7: Accountability series - Are you using the accountability equation?

[MUSIC] This is Walking Your Talk, a podcast about leadership, authenticity and courage. I'm Carolyn Taylor. Over my career, I've worked with well over 100,000 leaders in every kind of organization, people who are committed to closing the gap between their own values and those of their organization and how they show up every day. I wrote a book called Walking The Talk on how you change corporate culture. But this is much more personal. If you want to be known as someone who walks their talk, then this podcast is for you. [MUSIC] A body of people who hold themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anyone. One of my favorite quotes by Thomas Paine, who was one of the founding fathers of America. Accountability is a contract between two people. So between you and someone else, you can't be accountable alone. In today's workplace, with this new and agile and empowered ways of working, with all the uncertainty and agility and ambiguity that we're all experiencing, it's easy to forget just how important it still is to build a reputation as someone who can be relied on to deliver, to actually be accountable. But also the skill of holding others to account. Today's podcast is the first of a new series based on accountability, where we'll explore different elements, both of what it takes to be accountable, to hold others to account, and to lead a culture in which accountability is considered to be important. [MUSIC] What does it actually mean to be seen to be walking your talk on accountability? And many people will blame others. They'll say, my people are not accountable, or our culture doesn't encourage accountability. It's more difficult to look at yourself, I think, on this one and say, what is it that I'm doing or I'm not doing that is encouraging or discouraging that? So when I became very interested in accountability, I started by going back to the dictionary definition. And what I found is that accountability relates to being asked to give an account of, so it actually is a contract to a relationship between one person who is asking someone else to deliver something on their behalf. And there is some kind of exchange of value that is going on, on the basis of an implicit or an explicit but often just implicit contract between those two people. And at the heart of that is a moment where one is able to say, so can I count on you? Yes, yes, you can count on me. So I love the play of words of this accountability, you can count on me. Because I think it does go to the essence of what we mean when we look at accountability. Unlike responsibility, you can absolutely be responsible on your own. You can, as I said, only be accountable in relation to somebody else. So there are two halves to that relationship and there are two sets of skills. And you can have accountable relationships with many people in your life, anybody from tradesmen who you're contracting to do some work on your house, perhaps with your children and what you expect of each other. Obviously, if your colleagues at work, the people you depend on and the people who depend on you, on your direct reports, both for small little commitments and for much bigger, what can I count on you for this year? Similarly, of course, you can be held to account. You're held to account by your clients, by your partners, by your boss, by your colleagues, by anybody who is expecting that you will deliver something. So in order to really unpack accountability and become better at the different elements of it, I think it's useful to consider that there are actually four components. There is what happens before what I'm calling that contract, that commitment conversation, that yes, you can count on me conversation. How is that contract established? What is set up and discussed in order to reach a commitment where both parties feel that yes, this is what I've asked for? And yes, I can promise to deliver that to you. And then there's what happens after that promise, that commitment has been made. The follow up, whether or not the individual is able to deliver what happens when it's going wrong and it's not happening, is the clarity, what are the consequences, etc. If you like, there's the before the promise and there's the after the promise. And all the research that I've done inside organizations has led me to believe that there is much more attention paid to what happens after the promise. So are people delivering or not? What are the consequences? What are the bonuses? How are we going to reward people? And nowhere near enough time is actually spent before the promise that we don't spend enough time having really engaging conversations with each other about what I expect of you and what in return I feel I can promise you. And that the less that is done before that moment of promise, the more trouble you're likely to get later on. And in fact, I would actually go so far as to say that if you have a really meaningful commitment conversation, a rich conversation in which one person is asking and the other is committing and you do that well, the likelihood that what is being asked for will actually be delivered goes up by a very large percentage. So in fact, one of the most effective ways that you can increase the performance, both of yourself and of other people, is by ensuring that you have those conversations well at the beginning. So there is the before the promise and the after the promise. And then there is two roles. We have the asker, the person who is making the request. And we have the giver, the person who is committing to deliver something as the other half of this accountable relationship. So perhaps in the simplest terms, I might be an asker of, say, the builder who's going to come and do some work in my house. And he or she is then the giver who is prepared to contract and commit to certain things in exchange, of course, in that case, for money. But it's not always the roles of that clear. It's equally true, for example, that there are many of your peers, many people in your organization who depend on you and many people on whom you depend, where you don't necessarily have any authority in the direct sense. And yet your ability to be a good asker and a good giver, nevertheless, is crucial in terms of what gets done and in maintaining a high quality of relationship where both people end up being satisfied at the end. So in this series of podcast episodes on accountability, what I intend to do is to introduce to you ways to evoke deep feelings of trust, of honor, of making and keeping your word and of the satisfaction of actually setting out with a clear achievable goal and then being able to deliver against that. Which is a long way from most people's experience of accountability, which is much more of punishment, of consequences, of blame, or of disappointment. Sending out emails, telling people what to do, and then wondering why they're not getting it. A feeling that you don't have enough control or enough input into being able to make the commitments that you really feel able to make. So as an exercise for this week, I thought we could start with the opportunity to actually map out for yourself your relationship with accountability. And then later on, we'll dive deeper into the different roles of the asker and the giver. And we'll have one episode on how to get things back on track when there has been some level of breakdown in the expectations of what was going to be delivered. So here's a starting point. So imagine that you're sitting at the center of a wheel and going off from that center are spokes like a bicycle, if you like, which lead out to the various people who are important in your life. On the one hand, you've got the people on whom you depend. And there might be anyone from suppliers, people in other divisions, people in your team, people in head office, perhaps, from whom you need certain things. And on the other side of your wheel, you have the people who you have to deliver to the people who are depending on you and who have expectations of what you're going to be able to deliver for them, your customers, your boss, other people within your organization who are your peers to whom you have to deliver something. So you sit at the center, in fact, with all these spokes running off from you of people with whom you need to have that accountable. Can I count on you? You can count on me conversation. Just take a moment and write down those two lists. And as you continue, what you'll realize is how long those lists are. My proposal is that no one who is on that list should be neglected by you. And then, in fact, a large part of your job is in having those good, clear, honest commitment conversations with those people. And the more you're able to do that, the more you're able to get really clear on expectations, have the difficult conversation early if you need to, and then make clean commitments that both parties understand. And that actually is the essence of accountability. But when I first ask people to do this exercise, they'll often say, "But this is ridiculous. I've got so much work to do. How can I possibly have commitment type conversations with all of these people?" And yet, unless you work completely in isolation and you have no customers, no suppliers, no one who's depending on you, no one on whom you depend, your life actually is all about being able to negotiate and then hold to account and hold yourself to account to get things done through those relationships. So the more that one can actually understand the nature of it, and then highlight the people who are the most important, the more likely you are to start really treating accountability as a tool, a tool to build trust, to build outcomes, and to build results in your organization. Next week, what we're going to do is we'll go deeply into the role of the asker. And we'll ask you to come back with the list that you've got and actually think about who are the people on whom you depend, and how do you play that asker role both before the commitment and afterwards, so that you set up a contract between two people that enables the other person to honor that commitment and enables you to feel satisfied with the outcome. That'll be the topic of next week's episode. I look forward to seeing you then. Thank you for joining me. (soft music)