Leo & Randy On Accountability Peernovation-Style

Welcome to Peer Innovation, the podcast with Leo Bottari and me, Randy Cantrell. Building on our previous shows, The Year of the Peer and What Anyone Can Do, we turn our attention to helping business leaders build high-performing teams. We'll talk with a diverse group of thought leaders who will share stories and insights that will help you and your teams achieve new heights. If you believe there is strength in numbers and that meeting the challenges of the future can only be achieved if we do it together, then join us for the conversation. Welcome back. Another episode of Peer Novation, the podcast, and I'm back after what seems like a lengthy, lengthy—

You're on assignment. Yeah.

Yeah. On assignment. It's good to be back. The website is peerinnovation.co. He is Leo Bottari. I am Randy Cantrell, and we welcome the audience back. And we've got a number of, I don't know, just a hodgepodge of things, but the highlights are going to be Leo's forthcoming book called Peer Innovation. As well as an article that he wrote just recently, was published in CEO World about accountability that I think is worth a bit of a deeper dive for our audience.

Yeah, no, I think it is. It's gotten some really good reaction. Yeah, by the way, obviously it's awesome to have you back. That's why I think it's good to just do a show so people can get their Randy time that they've been missing lately, you know, but I guess. So just quickly on the book, manuscript's done, submitted, line edits done and all that. We're in the process right now of interior page design, cover design, cover copy editing, you know, all the kind of fun things now that kind of create the whole package, you know, if you will. So, you know, again, working with Archway Publishing, division of Simon Schuster, and just love that team there. They've been just fabulous so far, and I'm sure it will continue all the way through. Had a great conversation with one of their marketing people yesterday. But now there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of things happening. As soon as I do have a date where it'll be available for pre-order on Amazon, obviously that's going to really be a trigger for a lot of things out there. You know, Amazon reviews is going to be like the number one thing I'm going to be looking at over the next 2-3 months or so when once that available becomes available for pre-order, um, for people to, to get a look at it. And, um, you know, again, I'm— it's a book that, um, you know, obviously enjoyed writing the other two. I think I'm particularly proud of this one. Um, I think there's a lot of that is that we've all learned together. There's a lot of things, you know, over the past 4 years that have kind of culminated into something that not only serves to give greater insights for people who are running peer advisory groups no matter where they are in the world, whether those are virtual or in person, but also, and I think even more importantly, things that have come out of all of that research and that I think are hugely beneficial for driving high-performing teams And post-COVID, the timing couldn't be better, I think, for people who are really trying to pivot and figure this out, which is really in many respects why the accountability article was written and kind of called out. When you think about other than having the right people, right? And obviously we know the pivotal importance of psychological safety, when it comes to really great teams, having a culture of accountability, you know, to one another and for one another is just right up there. And so talking about that, not in the way we typically think of accountability, but in kind of the pair innovation style accountability, was kind of fun.

Well, let's contrast those two. That's a good launching point. So there is the stereotypical view of a leader imposing— I'll use that word— imposing accountability on the team or the group versus not at all how, how your article and how I know you personally approach it.

