Redefining Accountability: More Than Meets the Eye with Kevin G Armstrong

Hello and welcome to Mastermind Mastery, the podcast for professionals who want to create and run successful peer advisory councils, or as we call them, PACs for short, or they're also known as peer groups or business mastermind groups. I'm your host, Tina Corner Stolz, founder of Elix Council, where I've been in the industry running groups since 2005 and now help those like you with education, certification, and support wanting to do the same. At one time, I ran 10 groups, nearly 100 members, and sold my groups For a Good Multiple and recently released my second book, Your Seat at the Table: How to Create and Run Your Own Peer Advisory Councils, published by Forbes, and grateful to you that it's an Amazon bestseller. I invite you to join each week where we share strategies and techniques to successfully launch and become a master of running your PACs. You'll hear insights, perspectives, do's and don'ts, learn from my and my guests' mistakes, successes, and get the inside track to key takeaways. Each time we have a guest, we'll be having a bit of fun. So are you ready? Let's get going and dive into today's episode.

So welcome everyone to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. I am your host, Tina Corner Stolz, and today we have a guest, and this is a longtime friend and someone that you will all be excited to listen to because he does have wisdom to share. And this is Kevin Armstrong. So Kevin, welcome today.

Thank you. Good to see you again.

Yes. And, and Kevin has a great background. And, um, first of all, I will have you tell the audience where are you located.

I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

And yes, so Canadian, you can hear a little bit of that.

That's right. Yeah. And so half my work's in Seattle, Washington, and half of it's in Vancouver. So I'm kind of, you know, Semi-American, semi-Canadian, but born Canadian.

Yes. And we've had so many great conversations about Canada and American politics and stuff.

Oh, we sure have.

So this all started because Kevin and I, when I was a TAB franchisee, we were franchisees together, shared so many experiences of being on committees, the top 12 and all of those things. And this is how I got a chance to really get to know Kevin and Kevin. As we go, I want to put some credentials out there because you've done some amazing, amazing things. One, an author, Forbes-published book, right? The Miracle Manager, which parlayed into a TEDx talk that you just surpassed a million views in less than, like, 2 months or something crazy.

Yeah, maybe it's the title. Stop sending ducks to eagle school. You just have to Google that or search that on YouTube and it'll take you. But I always like that statement. Stop saying ducks don't feel cool.

Yes, a great statement. And I'm going to say this multiple times, but for all you listeners out there, definitely look up Kevin's TED Talk because it is a great talk to share with your members and your groups, don't you think?

Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it is just to really get clear on You know, it's clear in any organization to get clear on the meaning of words and functions, right? What's the function of a leader versus a manager? And I think we really got that screwed up in business for sure.

We did. We did. Yeah. And you have taken upon you as a passion to, you know, set the record straight on the difference.

Yeah. Yeah. Trying to.

You're making progress. So what else do you do? So you also are an EOS implementer.

Yeah, I'm an expert EOS implementer. I joined Gino when there was about 14 of us in 2011, and now there's like— I think we're going to Dallas in 2 weeks and there'll be— I think there's 800 implementers around the world, 7 books now, and it's just a machine. It's just a machine that works because it's based on accountability. The whole thing is about— it's funny because Bern Harnish, I was talking to him and he goes, "Oh, Gino's so good at marketing." And I said, "No, he's not. He's the most focused person I've ever met and definitely accountable." Totally focused on what he needs to get achieved. And then probably what he brought to EOS, because he just copied Bern and he copied Dan Sullivan and he copied so many people is what he brought was a real simple working process around accountability. He did.

He did.

