S2E22: Understanding Accountability

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome listeners to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. This is a solo episode where I want to bring you up to date on some of the new ways I'm coming to understand accountability. And how just walking with a term like accountability, if you walk with that word through life, it just gets richer and deeper and richer and deeper. And these teachers appear that take you really to the next level. And that's exactly what happened for my team and I as we recently went through a training program put on by a company called IGIOS. And Within that company, there's a gentleman called Tim Galloway, and you know I'm a fan of Tim's and all the work he's done on the inner game. And this was a team training, an extension of not only his ideas but also the ideas of a couple of other really talented, amazing folks. And somehow intuitively, I heard about the training— not intuitively, but when I heard about the training, I intuitively just said yes, like a Yes. Like, without even knowing what it was about, I said yes, and we will bring the entire team, and we will come to LA, and we'll spend 3 days, which, as many of you know, is a really big investment of time and money. And that intuitive yes, again, was one of the best yeses I ever said. And I can understand where training can get discounted in the day-to-day operations of work and life, and it seems like a big ask to ask your team to take time out of the office, time away from their weekend lives, their family. I mean, this was a big ask for me to make and another big yes that my team just said, sure. And interestingly enough, they asked me for details which I didn't have. So they really also said just an intuitive yes. Now, I'm so glad that we did because we had 3 days of coming together as a team. And if I had to put my team up against any team out there, my team is fantastic. They are a dream team. We know from our benchmarking that we pull off, given our size and given the size of our team versus the size of the revenue they generate and the work that they move through on a daily basis, we know from actual benchmarks that we do the same amount, have the same impact as teams twice our size. So this is a team that is a well-oiled machine. They are so good at resilience and execution and pulling off miracles that it's just unbelievable. So I went in interested on what we could learn, how we could take things to the next level. And boy, we just learned so much. The training itself was not stand in front of the room and teach and preach. There were some really wonderful tie-downs and messages, but the training itself takes what we teach folks about their ego and moving beyond ego as a leader. The training takes entire teams into a simulation, and you basically are put into the simulation and then asked to achieve the goal at hand and then reflect on what you brought to the table and what you learned and how that could help your team going forward. And one of the things that was so interesting to me, because I really believe my team's like the dream team, I'm thinking, you know, how can we really up our game? And, you know, we've been through a lot of training and development, like really what's in it for us? And I tell you what, we really walked away with some great new understandings that I want to share with you about my learning. And everybody's learning is different in these experiences. This is just what I learned about myself. and about a deeper level of some of the things that I can teach others. It really led me to get into this really creative process about all kind of cool new things we can bring to you. One of the things that I learned, and I know my team learned, but I'll speak for myself, is that we can get more accountable during our self-reflection. Now, self-reflection leads us to accountability, and it's really the foundation of accountability to toggle up from ego and venting. Self-reflection that amazing act that can move us into accountability, into a different part of our brain so we can move through the world with all of our intelligence instead of that primal, visceral, reactive part that is ego. But what I learned about my own self-reflection is that a lot of times I self-reflect and then I share what I've learned about myself in a pretty self-indulgent way, meaning I use a lot of words and I want to describe the entity of it, the entireness of it. Mm-hmm. And what I learned during this training about myself is that clarity comes with fewer words, and that many times when we speak longer or use more words, we actually take away from clarity rather than add to it. And at times we think that more words adds clarity, and that there's an accountability, a responsibility on my behalf to really preprocess my work so I get clear and I present it in a way that's concise. So I actually clarity, not chaos to the team. That I not only have a responsibility to self-reflect and stay in my lane and own my own stuff, but I have a responsibility to my team to not add chaos in. And this took some things to a new level for me. It also validated for me some of the power of our message at Reality-Based Leadership is that I work really hard to translate the research and experience and application down to very clear, simplistic ideas like toggle up. And, and that, that's really the power that people can leave our trainings and really use what we taught them in minutes. And for me, I want to work with the leaders I coach, you, my audience, to really encourage you to preprocess your work before you speak and let bigger pauses and more silence enter your space. When we're filling our space with words and we're interrupting one another and it looks like we're innovative because things are frenzied, it really takes the air out of the space. It takes the breath out of a space. And we really can't grow magic because there's no room in there. There's so many of us talking about what we know about ourselves and what we know about the situation that we really kill the curiosity and don't get into what we don't know. And So one of the first lessons I've learned is to process my own work. Now, we've taught you some of this where if you're going to take the time of another about a work situation, to use a tool like the SBAR to preprocess your work so that you don't come in with unprocessed work and the other person has to process it. And then he who processes it usually takes some accountability and runs to Fix it. We, we have that tool out there, but I really want to encourage people to do a lot of pausing and