109: Why Accountability Drives Results

It's time to simplify something that gets way overcomplicated in leadership, and it is personal accountability. And most importantly, the fact that accountability is not a dirty word. Welcome into another episode of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, CEO of Reality-Based Leadership. And this is the podcast where, as you know, We help you ditch the drama or lead beyond drama, build alignment, and call your teams to greatness. And this episode's all about a core principle of reality-based leadership. So core, it's actually the second source of drama that you'll often be called to navigate, which is about personal accountability. And again, it's the fact that personal accountability is not a buzzword. It is not a dirty word. It's not about finding out what someone's doing. It's not about blame. It is really the key to our happiness, our results at work. And that's really where I want to start today. That's my concern with where we're going with personal accountability is just bringing you into a little story that I've been noticing in many of my sessions lately is some of the first parts of the content is how your mind works and talking about stress and things. And then I move into the second source of drama. It's almost 23% of the drama is leaders navigating a lack of accountability on their teams. And so I bring up personal accountability and, you know, the principles, the definition, which we're going to go into. And here's the concern. People's eyes glaze over. Now, maybe it's me. Like maybe this is a boring part of the talk, but I don't think that's the case as I'm always trying to sharpen it. I really think it's this phenomenon as I ask people, They're like, yeah, you brought it up. And that's, I've heard 1,000 talks on that. Like I've been a leader a long time. It's kind of a buzzword. We have our leaders saying, hold people accountable and accountability is good. And so I realized to start off this podcast, it's an apology that's needed that in our space of leadership development, other speakers like myself, I think we've watered down the term and we aren't being sharp with our language so much so that it's become something that people throw to the side. And they hear the word, but it's, it's, it's just, I can't think of anything else, but it's a buzzword. It is just a non-word. And I know I've been watching on TikTok and some of these, these accounts that crack me up that they get, they make fun of like corporate speak. If you've seen any of these where they, they say like KPIs and all of these things, and it feels like accountability is going to be in those soon because it has just been watered down that much. Now, why is this such a concern? In the research, the biggest predictor of academic success, biggest predictor of career satisfaction and success, and then athletic success is essentially your level of accountability in your mindset. It's called internal locus of control in psychology. And making that simple and just, just going at a high level, if you have an internal locus of control, which we would call it reality-based leadership, a high state of accountability. You essentially believe you can have impact in the world. Not that you could control it. Not that you can control all the outcomes and all the people involved, but you can look at a situation and you can find a space to impact it and contribute. So that would be a high state of accountability. On the other side, an external locus of control, you often believe you're at the mercy of your circumstances. Things are up to luck. Some people just get things and others don't. And there's not much effort I can put in to get the results I want in my life. And I often ask, if you were building your own team, your own company, which mindset would you want? The one that believes they can have impact even in an unpreferred challenging reality, or one that believes that we're often helpless? It's kind of an obvious answer. So this mindset, and it's a mindset that is available to everyone, and that's the exciting part, is so key and core to your team, to your culture, To what you want to be coaching on every single day. So with that, that's why accountability shouldn't be a dirty word. It should be a key word that we're thinking about and integrating in everything that we do in, in reflection, in our coaching and our one-on-ones. And, you know, I even add our engagement surveys if you're doing those, and that's a whole different topic. And so let's simplify this a bit. What I first want to go to is just a clarification that accountability is a mindset. Not a skillset. It's a mindset. So many people are trying to teach it like a skillset. And there's some elements there that you could maybe make the jump to a skillset, but it really is a core mindset. And it's that we believe that results happen because of our actions, not in spite of them. In other words, someone in a high state of accountability believes that they can choose their own destiny in some ways. They're never at the mercy of their circumstances. Even if they're really, really in a tough situation, they can find a place to reflect and feel and find where they can impact it. That's really the core at a high level of accountability. And going even deeper into some of that, that quick research on, on why this is, is a challenge is, is there was some cool stuff done. I believe it was at Harvard and, um, and it's come together in some other spaces, but It was this idea of 50-10-40, 50%, 10%, 40%. And it's not a perfect model, but it really gets you thinking