I want to talk to you about today is what I observe is the correlation between a lack of comfort so and or we say this the opposite discomfort with, quote, unquote, holding other people accountable and personal belief and accountability in achieving your big goals. I see a real direct correlation and I'm going to sort of walk a little bit of a tangled web here, but hopefully you'll follow me. So, first of all, you know, the women that I work with privately are wealthy, successful, accomplished women. And many start at least initially with me with all these, these, you know, sort of feathers in their cap. And yet they're incredibly over tolerant, they are over accommodating, they make excuses for other people, they defer to other people's plans, ideas over their own. They don't address ongoing performance issues. In fact, the opposite is true. They get incredibly bothered by emotional, have emotional responses to a lot of frustration with what other people choose to do that is out of alignment with agreements that we may have made. And so I've always found this such an interesting juxtaposition to have this place in the world where you're incredibly successful, you achieved so much. You're one of a very small percentage of women if you're running a million dollar business plus or if you're at the C level of a, of a business, and yet you're still struggling to say no to. Talk to John about the conversation that you had yesterday that was inappropriate to address Allison and her consistent tardiness or poor performance. I see it in their work lives and I see it in their personal lives. I see a lot of successful women who have relationships with family members, children, spouses, parents, siblings, and they allow themselves to not have a voice in vital personal relationships in their lives. And so I'm always asking, like, what's the, what's the pull through here? And I do believe there's a few things, but I think the first thing is it's pretty hard if you can't address someone for not achieving an agreed upon expectation at work. It's even harder to have a conversation with someone that you love or that you're in a long term relationship with who is also not meeting those expectations. Right, that, that makes sense. Right. The second thing is a lot of people don't, A lot of women don't trust their own knowing when it comes to somebody not meeting expectations. When somebody says something they shouldn't say, when somebody acts in a way that's inappropriate work, when somebody is consistently not contributing or making excuses or placing blame. A lot of women don't trust themselves. They think they're being too demanding. They think that they'll be unliked they think that they'. And there's a little core of that that is like a lack of safety. If you address it, that somehow you won't be safe. And I watch women do the same thing in their personal lives. They don't trust themselves that they. That this way of someone speaking to me, that my ideas are as important as someone else's ideas, that I know as much as I can. I know more about this than my business partner, my life partner, my father, and yet I don't trust myself. And so until we agree that that's the core, the cause, it doesn't matter what tactic you smather on top of it, you're not going to replicate it. Right. And that's what I see a lot of times with my clients, is we address one issue. They come to me, I have this big issue. I need to resolve this issue. Great, we're going to get this. But now what do I do about this issue? But now what do I do about this? So we have to find the core so that, as I hope you heard in the pet sitting adventures, it doesn't matter to me if it's my pet sitting situation, if it's an issue in my family, if it's an issue with another employee, if it's an issue with a colleague, like, if we've made an agreement, I will address that with you. And people don't like that, y'. All. Because it's not what we do, right? What? It's not. Women aren't supposed to do that. A. And then there's always this belief that, yes. Oh, yeah, we should absolutely hold boundaries, hold expectations. All these you make, we should. Until all of a sudden it's us. And then we get uncomfortable, like, whoa, I gotta be so rigid. Right? Whatever it is. Like, well, I mean, but we made an agreement.