Well, and to all its individual members, right? It kind of makes everybody feel like anytime they go to any meeting or show up to anything, they're always playing defense. It's always about did you do this, did you do that, did you get this done, that done, or whatever. And interestingly enough, so much of it is around outcome metrics versus output, right? We get so focused on, you know, the end result that too often we don't spend the kind of time, particularly when we're a team and we have opportunities to work together and collaborate in ways that can make us more productive, that we focus on what does it actually take to achieve those outcomes and how well are we doing those things together. Um, but I, I have always regarded, and I think in most situations you talk to employees and that's what they will tell you, it just feels like that the leader's on one side of the table, I'm on the other side of the table, and I'm just fending things off. I'm playing defense all the time in terms of justifying all of these kinds of things, whatever did happen, didn't happen, whatever. Um, I think this kind of speaks to a number of things in the article, and I'm going to just kind of take them one at a time. One of them, I guess, is rather to think about you holding other people accountable. It's basically thinking of it in terms of I'm accepting personal responsibility for the role that I play on this team and with this company, and that I— it is up to me to bring my A-game, and I hold myself to that incredibly high standard. I expect others to do the same, just as they expect that of me. But it's, but it's a different feel to it. It's much more about playing offense than it is about playing defense. It puts me as the employee, you know, in real control in terms of taking pride over my outputs, my outcomes, and my contribution to not only doing my job but helping everyone around me be better. And this is where it kind of pivots to the leader. And I think this is the importance of it being a part of the team and not being apart from it. Oftentimes when you talk to leaders and you ask them, are you part of the team or are you separate from the team? And they'll oftentimes say, no, well, that's the team there. I lead the team, but that's the team. And it's like, you know, you could look at it that way, certainly. But I think what we found time and time again in our research over the years with both groups and with CEOs who lead high-performing teams is that the CEOs are a part of the team. They absolutely consider themselves that, right? It's not like, you know, like I mentioned about one person on one side of the table and one on the other where the leader often has this philosophy that, all right, I have one employee that I'm going to hold accountable for this goal because then if they don't get it, I have one throat to choke. It was literally the quote that I've heard on many occasions, by the way. It doesn't exactly make me feel like, all right, we're all in this together, win or lose, right? So I think the idea— of a team feeling like that you are in it for one another, there to support one another, and for that leader, by the way, to just to be as accountable to the team. And what I mean is kind of publicly stating to the team, here are the expectations for myself in terms of how I want to support you all, and the team members do the same, then everyone's on a level playing field there and they understand what it takes, you know, to achieve the goal. Of course, being on a team is more than just about achieving a particular goal or whatever. Great teams have what we found in our research with high-performing groups as really strong learning achieving cycles, which is how they continually get better all the time, right? They learn together. They do it really well. They give each other the courage and encourage one another to act on that learning. They achieve results, even if there's some trial and error involved there. And once they do, it inspires more learning and more growing and ability of the team to get just that much better over time. And again, these are things that we all do, you know, leader and employee alike on the same side of the table as part of the same group, right? We've already chatted a little bit about, of course, measuring, you know, outputs as well as outcomes. I think that's really key. But I think when we think about accountability, framed much more as about personal responsibility than it is holding other people, you know, accountable. You know, we think about like a model sometimes of the leader and then there's the team underneath him. There's all these kind of little dyad relationships that create this, I'm on this side and you're on that side of feeling. We worked with Dave Logan originally, or initially I should say, in writing The Power of Peers and thinking about how triads, you know, is probably a better model where the leader, the individual team member, and the team itself as an entity each hold equal responsibility for having that culture of personal responsibility/accountability that's designed really to make everyone better, which is the why, you know, everyone's there. They want to produce, you know, a common work product or achieve common goals together and do it in the very best way they can. But before I get into kind of the role of the leader on that, Randy, how does that strike you as being in some respects different from what you grew up with in terms of leadership or on the employee side of things?

Well, you know, we're very steeped in hierarchical kind of authority. Figures. And I can tell you that from my very first job throughout most of my, you know, early career, hey, the boss is the boss. The boss is in no way connected to us, right? And I grew up hearing more bosses say— and if they didn't completely articulate it this way, this was the sentiment— it's my job to catch you doing something wrong. It's my job to point out your faults and where you missed the mark. And it probably had a big impact on me in that I didn't follow suit with that whole autocracy. I hated it and committed myself, if I ever get the title, if I ever get the authority, I'm going to so go in the opposite direction, you know, which is what I did. I think of all the high-performing teams that I've ever not been a part of, but the ones that I have helped serve in the last 11 or 12 years as a coach, and none of them are led by autocrats. I mean, they are all led by people who, I don't know whether it's intuitively or otherwise or learned, but they just seem to be people who, who believe that they are part of, of the whole and, and not even the major part of the whole, but they have a pivotal role, but so does everybody else. And yeah, and we're going to put links in the show notes to the article because there's some diagrams that depict what Leo's talking about as opposed to a hierarchy where You know, these, these triads, they just fit together and they just move the process further along. Hoping that we're getting away from the autocrats that I grew up. I'm seeing fewer and fewer of them because so many organizations just won't put up with it. It's just that lone wolf who thinks that they're all that and then some. Thankfully, I'm seeing, whether it's in city government or whether it's in corporate work, business work, I'm just not seeing that pay off because you can't do it all by yourself. And those people don't seem to be capable of getting the most out of a group of individuals. They— I don't, I don't think they're even capable of building effective teams, much less leading a team to be high performing. So yeah, I love that triad model.