about where's your energy going as a leader or as an individual each day. So basically what it said is 50% of our happiness is our starting point given to us at birth. It's kind of in a weird way, the gift of being human, because it's such crazy odds to be even a human being and be born on this earth. So it's like 50% of our happiness is our starting point. given to us at birth. And now real quick on the macro, I think we can acknowledge really quick that there is challenges with access to good starting points, you know, in America, across the world, where it's access to healthcare, access to education, access to resources. You know, as a whole, we're always hopefully working. It's a lifetime, generations of work to be able to give better starting points to all. So that's there on the macro, but on the micro, I often joke that we all start out as babies. And babies are pretty dang happy, or they're, they're not suffering. They're content unless 4 or 5 things are happening. Hungry, hot or cold, diaper change, sick can be in there, but sometimes they're, they're pretty dang strong and I'm missing one. Hungry, hot or cold, sick, tired. Unless those 5 things are happening, I often joke they're not worried about how many emails are piling up. They're not worried how behind they are on projects. Like, I think the research shows they can only see about this far in front of them and it's really blurry. And they don't know, for example, if they're born in a hospital, like what the outcomes are there yet. If this is a good, safe, incredible hospital, they don't know if their parent or parents are like good yet, if they stink yet. And so they're like, whoa, this place is pretty wild. And we all start out as babies. Now that's 50%. 10% is our circumstances. And that's a big chunk, our external environment. The remaining 40% is the level of accountability You or I or one takes for their circumstances. And if I zoom out and I'm being completely honest with you, when the going gets tough in my life and I'm challenged in my career, I'm feeling really busy or I'm behind on things. If you have the human condition as I do, which do I go at first as being the problem? Starting point circumstances or my own level of accountability, boundary setting, making good choices, being intentional. Circumstances. And being honest with you, I'm often like, you know, I'd be such a successful speaker and author with my new book coming out in the fall. I'm like, I'd be so successful if only I had more time. If I had gone to a different school, if I had different follow-up, different marketing, different, you know, video crew at the time, if I had different, um, you know, resources, if I was part of a different mastermind, if I had, you know, um, a different, you know, CRM, if all of that was different, I would be a rock star. And what are the odds in the short term that I will get all of those things filled in the short term? Very low. Now let's say a genie in the bottle came and actually gave me all of those things. What's the maximum amount of happiness in this general model? It'd be the 50% plus the 10%. I'm still missing this void, this gap, this 40%. And so I often ask leaders, is it better to go chase and perfect circumstances for your teams? Engagement surveys, engagement efforts, maybe 10% you can impact there. Or is it better to continuously, consistently, and lovingly coach on accountability to ensure you're not defaulting into a victim mindset, low in accountability, blaming others, or to call you to greatness, to accountability, see your choices, intentional impact? That 40% is where the magic's at. So given that, that setup there, Let's look at all that research narrowing down into that 40%. So I want to clarify why accountability is definitely not a dirty word beyond that, because it's such a predictor of your happiness and your team's happiness. And then some of you are working on engagement efforts. Many people, this is another separate talk, believe that engagement drives results. That's like saying that storks bring babies, but there's a third factor that brings storks and babies because storks are migratory birds. They come in when there's a good harvest. And by the way, this was a study in the 1800s in Amsterdam. They thought that storks were bringing babies. I mean, that's how you got your babies. If you have a baby, right? If you have kids, it was the storks, not any other behavior. They thought the storks were bringing the babies because the data was showing it 2 years straight. But it was the great harvest that brought both storks and babies because storks come in and eat the good food when there's a good harvest. And then mothers at the time had better birth nutrition rates. And so there was a third harvest that brought a great harvest and a third factor that brought both. And when you're looking at your engagement efforts or keeping your team highly engaged in your workplace, whether you're doing formal efforts or not, it is accountability. That's that, that great harvest that brings both results because high accountables in the research get results. And they tend to lean into engagement. They know that as a high accountable, regardless of the circumstances, I can find a place to engage. So I will choose engagement. So this accountability hits both of the metrics that you're measuring as a leader. Every leader I talk to is saying, basically my core responsibilities are to have an engaged team and we got to get business results, organizational results. Accountability gives you both. So that's why it's definitely not a dirty word. So let's go into