just be clear. And so one of the rules we put in place as a team is you can only speak for 10 seconds. You have 10 seconds to have the floor, and then somebody else raises their hand and you point to them, and you have to pass that baton of speaking off in 10 seconds or less. And that— Rule changed our conversations. So I encourage you to just get in touch with how long you talk. I know on my podcast I'm always looking, and it can be 40 minutes or so as I do a brain dump for you to get you thinking. But in the moment, just really thinking about that responsibility. And I recently heard on a podcast that You know, to become fully human, to evolve, really is the work of a lifetime. And what I love about these concepts is if you take that just one word, as I said, accountability, and walk with it and really let it seep into kind of your life on a cellular level, you'll just keep peeling back the onion about what that can mean for you. And I think our understanding of accountability is pretty superficial. And a lot of us don't really understand it at all. It's a lot about ownership and whose butt's on the line. And we as a company expanded that from our research, that it's a mindset, not a skill set, that it's not about ownership, that it begins with commitment, the willingness to do whatever it takes, the knowledge that we will always have reality and our success isn't going to be in perfect circumstances. We're going to succeed Given the fact that we had interruptions, changing priority, too few resources. It's being all in anyway. It's understanding that buy-in is a verb. And then accountability has a lot to do with how we stay in, our resilience. Like, not just that we're all in, but that we stay in when the going gets tough. And resilience is about how we stay in, that we don't stay in through our own muscle and our own frenzy and our own— high stamina, that we stay in through strategies that use our resources better, use our team better, use our great network better, that we get good at crowdsourcing, that instead of hunkering down and trying to muscle through, we build a form of resiliency that the minute we're stuck, we question our thinking, look at our assumptions, open it up to crowdsource with our team and get really curious about a situation. And then ownership, kind of this third factor when you look at what we know about accountability that starts with commitment, it lives through resilience, but at those points that you really get your report card back, that you get your results back, that from an ownership perspective you can really account for. Accountability is the ability to account for what was my part in that, what helped, what hindered, what added clarity, what added chaos. And during the training we were in, I found a new level of accounting for that I think I wasn't focused on enough. And that wasn't just accounting for my part in the results, it was accounting for my commitment to the process we agreed upon, my honoring of the agreements I made. So when a company comes out with values or a team comes out with a process or business discipline has a methodology, that my accountability needs to include, my ownership needs to include taking a bit of inventory about did I honor those agreements? Did I abandon the process and go rogue? Did I really abide by some agreed-upon cultural basics that we talked about? And then is the majority of my time about continuous learning, which is the 4th factor that we talk about at Reality-Based Leadership in learning and being able to commit to bigger things. Learning To me at times is I take an inventory. It's kind of serial, and then I think about what do I need to do next to get better. And learning for me is expanding into— if it's an inner game process, learning means awareness and focus to how I am in the present moment, whether I'm operating out of an external need to meet some performance or influence another person or be seen in a certain way, or the awareness of whether I'm operating out of an inner game that's pretty peaceful. So am I— where am I in the moment? Am I external or internal in both my motivation, but also in what part of me am I bringing to the table, my low self or my high self? So So to summarize our 4 factors, we know that accountability has a lot to do with commitment, resilience, ownership, and continuous learning. And what was fun is being together as a team, we were able to spontaneously take these factors to some really deep levels. And I really want to pass on to you what I think are some Additional ways to think about accountability in your life and in your work life and in your team's life that you might not have thought of before. So one of the things I've already mentioned is if you want to add clarity rather than chaos to a team, if you want to help rather than hinder, if you want to do improvisation, which is that yes, and, and move us forward, if you want to use your expertise to move us forward rather than your opinion to stop us. You really have an accountability to speak clearly and concisely because conciseness leads to clarity. And then be done and really settled into the accountability of listening and really seeking to understand and trying to see things from another person's perspective and listening with a way of— Empathy. Not how can I defend against that, but how can I incorporate that data point, that different experience into my own understanding of the situation? So listening with a ton of curiosity, which is bigger than just seeking to understand. It's really listening with some curiosity. Another way to look at accountability is not just can I account for my part in it, but Accountability is really the ability to count for something. It's my way to count, to have my efforts have the highest value. If I want to add value, I need to be really thinking about how I'm showing up at the table. And I have a lot of people who say to me, Cy, I wish I was more valued at work. And I would often say, well, if you want to be valued, add value. And I think at times I was too narrow in thinking add value meaning be the one who produces some great results, and that's part of it. But sometimes adding value is not tinkering with an idea, it's just saying yes to something that you could live with rather than always figuring out how to optimize it and be clever and fancy with it. So One of the things that really came to the top for me is one of my responsibilities to the team is unless something's lethal, to just say yes. And we talk a lot about reality in Reality-Based Leadership about saying yes, but this was so subtle on how our preference comes