Definitely admire him. And with EOS, obviously that has helped you with groups. So as we come full circle, how about sharing with the audience your whole journey in regards to the groups that you do? What kind of groups do you do? And yeah, and then we'll kind of start with accountability because that is our theme today for everybody listening. And one of the reasons I had asked Kevin if he would talk about accountability, and pardon my French, I'm going to say this because I have no other way to make this point, is that when we were franchisees together, I always admired he was such a hard-ass. You were such a hard-ass with your groups. And I'm like, Man, you know, this is exactly how it should be. But, you know, you got to have a lot, a big level of confidence to do that. And you do. So, yeah, I'm going to flip it back about— yeah, to you about accountability and just obviously EOS helps with that.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Now I've transitioned from working with groups of business owners, which I really miss and which you do so well. Right. In terms of the company, I'm really amazed at the success you've had in your company in terms of setting up boards with business owners. I think that is invaluable. Like, I think there's 3 things. One, they should have an operating system that works. Two, they should have a coach for a business owner. And three, they definitely need to have an advisory board because of the accountability. Right. And so transition now where I just— I work with teams, but it's the same thing, right? It's, it's, it's about coming together on a regular basis, sharing ideas and holding each other accountable. And, and so it, it really is, man, how do you even compete? Like, if you don't have those things with people, you know, it's just amazing. Like, could you imagine you're competing against somebody you don't, you don't do any of those things. And so you're competing against somebody who sits down with 200 years of experience every month and then through a coach and through a process implements and executes. And you're sitting down with yourself, which is anywhere from 10 to 20 years of, or 30 years, maybe 30 years of business experience in one, in one area, right? So, you know, the, one of the things I remember first starting with, and we, we built great groups. I, I had about 85 members. So I sat down with a, I've sat down with a lot of business owners in the, in the last 25 years. And I was so intimidated at the beginning because you think you're sitting down with these people who have just got it together, and then you learn there's no business owner who has expertise in sales and marketing, operations and finance, all three. Never. Right. They might have real experience with sales. They might have real, you know, with operations or finance. Maybe you'll find a business owner who's strong in two, but never three. And so not only are you sitting down every month with 200 years of business experience, but 200 years of business experience with people who have strengths in those areas, especially finance, because most business owners don't understand finance. You'll always have 1 or 2, 3 people on the board that go, "You need to know your numbers and you got to get a plan to learn your numbers." Which makes you much more bank-friendly when the banks come to talk to you and stuff. And so just huge benefits, right, from that.

By far.

Yeah.

And so can we start with— this may seem so simple, but the more I started thinking about it right before you and I got together to talk about it is just what is accountability? So what does that mean? And I think— do you think it has also the stigma that it's a negative? It's always going to have some negative outcome, like somebody's getting in trouble and getting punished. Versus the benefits from accountability that you were just talking about. But maybe start with, like, what in the heck is it? In essence, how would you describe what it is?

To me, it's— I phoned Gino at 7:00 in the morning a while back. I said, what do you think the difference between accountability and responsibility is? And he said, I don't think there's a difference. And I said, I agree. You're responsible. You're accountable. Basically, it's the buck stops here. I take full accountability. And I think it's such a powerful word because they're invert— I don't know if I discovered this, but I'll take credit for it until somebody proves me wrong. But accountability and politics are inversely related, right? If you have high politics, it's because you don't have accountability in your organization. It's why we don't like politicians, right? Because high politics, no accountability. They can't even answer a question anymore. And so when you change that and you have high accountabilities, the politics disappear. And so what accountability is, is it was me. I take full account. It was, you know, John Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs, right? The buck stops here. And I take full accountability. It's not going like, I was on a call this morning with a group and the guy goes, oh, my secretary, I'm sorry, she didn't update that. And I said, I don't want to hear that. You didn't update that. Don't bring your support staff in here and stuff. You didn't do it. Don't blame other people. The buck stops— you said you were going to get it done. We don't care. You go into a restaurant, the guy goes, oh, I'm really sorry. The chef didn't show up on time, blah, blah, blah. OK, so are you going to give me a free meal? Otherwise, shut up. I don't want to hear all the details about why you couldn't deliver on what you delivered. Just say, we really screwed up. How can I make it right? You know, the thing that drives me nuts, absolutely nuts, is that, is that unfortunately in our society, people who aren't accountable create controversy. The minute you don't take accountability, there's controversy. And they— and we, unfortunately, the people who create controversy in our society make the most money. What is it, $750,000 to hire Bill Clinton now for a keynote? I did not have sex with that woman. Right. Or just that whole thing of just own up. Just say it was me. I did it. And then instead of saying I'm sorry, which is just a statement, because you say to people, raise your hands if you know people who say I'm sorry all the time, which is just a statement. What you're not asking is ask this question and feel it in your stomach. It's a lot harder to ask this question. Can you forgive me? Because sometimes the answer is what?

No.

Right. Now you got some work to do on a relationship because you've said many times, right, and you haven't been accountable.

At least you know where you stand, right?