Well, and you know, in fairness, there's a guy that I talk about in the upcoming book, his name is Roy. Now, this was one of the early jobs I had out of college. I was supposed to take this job with Paul Songress. It wasn't gonna start till October. So from April to October, I gotta find something, right? I got no money, no car. So I'm like, oh great, I'll get a job at a car dealership. I can make money and they give me a new car to drive as a demo, right? So, but anyway, it was also, as it turned out, one of the richest experiences I had from an employee perspective because, you know, I was in an environment where basically the sales manager there, if he caught you in what he felt was a fleeting moment of inactivity, he literally would take a phone book and throw it at you in your direction and say, hey, call 20 landscapers. And, you know, and you didn't question it. You're just like, okay, I gotta get to the phone and call my 20 landscapers, right? I mean, that was kind of have that environment. It was very much, we were all told what we were supposed to do, and we just had numbers to hit, period. And that was that. And it was, yeah, it was very, very different. Now, as I point out in the book, Roy didn't do that because he's a bad guy. He didn't do that because he was mean or anything like that. That's all he knew. That's all he ever really understood about what leadership is all about. Because it was all about the task, hit the number, get the task done, hit this. The fact that it actually takes people for you to make that possible kind of was a kind of a side thing, right? Right. So now you've got, you know, for, for some people who eventually say, yeah, no, I'm— this has to be a better way, I don't think I can survive in this environment, I'm going to be out of here now. Um, you know, they would eventually, although they were few and far between, would find places where you had leaders that recognized, at least to a greater extent, how important it was for people to develop and for people to be empowered and for people to see their role as one where they were following the example of others around them, like who were really great at their jobs. So you wanted to show up and be really great at what you did as well. It wasn't about people holding me accountable for that. I was in this environment where it's like, whoa, you know, um, got to bring your A-game here, you know, because the expectation is that I'm here for a reason. I'm here to make a difference, not just to fulfill a role. And so that creates an entirely different feel, which is kind of a bit of where I was getting to, you know, with that. The other thing, you know, that brought up in the article too is if you think about, okay, so what's the leader's role in the culture of accountability. And I think about it as a leader, not as an enforcer, right, because that would put you back in that command and control type of model, right, but more the backstop. You know, that if you can create a culture where people recognize that their own currency in that organization is based on them showing up and bringing their very best every day, and that the leader models that behavior by doing the same, Right? Now all of a sudden you've got everyone literally on the same team, not people across from the table, but everyone on the same side, you know, working on that. And when something does break down, if it ever does, in terms of a culture of accountability, the leader is there to offer a reminder, I think, for the fact that, hold on, remember how important this is. Let's make sure we stay on track and we're here, as opposed to, you know, being the one driving it. And, you know, I think it's, you know, really essential when we have that type of approach, you know, we look at, you know, the other aspect of this too is that the goal, right, because we think about this accountability thing, is more getting better every day as opposed to hitting certain numbers or trying to win a championship or trying to create an ad campaign or trying to trade whatever, right? That those become the reward for a daily effort to just get better every single day we walk in the door. And if we continue to do that, we're going to be great. We're going to do that and we're going to do it together. And then of course, you know, we talked about this idea of you win to lose together. It's not about a throat to choke, you know, it's about being all in, and we celebrate together, we mourn together, we, you know, whatever it happens to be, but we're going to continue to learn from one another, we're going to continue to grow, and even if we lost yesterday, we— that doesn't mean we're not going to win tomorrow and the day after that. But yeah, it's such an interesting thing, I think, when you think about you know, leaders and how we— and especially, by the way, when times get tough, right, in times of crisis, when we reach management by desperation, right, well, now all of a sudden we're all about like, how do we hit this, that, and the other thing, and we forget those important lessons about all being on the same team. It starts to become every person for himself, you know, and, you know, that is not particularly great.

Speak a bit to the role of a leader as it relates to this topic of accountability and your thoughts on a leader's impact on helping people better understand and see where they fit in the team.