So. Okay. Right. So accountability is. Is at its core, such a vital practice for you to achieve what you want. And the person I actually think that need. That you. You need to work on the most for this is you. So one of the things that I wrote down is I think that in a lot of cases, the presentation of the problem that you have with accountability is displaced. So you talk about it with your colleague, your. Your. Your spouse, your coach. You. You talk about it with someone and you say, this person isn't doing what they said they would. They need to do this. Why don't they just do it this way? How do I get them to change this? How do I do this? How do I do that? Right? Like, how do I get this person to be accountable, to deliver on the commitment and a lot of emotional energy and time is spent trying to figure out how to make this person change. But I really want you to see that's very displaced. The first reason that's most important that you recognize that is you have zero control. Which I actually think for people who are really uncomfortable with difficult conversations and difficult decisions and difficult exchanges and all that stuff, that's actually convenient. Because if all I have to do is just talk about how these people need to be different and if they would just do this and if they would just do that, I don't actually have to do anything. So I can avoid the very discomfort, right. Of, of. Of actually addressing the issue. So if we were to place this in the proper place, it would be with you. So if I have someone on my team who is consistently late or who consistently makes mistakes in their work, or who is regularly places blame for their missed assignment dates or whatever, Right? Like whatever the. I mean, you name it. Listen to me. Right? Right. The question isn't how do I make them be different. The question is what does this circumstance with this employee call on me to do or say or become? If I've hired someone to meet the expectations of a job and they're not meeting it, then that circumstance calls on me to address it, not to change them. That's not my business. To address it is my business. And then to take that to the next step and then, well, what do I do? If, if I address it and they don't resolve their performance, then I address it in a. Done in another way. Well, what about, you know, with my mother? What about with my spouse? What about with my kid? It's the same, right? My kid makes a mess in his room. Okay. I can say he should be a kid who keeps his room clean. That it's unlikely. Just for me, wishing he'll be a kid who keeps his room clean will work. What, what I want to do instead is what does this circumstance ask of me? Well, I might need to put a consequence in place. So if your room isn't clean by 4 o', clock, I'm going to put your phone in the lockbox until it's clean. Whatever, right? If you are in a relationship with someone who diminishes your ideas, insults you, we can, I mean, we can spend all day wishing someone wasn't like that. Or we can say, well, I'm in a relationship with this person. What does this call on me to do, to say, to become the reason that I correlate the gap here. So if that's showing up in your personal life, if there are places in your life where people are, you know, for, for lack of a better expression, walking all over you, and I know you know if you know you're that person, because I also know you're probably a person who. That happens and then eventually you lose it, the twig snaps, which is also so not constructive, right? Because there is a way for you to operate so much more presently, consciously and intentionally so that you don't have to snap, that you can be very clear about where someone else's behavior is versus yours, where someone else's intentions are versus yours. But I do know that if we, if we, if we operate that way, it's because we don't trust ourselves and we don't believe in ourselves. And so then the pull through of that is then let's say you have something you really want to achieve. You want to achieve something. Let's just, I mean, we're already in November next year. This is a thing you really want to make happen in your business or in your life. How much do you believe it? How much do you believe in your ability to make it happen? Not just wish for it, not just hope for it, not just put it in your journal, not just write it as a, as a resolution, but to actually build the framework, the scaffolding, and then hold yourself to deliver on those. Because that's why most people don't write, want to write big goals for themselves or any goals is because they don't believe that they will achieve them. So they don't even want to really write them down. And that to me comes back to the same thing. It's just with you versus with someone else. Because ultimately every result that you have in your life is, is up to you. Every person that's currently in your life is a result. Everybody you allow into your life is a result. Every conversation that you have with people is a result. Everything that's happening in your business is a result. It comes back to you if you choose to believe that. If you choose to share in that philosophy with me, the best news about that is it gives you all your agency back. If you instead choose to believe it's happening to you. Your life happens to you. Your business happens to you, your results happen to you, your employees behaviors happen to you. You posit yourself in a victim role in your own life and in your own business. And it asks different questions of you. How do I deal with this problem versus what is this Current issue, this current circumstance calling upon me to do, me to become, how is it calling on me to transform, Give yourself back your own agency. But again, like, it's a fascinating thing to watch a woman who, who has so much success abdicate. And so I've thought a lot, you know, that I think at the heart of what I do, it's this work. If you were on the coaching calls I do with my clients, you would hear that. So much of what we talk about is this is happening, this is happening with this team member, with this decision, with this. We have to take the same process, the same framework and apply it in a different circumstance. Right. So that tells me that integrating this into who you are is such a refined practice. And so I was thinking about, as we're closing out the year, I've been thinking about what can I do to help women solve the problems that they're facing in their business in a way that is powerful, simple, and frankly, quick, because I know you don't have a lot of time. And so what I am going to do now through the end of the year is I'm going to open up some sessions on my calendar. I'm calling them a starter session, but I'm going to do something that I actually did with my sage clients. And what I want to do is have a coaching call, a session with, I'm guessing it'll probably be about 10 of you, but I'm not really sure. Individually, private calls, and through a series of questions that I will ask you, we're going to look at where you are. What are the current challenges that you're facing, what are the current possibilities that you want to explore? What do you really want to create for yourself when you want to finish by the end of the year, and what do you want to create yourself for the next year? And I did this with my current clients and what I did out of that conversation is I created for each client a personalized 52 week journal that they can use during the course of their program. That is a series of questions I developed based on, based on where they are now and where they want to go. And I want to offer those sessions to you.

So I have, have put on my website. All you have to do is go to the visionary CEO.

Starter and you can book a call with me. It's going to be a coaching call. It will be on Zoom. I'm going to ask you a series of questions. We're going to look at where you are, we're going to look at some of the current challenges you're facing, what do you want to shore up by the end of the year? What do you want? What do you see as possibilities for next year? What do you really want to create? And then I'm going to make you this customized journal, and we're going to. It's tangible, it's an actual product, and we're going to send that to you. The reason I want to emphasize this right now is that I believe the only thing that separates you from achieving what you really, really want is your relationship with personal accountability. And I don't want you to take that as a slight, because that's not how it is intended. I believe this is something we all have to work on, including myself. But having a source, having, first of all, being heard, being supported, being directed, having someone do some thinking, partnership with you, there is nothing more invigorating than that because you're so powerful. You. I know you know once the light turns on for you, you go, and I know that's what these sessions will do for you. And then you'll have this collateral pie you can keep with you to keep it alive. So if you're interested in that, go to the visionary CEO starter and you'll see how this will all work. And you can register, pick time, and we'll get it done. But I think what we're going to do in the next podcast. Well, I. I'm not sure what specifically I will do, but I'm going to continue to unfold this accountability quagmire, let's call it that, because I know what you want more than anything is for everyone else to be different. And then it would be easier for you.

And I know that logically, you know, that's not a reasonable thing, but emotionally, that's harder to adjust to. And so I think we have to do more work to help your brain understand how to do your own work in these moments where other people disappoint you so that you can still continue to go forward and achieve what you most want. We. We don't get another crack at this mama. Let's maximize it. You have all the tools you need. You have that gorgeous brain. You have this beautiful business. You have your curiosity. If you're listening to this podcast, you have curiosity. You are willing to explore, play with ideas, be willing to be a little uncomfortable and vulnerable. It's all there on the other side of this. So I'd love to invite you to do a session with me. How fun would that be? Get your journal and also give yourself a notice this week as you're working with people and you're noticing, like, the trigger that you feel if someone's not meeting an expectation and the frustration you might feel that you have to address that. And also, I want you to look at what what have you committed to yourself and how well are you following through on that or those things as well? And what does that accountability structure look like for you? Okay. All right. Thanks for tuning in today. Talk to you again next time.

We have so many great things coming up. Are you on the list? Go to the Visionary CEO Notes and add your name. I will send you some fun things, and they'll be free. First to know about some really fun and interesting things that are coming up, like, say, the Hawaii retreat. So visionary CEO Notes and get your name on our list.