Yeah. And, and give me an example of where you're apologizing because you haven't been accountable for your commitment, right? So, you know, usually when you screw up, it's because— I mean, I right now I'm just running my mind if I can pick an exception to that, right? That you've screwed up because you haven't been accountable. So it's a very powerful word. You say you're going to do something Do it. You know, I have people that show up late and they go, oh, sorry, I'm late. I'm always late. No, you just don't respect our time.

Exactly.

Me, you don't expect anybody. So a person shows up for a board meeting and one of your old, you know, one of your board meetings, yeah, and they say, I'm late. Oh, I'm late. I go, you're always late. It's a joke. We just know you're going to be late. But basically, just understand you have no respect for the time of people in here because we all showed up in time. What you need to say is, I just don't consider you a priority because I know that you took your family and your kids to Hawaii in December. You didn't miss the plane. And I know why you didn't miss the plane, because you showed up 3 hours early, because that's what you have to do. And if you are late, they're not going to hold the plane for you, right? So guess what? Your trip to Hawaii is just a lot more important than us. That's all you're saying. Let's just get real with each other, right? Unless you're going to say Yeah.

Yeah. Which is your point. There's a point here. First of all, I hope as the audience listening, you can see why I love this man and why I said he was a hardass. And that you just— first of all, two things real quick that I want to make sure we pause for a minute that I think are phenomenal about what you're saying. And number one is if you have those members that are late to your meeting, I hope you're taking away from Kevin, first of all, these points that he's saying, because it is a disrespect of time, right? And just call it out and it is what it is, right? There is no, I'm sorry I'm late, and, and that part. The other part is that I hope you're hearing about, first of all, this is just very individual accountability. It's having self-respect, right? That I I'm also going to hold myself accountable because it's the right thing to do and I have integrity and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. We're not even really talking about holding each other accountable yet, except for that one instance about in a meeting. A lot of what you're already saying is self-accountability, which is probably a very good characteristic to screen for when you're screening for members in your group or even whoever you want to work with.

Right.

Because who likes to work with somebody who just never does what they say they're going to do?

It's like, yeah, for sure. And I don't think you have to screen. I think, you know, you can set the expectation, hold people accountable and teach them about it, right? Because when you, you know, when you teach people what accountability is, they can learn it. If they want to be a leader, they can learn it. If they want to be a great manager, they can learn it, right? Or a great employee, they can learn accountability in terms of just, just own it. You know, don't, don't, don't do this stuff where you're coming in, you know, habitually late or stuff. And then, and I've had people turn around, they're never late anymore. I mean, it's your integrity, right? I know with you, I, I, I give Tina, uh, 10 out of 10 on integrity. If you have friends in your life, you have friends that you say, okay, let's meet at 7 o'clock on Friday night for dinner, okay? And, and, and some of those friends Actually, you don't even book an appointment with those people, some of your friends, one-on-one, because they might not show up. So you make sure there's 2 or 3 other people in case that person— and when they don't show up, you go, oh, well, you know, Harold's not here, and you just move on, right? Uh, whereas you have other people in your life, like you, if you say you're going to be there at 7 o'clock and you're not there at 7 o'clock and I haven't heard from you, I'm phoning the police and the hospitals because there's something wrong.

There is something wrong.

And when you say, who's got integrity? Who walks their talk? Who says when they're going to do something, they're going to do it?

Right.

All that stuff is around your perceived level of integrity. Integrity is consistency between what you think, say, and do, and only, only measured on what you do. Right. So if you're saying, I'm going to be there, or I'm going to have this done, or I'm going to have this to you by Friday at 2:00, there's people in your life where you go, I don't even need to follow. I don't even need to follow up. This is going to happen. And there's other people where you jot down further on a conversation, you send them an email saying, you said you'd have this by here. So you can just up the commitment level, right? Because you're not sure.

Yes.

So which— I guess, which person do you want to be? Because when you show up late all the time, you're just saying, I don't have integrity.

And which person do you want to be with your clients? Yeah, right. And I love that part that you also talked about, that it can be learned, because I think about today's society, right? Some people don't even want to have that conversation about you know, what happened here?

You're late.

No, you're late. You could be on time. So, you know, those examples that you said, because they are afraid of conflict, right? And they're afraid of a negative backlash.