these factors. I said, it's a mindset. Think of it as an energy cycle. So a little bit of teaching here to just, to just know the mindset. And then I'm going to have some more podcasts that go deep into some of this, but I want to give you the mindset. And I want to give you some really cool coaching questions that, that can guide people to that mindset when they're getting into a lack of accountability. And again, this all funnels into that 40% and building that culture of an accountable mindset across your team. And for yourself, to be honest, because where the leader goes, so goes the team. So if you're modeling blame, lack of accountability, uh, pointing fingers, your team will do the same. It takes a super high accountable that's super intentional to stay underneath the leader. It can be done. And I'd absolutely coach that person to keep doing it, to stay super accountable underneath a very low in accountability leader. That's tough. And so let's look at the 4 factors. So the first one is commitment. And quick definition, this is the willingness to do what it takes to get results. The first step of accountability is that buy-in, that lean-in. Am I committed to do what it takes for my organization? Now that's legally, ethically not hurting anyone, but am I all in? And I'll get into the question shortly. Now, once I'm all in, you might've noticed in your life and your career, it doesn't matter what you commit to. There's going to be this thing called reality. That comes in to like smoke you in the face. It's like, oh, you think you're committed to doing that? Here's some challenges. Here's some unpreferred reality. Here's some circumstances out of nowhere. So that's where resilience comes in, which is the ability to stay the course in the face of obstacles and setbacks. And resilience, one thing to just add here, and we'll do a deep dive on this as well, is resilience isn't about the individual anymore. It's not about muscling through. You can't do this yourself. It's so hard to get things done just yourself. Yes, you got to do your action items, but resilience is about the collective genius. What is your network? Number one, of positive relationships. Who do you know? Who are you connected with that you help often in small and big ways? What pulse are you communicating in with others? That when you're stuck, you can number 2 to that big network. Number 2 is ask for help. And here's how I love to ask for help. This is the key question to write down, by the way, for resilience is what's your one best tip to overcome this barrier, this challenge I have? Because why is that so powerful? One best tip. Human beings love giving advice. They love telling everybody else what they need to do. I even love doing that. If there's a problem that's super complex from a friend, that's really, you know, got a lot of just confusion around it in my head, I'm like, oh, that's easy. Here's what you need to do. You know, they, we, we just love giving advice even to complex situations we know nothing about. And we'll just throw stuff at the wall to see if it sticks. So when you ask, what's your one best tip? It's easy to just say something in 2 seconds. But if I go to someone and say, hey, can you sit down with me? How do I solve this? I don't know how to fix this. That is a much bigger project than just your one best tip. So when you ask many people, what's your one best tip? They might give you a book which has more— the book is the tip, but it has more of a model in there. They give you a podcast. They give you someone to follow online. They give you a cheat sheet or a PDF they got from a workshop they went to. As those start to come in and you have a good network, then you get like 14, 15, 30 of the best resources. Now you have great items from people that care about you. They now know you're going through that struggle. And if they're good friends, you have that support group to help you work through the barrier. So now here's the key commitment. You got your, your list of things to stay resilient, your ideas. Watch for the human condition, the ego. It'll start to cherry-pick. This is low accountability. It's like, oh, tried that idea in 2007. Didn't work again. So that's not going to work. Oh, that looks like it's pretty hard. I'm not going to try that. Oh, that would be a hard conversation. Not going to do that. So you start to cherry-pick the easiest ideas and that will screw up our accountability as well. And so that's the resilience part. Third factor. These are the factors of accountability, the mindset, ownership. Now that makes sense. Many people, many leaders, when they hear accountability, they go right to ownership, hold people accountable, do what you said you're going to do, extreme ownership. And that stuff's great. But that's the third factor. As we interviewed those that were high in accountability, back to the beginning of the topic, internal locus of control, they were consistently happy in their career and getting good results. I can't tell you how many of them did not talk about ownership until further in the conversation. It always started with buy-in and then resilience, commitment, then resilience. Then there was the conversation about ownership. And so that's why it's the 3rd factor, not the main factor. And I think that's what many leaders get wrong is we narrow it down just to ownership. And it's really over-rotated on that. Although still important because it's number 3. Now ownership is the acceptance of our consequences, unwavering acceptance of our consequences, good or bad. No defense, no personalization. It's basically