I think it's, well, it starts with bringing the right people on the team. It's really recognizing who are the people that are gonna hold themselves to the high standard that everyone else on this team does. And how are they going to make a contribution and make a difference. I think it absolutely starts there. I mean, you know, the whole model, the whole reinforcing loop, you know, of the 5 factors starts with having the right people in the room. And I think the leader has a huge responsibility in being able to identify who those people are and what they bring to the table and what the expectations are. You know, I want to be really clear on this too, that just because we talk about the leader on the same side of the table versus on the other side of it or, not holding people accountable in that finger-pointing way, that doesn't make it more gentle leadership. It doesn't make you less tough or less demanding or whatever. You're going to challenge your team members and you're going to challenge one another and you're going to continue to be better and get better, you know, as a result of it. It's just different, you know, it's a very different feel when you feel like we're all in this together versus having someone feel like, wait a minute, I'm not the competitor, you know, which is what you can feel like that, you know, sometimes when you've got that, um, you know, just relationship that's doing this, you know. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think that's where, that's where it starts. And I think obviously modeling that becomes really important. Um, you know, being that leader who obviously is willing to hold themselves to high standards as much as they have the expectations of other people on the team and that they have of one another. It all has to be congruous in that way. It can't be the leader just expecting the best out of everyone else, and then all of a sudden you kind of phone it in 3 days a week. That's not going to fly.

Yeah, Dr. Henry Cloud, you know, advocates for leaders, and I agree with him, and I know you do too, is for us to show up with truth and grace So it doesn't mean, to your point, it doesn't mean that you don't have the difficult conversations. In fact, quite the contrary, it means you do have the difficult conversation. You just, you know, you're just not showing up with a baseball bat in your hand or with your hands ready to put it around somebody's throat, to your point.

Yeah. And, and, you know, Jim Collins speaks to the same thing when he talks about, you know, um, an iron will, but at the same time, uh, just incredible humility. And I think humility is probably as as much of an important word for a leader as there is, is really that. And yeah.

And it's interesting when you read about particularly high-performing athletes in a team event, team sport, and their biggest moments of their life, the championships, the records, the whatever, and just how tough the leader was, and yet bearing complete responsibility for the outcome as much as any of the star players, you know. And you've used UConn women's, and we've talked about various hockey— oh, and condolences to your Bruins, by the way, for being eliminated last night.

What happened? No, I'm just kidding. No, I know. Yeah, it's pretty horrible. Celtics are doing well though.

Yeah, well, my Dallas Stars didn't do too well last night. They had the opportunity to close it out and completely laid an egg. But you look at those kinds of stories, and being a person who's never played anything at that level, but I've done a fair amount of sports coaching and I get it. I mean, there, there is a toughness that does have truth and grace, as Dr. Cloud says, but there's a compassion and there's a, there's just, there's a love for these people to do their very best. And perform at a level. I'm speculating that the Dallas Stars, you know, they came out guns a-blazing two nights ago, and then last night looked like a completely different team. And they've got an interim coach, and I can almost guarantee, you know, the conversation, you know, this is a guy who feels the burden of leadership to help these guys perform at their very best. And last night they didn't. You could listen to his press conference and you can tell. I mean, this is a guy— he's definitely on the same side of the table as the players is really the point.

Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is great players love to be coached. Great players love to be challenged. And it's really all about getting better, which is kind of, again, it really always goes back to who are the right people for this team, right? What are the things that make the difference between someone who makes it on this team and someone who doesn't, despite what could be a great resume or someone who does amazing interviews all that, do they have what it takes to be successful here? And those are really important questions. And once we get a better feel for what that looks like in our organization, you know, because we know that when a leader tolerates a subpar employee, in most cases, the employees, I mean, are looking at that and they're like, really? Like, what is that about? And then when they finally let them go, and the leader thinks, oh, are you sad that so-and-so is gone? They're like, well, yeah, they're a pretty nice person and everything, but God, how didn't that happen 6 months ago? You know, is really kind of the thing when it comes to being, you know, and the expectation is that anyone you're going to add to this team or anyone who's going to replace someone in this team has got to be, you know, playing at a high level and willing to do, um, you know, what it takes to just have a passion around what they do, you know, and I think, and people who do work hard at it and they work hard to be better. They work hard to be great individual contributors and mostly, and I would really add this too, you've got to have people that aren't just strong individual performers aimed at setting good goals for themselves, but also who care about one another, who care about making everyone around them better. Because that way, when I'm challenged by a coworker or questioned by a coworker about something that I've already expressed that I've wanted for myself or for the team, I see that as us supporting one another, helping one another, not calling somebody out. So again, I think when it's clear why we're there and the value and importance of caring for one another, and a commitment to just getting better all the time. I mean, that's just really, that's what it's all about.