Yeah.

Into today's world. So everybody's kind of afraid and tiptoeing around, and then they accept this crazy bad behavior, right?

Right. Which is nice. So my big discovery in Well, one of my big discoveries in '24 was the difference between nice and kind. I never even thought about that, right? Words are so paramount and I'm so obsessed with words. But what's the difference between nice and kind? The nice thing to do is ignore it and say, glad you made it to the meeting. And habitually you're just going, hey, the nice thing to do is, oh, glad you're here, right? And just let it go. The kind thing to say is say, hey, If you're in business and you're running a business, your time is worth at least $500 an hour. So the 9 people around this table at $4,500 an hour, why don't you just bring in $10 a minute every time you're late, you know, just to make up? And we'll take that money and put it in a slush fund for lunch or something, right? Because so the kind thing is to do those kind of things where you go, this is unacceptable. You know, you said this and you're constantly just going like this to both, to all of us, right? So instead of doing that, why don't you pay for it and, and see if they're open to that? You know, okay, our time's worth money, you're going to pay us for our time. And, and that, that's the kind thing to do as opposed to going just ignoring it because it only is going to get worse. Then other people see that as acceptable and they go, there's no accountability in this organization, I'm not going to focus on results, I want to have a better car because John's got I want to have a better car. I want to have a nicer hotel room. I want to fly business class because Harry gets to fly. That's the stuff you start getting concentrated on, right? It's all the politics. It's not getting stuff done in an organization unless people are accountable.

So what do you do? I want the audience to know this answer. This is why I'm asking.

Yeah.

What do you do when you're sitting there and you're getting ready to start a meeting and there are people that are not there yet? Yeah, right. And so Kevin Armstrong does what?

Well, that's, that's a real dependent question on the circumstance, right? If you were late, if you were late, I wouldn't say a word because you're never late. I know there's a good reason why you're late because you're never late. If somebody's habitually late, maybe it's time to lock the door, you know, and send them away, or, or let them come into the meeting, say, yeah, you're late. This is happening a lot. And then in your one-on-one saying, hey, Susan, this isn't working and this is your last warning, or you'll be off the board. When you're in your business, your assets are only your board members. You have to protect your assets.

Yeah, you do.

Right. And so when you let somebody get away with saying they're going to fire somebody or saying that they're going to be on time or whatever it is and not holding them to account, then you're letting them down. You're being nice and not kind. Kind is having— to me, kind is having the conversation where there's a chance you're entering the danger. Because if you go up to somebody and say, hey, I need to sit down with you, you got bad breath. Really bad. And as an organization, go see a dentist or whatever you have to do. We're going to pay for it. We're going to help you with this. You got— or you sit down with somebody and say, I think you got a problem with alcohol, right? You're drunk all the time. You really get really drunk. And I'm embarrassed for you, right? So what can we do to help you? And that person might turn around and say, stick it. I don't have an alcohol problem. You know, denial is a great thing, right? It's conflict between knowledge and belief. I know I'm an alcoholic, but I don't want to believe it. And so while they're in denial, they're going to attack. They could attack. And so kind is just entering that on accountability, is entering that circle of uncertainty where you might not get, you know, you might not get a good reaction. And so it requires— oh, I know what it is. Kind potentially requires courage. That's what I think.

I would underscore that. Yeah, I think you have to have the courage because you're You're, you know, a lot of people worry, right, what other people think of them. So some people won't go down that path because they'll think, well, they're going to think negatively and I'm going to get a bad reaction versus the mindset that I hear you're saying, which is come at it from kind being, look, I want to help you. This is why I'm having this conversation so that you can be better. The better version of yourself, right? And have more positive impact around everybody, which I know you want to have, those kinds of things. Back to that, you can learn accountability. So you can probably discern quickly if somebody's willing to learn or not. Are they, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And you do run the risk, even with people close to you, have a kind conversation, you know, and it requires the courage to have that conversation. And I've had kind conversations with people that I love very much and they haven't talked to me since. Nothing I can do about that, right? I just had to get an answer to the behavior and I got an answer to the behavior and I'm satisfied. I walked away, but they're not satisfied. They're really mad. So I go, okay, you know, you realize it probably impacted other people positively. Yeah.

You know, I always just remember this when I had ran a sales team because I would lock the door if they were late. Yeah, right. And it only takes a couple of times and then they're not late anymore.