this. Here's what I did that helped. Here's what I did that probably wasn't so helpful. And here's my part in where we're at. Clean. Feel how clean that is? And it's always some things I did to help, some things I did to hinder, and then here's my part in it. Because what you often see is when things go well, it's like all because of us. And here's all the things we did that helped. Still nothing that we did that hindered because it went well. But every single experience, you still want to be gleaning it or reflecting on where there's some things that hindered. So we don't do it again in the future, but that, and then when it goes all bad, it's like, here's all the things that we didn't do that was helpful, but there's still some positives there that we want to make sure we're not missing. So it goes both ways. And that is where ownership should never be confrontational. It should be conversational. If it's confrontational, it's defensive. We're probably off track in the first couple of factors. And so it should be more conversational. And if you, as individually or your teams, when we talk about ownership, we can start to have that be more of a conversation, not a blame game, not a, you know, everybody covering their rear ends. That is a really good sign. So now commitment, resilience, ownership. Now for years in reality-based leadership, Those are the only 3 factors, but now there's a 4th one. And this has been there for a while, but we had to add it because it's continuous learning. Because let's face it, in the world today, if you don't have a continuous learning, some call it a growth mindset, it is just not sustainable. The world is moving too fast. We need our teams in readiness for what's next. So it used to be able to get away. People could get away with not learning because they had a lot of knowledge. They've been doing it a long time. But their jobs are changing so fast. We got AI eating up everything. We got really the world shifting as we know it. So if you're not continuous learning, you're not taking what we did and looking at it to fuel bigger commitments or figuring out, gleaning and mining that for learning. And that's what continuous learning is all about. We're not in a state of accountability. We're losing that cycle. If you think of it as a cycle back into the next commitment, there's, there's a cutoff there. And so commitment, resilience, ownership, continuous learning. And so this is how it goes. Now, where does it break down? Um, I often tell, uh, stories about, you know, so many groups that are like, I'm all in. We're in for that strategy, that decision. You know us, we're in as long as the scope doesn't change as we go. As long as this is the last change for like 8 to 12 months, as long as you don't ask anything else out of us, as long as my job stays very similar. As long as I'm not doing something different in my job that I like doing now. So there's all in committed, but here's the key to watch out for as a leader. As long as. It's called conditional buy-in. And that list of conditions will definitely and soon become your excuses because so many times those conditions, I'm all in as long as, are things that happen in every single commitment there is. Like, I'm all in as long as I hear sometimes everyone follows the process just like we're going to. It's decided, it's a new process, we're using that software, I'm all in as long as everyone else does it. And sure enough, on any rollout, it's known in change and change management that there's a bell-shaped curve that not everyone adopts right away. So I'm all in as long as everyone does it. And all of a sudden I look around and one person isn't doing it. I'm like, see, I'm not doing it. It soon becomes my excuse. And my lack of resilience. And someone says, well, why didn't you stay in there and keep leaning in and modeling the way and staying resilient in the face of that obstacle? And why didn't you say, given that this is decided, why didn't you advocate and teach that person how to follow the change and talk about why the process is so important? You could have been an advocate and got them staying resilient. And you could have, you know, without a leader having to do it, you could have done it. And it's like, oh, well, I said, I'm all in as long as everyone does it. And I saw a couple of people not doing it. So I'm out. So then see how ownership becomes blaming others because they didn't do it. I didn't do it. That's not fair. And then it leads to, what am I learning? Well, basically humans fail me everywhere. And that is just a different way to experience that whole situation. An accountable version of that is I'm all in given reality. And I haven't faced reality in my life as a leader, now as a CEO, as an individual contributor. That people weren't at a different level of commitment, a different level of adoption on my team. So for me and mine, my happiness, my results is I'm going to be all in given there's going to be others in different places. And I'm going to say, given that, how do I keep this moving forward? And I do that because when I get unaccountable, then I don't have resilience and I don't own things on my team. Then I have to get into excuses. And then I just feel the pain of that. So it's for my own cycle. So in a weird way, it comes back to being about us and our own happiness. And so that's why accountability is not a dirty word because it, as we get out of those factors, it starts to spiral fast. And once you get into a low state of accountability, it's kind of like a habit that's hard to get out of, which you can, but it can