forward as a better idea, like more efficient, better, better, better. And we were given A short amount of time to quickly get clear on what was said to us, really understand our reality, get really fact-based verbatim, then to make sure we were clear on what the actual goal was, and then to quickly strategize and conserve as much time for execution as possible. Now, this formula wasn't given to us, but this is what we gave birth to when we started thinking about what is effective as a team. And what I found we would do is we wouldn't, as a team, get very clear on the verbatim. We would all have our own understanding of what was said to us verbatim, and we didn't take the time to check in with one another so that we're all clear. And we didn't get that clear on the goal, and we strategized forever because we're all very clever, smart people, and we ate up so much of our time Thinking about all the cool things we could do and all the different ways we could approach it. And we often left ourselves too little time for execution. And my team is so resilient and so amazing that oftentimes, even though we cheated ourselves out of what was left for execution, we pulled it off because my team is so resilient and we're almost proud of that fact. And yet It was with effort, not effortless. It was— it took a lot more resources from us individually than it needed to. And so as we played with this, we found ways to make our execution more effortless because we were operating from a higher level of consciousness and we were investing energy in the right places. And it became a pretty magical moment in that we really started to, by choice, invest in different places and bring a whole new level of insight into how we add drama to the workplace. And when you think about it, as humans, our potential is unlimited. But our performance, what we deliver to the organization, is often not equal to our amazing potential. And that difference is Interferences in drama. And so many of those interferences don't happen from our external world. They happen from our internal worlds and how we're showing up and what part of us is showing up, whether it's low self or high self. And so it was just a really wonderful understanding. Other accountability segments to think about is That we have an accountability to move on and get over it. Like, so many times we think that it will be just time that removes from us resentment, or that it will be the other person truly being sorry or apologizing correctly. Or— But if I really want to serve my team, I've got to do a big job daily minute by minute of just getting over it. If you aren't heard or felt listened to, bring it up, share it concisely and clearly, and then get over it. Bring mercy and tolerance to the table. And so when you think about these accountabilities, they're very internal in what you need to do to refine your position and interaction with others. And so many times our idea of accountability is very external. Now, one of the coolest things that I grew an understanding about that I want to share with you is the responsibility to, as quickly as possible, move into saying yes and using your expertise to get clear and get committed and then honor that agreement and make it work. Now, I teach a lot about saying yes and making it work, but there's something in between that about honoring our agreements. And we found ourselves often losing valuable time in— many of us, instead of just saying yes, bringing up a better idea, trying to optimize something we hadn't even standardized, trying to think of the exception, trying to think of the highest risk out there. And our best work came when we had clarity and someone put something on the table. And we had a responsibility to the team that when possible, we just said yes. And if we couldn't say yes, we would raise an objection, and that objection needed to be defended. And if the team didn't see it as something lethal, that our job was then to Just say yes. And it was a wonderful accountability. So accountability to speak clear and concise, to be yes or no, no third option. You're either in with a heck yeah verbal that everybody can hear, or you're out with an objection. But if that objection isn't honored, you're back in. That there just isn't this space in there For the middle grounds that I'm not in, but I'm not objecting, or I objected, it wasn't supported, so I'm going to not let go of that and have that disengagement hurt my team. And that the ultimate accountability was full-on engagement, not because your team or your organization created the perfect environment, but because, darn it, you chose it. And The final thing that got me so clear is whether or not I personally was accountable to honoring my agreements. So as a team, we would get clear and then we would agree on a process. And then halfway into the process, me or somebody else would say, yeah, but you guys, what about if we change this? And what I didn't realize in that moment is I didn't honor the agreement that I made to the process we considered. Now, my what about this wasn't to deal with lethal stuff. It was just because I came up with a cooler idea mid-process, and playing with the value of when to add in an improvement and when to just really honor the agreement was interesting to me. The insight in this is that my accountability wasn't always to me. And my understanding of this really changed where I look at the accountability as what I personally bring to the table. But this had me really look at my accountability to good business process methodology, agreed-upon strategies, and how many times when I feel clever or fancy, I go rogue and Leave kind of the group and do my own thing. And so it was, it was interesting because when we're looking at did we honor our agreements, which was one of our team rules, we didn't talk about the process from terms of our story, like what happened for us or what we were feeling or thinking. We talked about it from— Whether or not we honored what we agreed to. And it is so easy to get caught in the drama when we talk about our perspectives, 'cause nobody can really agree on the story or exactly what happened. But when we took accountability for whether we honored the agreements we had, things got very clear and it was not personal. It was more— process. And I've really walked with this idea of honoring my agreements because I used to think I was really good at follow-through. Like, I will put something out there and then I will follow through. I will set a goal and I will muscle my way through. And so it was all very results-focused. But honoring my agreements had