No, no.

Yeah.

Like the airline. The airline's not going to phone you and say, hey, are you going to be here pretty soon? Because you're late and we have to wait for you. Right? Right.

Can you imagine?

It's not going to happen.

That's right. So as we get towards the end, I have a question in that if we, you know, can you recall, do you know of some techniques that you would use to help members hold each other accountable? So teaching them to go, okay, you all can hold each other accountable. It's not always you, the moderator, running the meetings, right?

Yeah.

And getting them into that great behavior of doing that. So any thoughts on that?

When I used to moderate those meetings, I would coach other members to challenge that person, right? I shouldn't, as a facilitator, I shouldn't be taking that on. People complain to me about George. I go, well, Let's have a kind conversation with George and let's learn how to structure it. So two things would be Crucial Conversations, read that book. There's lots of books on tough conversations. Crucial Conversations to me has a formula of here's what I observe. And that gives a person the opportunity to say, you're not observing things properly. And you go, yeah, you're right. You do work till 6 o'clock. You do have an agreement with the president to come in late, 'cause you have to look after your kids. And I don't work till 6 o'clock, so I don't see you working till 6 o'clock. So take back my accusation that I see you coming in late all the time, right? So you can have that, here's what I observe, here's how it makes me feel. The emphasis on you. How does it make you feel? I'm frustrated. I'm embarrassed for you. That's how I'm feeling is embarrassed for you and those types of things. And then what do you need? What do you need from this person? And that formula has— when you want to have a kind conversation, that formula will keep it kind. How the person reacts is not your responsibility. If you frame it that way and make it about you, what you observe, how it makes you feel, and what you need from that person. And then if it goes south, not much you can do about it, right? And that's what you're concerned about. The person will quit. Well, they're not paying you a fee anymore. Well, you're going to lose your whole board if you're monitoring a board of directors with your company and you don't do this, then you're not going to have the kind of lack of turnover that you enjoy, right, with your members, because I know you have an excellent turnover rate. People could join a board, they stay on it because they say they know it's business and they know they can get a lot out of it.

Yes. Yep. Not going to waste your time.

We're back.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, the last question.

Yeah.

This is the catch-all with our listeners that are out there running groups. It could be any advice, but you have had such great success. What's one thing that comes to mind you would share with the audience of a piece of words of wisdom for them?

Integrity is consistency between what you think, say, and do. And so if you make a commitment, life is about commitments. And so when you make a commitment, you got to hold yourself accountable. Right? So you need to focus on yourself. Don't focus on somebody else's integrity. Focus on yours. Where are you letting people down? And work on it. And if you need help, I guess if you need help, ask for help, right? That's what they're there for. Yeah.

Excellent. As always, time flies with conversation with you. And I want to make sure the audience knows how to get a hold of you. So will you list all the various ways that they can reach you? And we'll obviously put in the show notes all the links to, like, your TED Talk and your book, et cetera. But for everybody out there, what would be the best way if they want to reach out to you?

So Kevin, as in heaven, right? Kevin's in heaven. G as in golf. I love to golf. So Kevin G. Armstrong. Armstrong. Neil Armstrong. Right. The first person on the moon. So just kevingarmstrong.com.

Excellent. There you go. Yeah, perfect. As always, Kevin, it was great to see you.

Great to see you. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Love us back.

All right, so everyone out there, another great episode today, and we look forward to you joining next week. And until then, go make it happen.

Right on.

Hey, moderators of groups, thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. To get access to today's show notes and exclusive content and resources, visit TinaCornerStolz.com/podcast or LXcounsel.com, where you can also become part of an exclusive online community, attend our academy, or get free resources, templates, checklists, and more. And you can even contact me there as well. So if this episode resonated with you and you know someone who can also benefit from listening, please share with them by taking a screenshot and even posting on your social media. I also love reviews and appreciate hearing from each of you, those actually doing this wonderful work. Please tune in next week for another episode of Mastermind Mastery. And I'll close by sharing something my mentor did after every learning moment. He shared a shiny pebble from his pocket with anyone he passed knowledge to and ask them to forward that pebble knowledge on. So now I encourage you to go pass on a pebble, the takeaways you learned today, to either your existing groups or fellow peers. Now go make it a great one.