be really reinforcing. Same on the other end. And so that's why it's so important to model it and have tools like this on your team. So here's my questions I want to leave you with that are my favorite to start introducing this, knowing the 4 factors. So I recommend sometimes just writing down or having a sticky note of the 4 factors and watching where your team is either conditional in their buy-in, they're not being very resilient, or they're pointing fingers when it comes to ownership. And I might sneak in this question at the end of a meeting. We got some action items out there, or I just talked to someone one-on-one. I might say, hey, can I count on you to take that? Or if I roll out a new change, I might say, so that's, that's something new there, team. On a scale of 1 to 5, just everyone in the chat, I want you to put on a scale of 1 to 5, what's your level of willingness to like buy into the what? You don't, you don't have to be all the way in, but just give me where you're at. And that's cool because if I have a team of 10, let's say, 3, 4 people put 5 right away. They're like, the what we're doing is not illegal, immoral, unethical. Like, I'm in. Now we got to figure out the how. But every decision, we got to figure out the how, but they're in and we're going to figure it out. They're 5. Other people say 4. Like, great. There's some willingness there. Someone says 2, someone says 1. Now I don't want to public shame that, but I might be like, for those of you that are saying, you know, 2 or 1, what risks do you see? Let's talk about this. Given those risks, how do we get you still bought in? Because without willingness or commitment, game over. And that's another thing that leaders miss is So many of us are working with the unwilling, meaning not the first step of accountability. It's that fake buy-in, that 1 or 2 out of 5 from the start of the project. And what that looks like, if you don't ask, is people nodding their heads. Yeah, I got the decision we're in, but they didn't put that vote in there. They didn't come into the meeting and say, here's my concerns about buy-in. So I like to ask, are you all in? Can I count on you? And that's all from research. The, in the exit row on an airplane, you're 6 to 8 times more likely if they say, are you willing and able to open that door over there if we're in an emergency? And you're kind of like, rah, maybe. They're like, I need a verbal yes. Otherwise they move you out of the seat. Now I know you can't move your teams out of the organization necessarily, um, right away if you don't get a verbal yes, but think about it in that way and go for that close. And many of you know the close in sales. This is the close in leadership. And if you're not closing with a verbal yes and who doing what by when, it's like the conversation never even happened. That's true accountability. Resilient, I like to say, so you got stuck. What else did you try? And then what else? And then the big one is who else did you reach out to? That's actually more accurate of resilience is who else did you reach out to? Well, nobody, nobody helps around here. Let's build your network. Let's figure out who knows those kinds of things in the organization and outside the organization. I need you to have 10 people by the end of the next 2 weeks that you can reach out to and ask for tips, because that's how you build that collective genius to be able to get through barriers. Ownership. I like to say, what's your part in it? I don't like the judgment of it, but I say, so thanks for sharing. I see we got way off track here. We got You know, a lot of problems. What's your part in the mess? Here's my part in it. I didn't know this was even happening, or I didn't know, or I came in late, or I should have checked in. What's your part in the mess? Now, I don't like mess because that's a judgment, but that's my favorite. Now, continuous learning. This one's my favorite. And I ask this one often. How's that working for you? Now that question is good for a lot of things. When someone's like, well, it's not working. Everything I say to this person, it doesn't get through to them. And I tried this, I tried this, I'm trying this. I was like, so how's that working for you? Well, it's not. I'm just getting more and more angry. So what can we adjust in your skillset, your approach? What can you commit to first step next time? And so these questions are so powerful and they help to cultivate accountability. So pick one. I like to start at the top. Most leaders I work with aren't securing that commitment officially. And they, they assume it's there. And I know it sounds like an extra step, but that extra step goes a long ways in the whole model. So, so everyone here, thanks for listening. Remember, accountability is not a dirty word. I hope you can take at least these factors, get them written out, or these questions, and really start that shift in your teams. Now, again, one disclaimer, don't go so fast. Don't line up your team at the end of an announcement like a drill sergeant and say, can I count on you? Are you all in? Why aren't you all in? That's too much. Find your pace, conversational, know your personality, know your relationship. But if you can just in a casual way, go for that close and get that first step of accountability, you're going to love that the dirty word dissolves. Happiness goes up, results go up, and you're going to love where you end up. So thank you so much. And let's keep ditching the drama, love people up, but don't forget to call people up to greatness. Thank you, Zakariyya. I'll see you on the next episode.