Well, and I think to your point, as we kind of round the quarter pole to the finish line here for this show, I think the team itself, I mean, there's an accountability. I don't think it ends up just being completely on the leader, the sole leader, the team itself. Every high-performing team that I know of, there has been this whole group of people stepping up before the person in charge or the person with the title or authority can even say anything, them holding one another accountable, which is a powerful, powerful thing.

Well, absolutely. We've talked about that, as you mentioned, with— there isn't any great sports team who will tell you that, yeah, you think the coach is tough on the players, you should see how the players are with one another. But again, not in a way that puts people on the defensive, but in a way that brings out the best in everyone around them. And I think that is, you know, essential, and it's kind of what it's all about. And, you know, the hope, I think, especially I think as we are, you know, in virtual teams right now, we talked about this a little bit in advance, the caution I would have for CEOs out there who are really getting a little bit like, okay, These teams have been working remotely a long time now. Yes, some of the early results I think for a lot of teams have been particularly positive. People have stepped up, people have shown that they can do great work and be trusted and, and do everything from home. But I think the longer that goes on, the more nervous some people start to get. And I think there's a real tendency to say, okay, we're going to impose all kinds of new accountability pieces because boy, we're going to make sure everyone's doing what they're doing. I think that the likelihood that that would be— have the opposite effect of what you're doing. A, because you're going to engage them in activities that aren't really going to be about their work. It's going to be about just showing their work. And it's going to basically send that not-so-subtle message that, well, they don't really trust me. Here I've been doing all this work. I've been working to death now for the last 3 to 4 months. Numbers are up. Things are good. Now all of a sudden, accountability expectations and measures and things for me from a reporting standpoint and everything just went up, you know, 25%, 50%. You know, so I would really be, you know, trying to swim with the current on this one, you know, for a while. I mean, pay attention to trying to really create the culture that we've kind of talked about, which is kind of this, you know, peer innovation style accountability. And, um, you know, I think, um, that's a better—

we've got to manage our restlessness for sure. I mean, I'm sensing it with my clients. Restlessness, to your point, of wanting to— thinking that you need to, frankly, that you need to do more than you need to do. You need to impose some things.

So, exactly. Well, hey, it's been, um, Randy, good to have you, uh, back. Excited for— we've got some upcoming shows with some, uh, you know, fun guests for September. So, um, that'll be a really good thing. And, um, you know, um, why don't we give you the last word here as we, uh, head up?

I'm really, I'm really excited about the book. Leo, you know, sent me, uh, kind of the final, the final version to, uh, to start reading. So I'm, I'm really excited for the book. I feel like it's going to take this whole conversation to the next level, uh, to to beg a trite phrase, uh, for, for us to just lean on each other. I mean, the tagline is still, is still very powerful. You know, that the power of we begins with me. And that really is what this conversation is all about. We'd like for you to join the conversation. You can, you can ping us on social media. All of the links to our social media profiles are on every episode show notes. So we'll post that. You can find it at Leo Bottari. That's L-E-O-B-O-T-T-A-R-Y.com. PeerInnovation.co gets you to the exact same place. We encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. If you're doing that already, we thank you. And you can watch the YouTube videos. So the podcast is available. If you don't know, those of you that are listening on audio, you can catch the video at our website or at the YouTube channel. There are links to all that. You can find everything at peerinnovation.co. We appreciate you. Everybody have a good one. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. To subscribe to the podcast and learn more about how you can engage peer innovation for your organization, contact us on the website at peerinnovation.co. Till next week, remember, the power of we begins with you.