me sit back and really take some inventory of my relationships and the processes. And one of the things that I came to understand is that we make agreements, I think wholehearted, I think for most of us with good intention. And at times when we account for how we did, we can find ways where we didn't honor our agreement. And there's some accountability in that to just be willing to admit my part in how I screwed up or how I lost it. But in that accountability, we don't often go and say, you know what, I just didn't honor that agreement. I agreed wholeheartedly, and then what I ended up doing was different. Can I explore that for myself? And that, for me, I had a powerful insight I want to share with you, because many times when we make an agreement, we are wholehearted, and then in the end, we don't honor that agreement we made And the question is, why? And I think the answer is helping us understand what was the definition of the goal in the time you made the agreement, and have you changed that definition to a point that it was easy to break the agreement? Now, I want to give you an example from my real life and then give you an assignment to be thinking about this. going forward. As my husband and I came together, we had established incomes, established wealth, established families. And as we came together, we've had to negotiate through how financially we'll pass wealth on to our kids and plan for our retirement, all that money stuff. And when I would sit down with my husband and he would put a proposal together based on the two of us, I had the goal at that moment of putting together a wonderful retirement that we both could enjoy, of doing things that worked for our benefit, that supported our marriage and the wonderful life that we wanted to have. And the goal was to just be joyfully together and have money not be a focus and just make sure we've cared for all the people that we loved. Wow, super easy to agree with a really equitable plan and something that honored all of those values that we had. And then a few weeks later, he would share with me part of the agreement I didn't honor. Let's say I agreed to set something up differently in our accounts and I would go through, you know, gosh, it slipped my mind, which is true. I just didn't even think about it, which is true. I didn't have time, I was traveling, which is true. But it just never got down to accountability. Like, I couldn't honestly say I did it maliciously. I couldn't honestly say that— I could say I learned new information, I no longer agree with it. But what I noticed is from the time I made that agreement and really wanted to honor it, and the time I felt nonchalant about what's the big deal, I just didn't get it done, something had shifted. And one of the assignments we were given was so powerful. It asked to have us take a look at our goals around the time we made the agreement and our goals, the definition we put around those goals and that behavior when we didn't honor the agreement. And I had my mind blown. I realized that when I was making the agreement, it was about unity and happiness and caring for all the people I love and being generous and combining our ability to provide for everyone. That was when I made the agreement. And somehow by the time where I blew off part of my commitment, My definition had changed, and it was all about, I want my independence, and nobody can tell me what to do, and you're not the boss of me, and I should be financially able as a female who owns a business to just do whatever the heck I want to do. And I don't— and if you look at those 2 states of being, boy, that definition had really changed. And so once I was aware of that, I'm like, wow, where'd that definition come from? And I realized that that definition is such an old definition in my life that my mom, who was a very successful businesswoman in the '70s when it was pretty new for a woman to be financially independent, and the conversations she and my father would have, and at times my father would move unilaterally given what traditions he was raised in, and at times my mom felt so slighted about that. And that definition of how we handle money in a marriage was really old. It wasn't appropriate for these times. It wasn't appropriate to the life I want to create. And by the way, they ended up divorcing over some of that so my mom could get more independence. That was the only option they came up with. And that's not my goal, is to have anything but an awesome marriage. And so I wanted to share this kind of personal insight too, because your assignment is this. I want you to walk with the word accountability. And if you want to have the ability to make your contributions count, I want you to take self-reflection to a whole different level. Notice when you make agreements to your team, to the people you love, even if it's just, I'm going to show up at the ballgame. Notice your definitions around being a parent and being a spouse and And your goals and your definitions around those goals, what it takes to have a good relationship. And then I want you to think about those times where you come to realize you didn't honor that agreement and see how your definition changed. And then take that power of choice, what we learned from our insights, and make a different commitment. It could be as simple as, I said I'd be home for sure on time and my definition was that I have this loving home life and I want to spend time with my kids. And then when you break that agreement by staying at the office till 7, notice that your definition changed to, I have too many responsibilities and burdens and I can't be everywhere at once. And because when you have that definition as a victim, it's easy to break your agreements. But if you hold on to the definition in which you made your agreements, which was not as a victim. I think it will help you honor your agreements more. At least it has for me. So I wanted to just share with you some of the things that I'm thinking about and taking away from my learning. And I'll start blogging on some of these really cool new accountabilities we have, which is all about honoring our agreements And providing clarity, not chaos, and using our resources concisely, and really just how to up our game and operate from an even higher level of consciousness as we move through the world. Take your honoring agreements seriously. Notice when you don't honor those, how your definition might have changed, and do great stuff in the world this week. I will be back with another incredible podcast. Next week. Thank you. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.