Aaron Schmookler

Improve accountability with Support vs. Challenge

You want to improve accountability in your team.

This is the third and final installment of our Leader’s Accountability Guide. Did you miss the first or the second installment in this series? You’ll get more out of this entry if you go back and read those first.

In installment one, we named some common surprises and frequent mistakes that well-intentioned leaders make in trying to improve accountability.

In installment two, we got clarity about Clarity in the Accountability Culture Equation.

Clarity + Support + Challenge = Accountability Culture

Clarity established. So now…

Support Second

Once you’ve got clarity, it’s time to assure our people that they’re not on their own. They’ve joined a team. Someone — better yet, everyone — has got their back.

Simon Sinek, in Leaders Eat Last, does a great job of laying out the scientific case for support. He demonstrates, teams will not pull together in places where people do not feel safe, supported, and cared for. In fact, neuro-chemically, people who feel under threat will not be accountable. In order to make it easy to repel threats, their brains will switch into self-protection mode. This is not a choice on their part. It’s not selfishness, not a character flaw. Actually, it’s not really a choice. For the brain of someone who feels unsafe, self-interest is a biological imperative.

Accountability is a state of vulnerability, and people don’t do vulnerability when they’re in danger.

How to Support

Consider this. Support is key to building the trust and a sense of psychological safety. Trust and psychological safety, in turn, are required to inspire accountability.

In other words, support is a prerequisite of accountability. That’s because accountability is a choice to be vulnerable, and a brain that feels under threat will not choose to open-up under a condition of threat. The brain considers that giving the knife to the enemy.

A brain that feels protected, safe, and supported is the only brain free to choose accountability.

In order to create an environment of support, we’ve got to know what that looks like. It includes policies and procedures that acknowledge the humanity of your team. Support requires that you adopt business practices and HR polices that are consistent with the organization’s professed values. (In too many companies, for instance, “TRUST” is listed as a core value. And then the employee handbook is full of policies that belie profound mistrust in the employee — by default.) Support includes everyone on the team looking out for one another and stepping in to help if someone stumbles. In a high-support environment,  leaders give specific praise for a job well done, and constructively crafted suggestions for improvement when needed.

Here are some ways supportive leaders express their support directly to the folks on their team:

• What are your career goals? How can I help you get there?
• What are your expectations of me?
• Do you have what you need? (I may not always be able to give you the tools you want, I always want to know what would help.)
• I have confidence in you.
• Let’s make sure we have clarity around the priorities so you know what most needs your attention.
• Failing happens. Failing is expected. Fail forward.
• Yesterday’s presentation was far better than last month’s. I can see you took my feedback to heart and improved your slides and your speaking cadence.
• How’s your family? (You know names, by the way.)
• What obstacles do you see coming down the pike? How can I help ensure your success?

To be effective in inspiring accountability, support must not be occasional, sporadic, or inconsistent. Effective support is frequent, regular, and consistent. It’s specific. It’s so common as to be the norm. People who’ve been working in a supportive environment learn to expect support. And give it. Support becomes the rule. Like gravity.

Why do we trust gravity implicitly? Because, it’s always there.

Here’s the code of accountability…

When my team and the structures we work within have my back and I know it, then I will readily embrace accountability. 

Clarity + Support + Challenge = Accountability Culture

Challenge Third

Relationships built on reliable support can — errm… ah — support a hefty dose of challenge without cracking under the strain. Support helps people to know they belong, that they’re accepted, and that they will not be hung out to dry. And secure in that knowledge, people will accept and welcome challenge that presses them to improve. When supported AND challenged, people willingly reach for levels of excellence, initiative, and productivity they haven’t reached before. They take risks.

In the military, they have a saying for accepting the pain of growth and commitment to purpose. They say, “Embrace the suck.”

When you think back through your life, who are the people — the teachers, coaches, leaders — who made the biggest difference in your life? For me, they’re the people who knew how and when to support me. And they knew how and when to challenge me.

• They knew I was capable of more. They calmly insisted that I step into that capability.
• They calmly insisted that my teammates step into the capabilities that their roles required.
• They invited us to embrace the suck. They insisted… gently and firmly.
• They did not lower standards to meet us. They lifted us to meet high standards.

That combination of support and challenge fills people with a sense of surety and courage. As a combo, it’s a steady hand on their back, ensuring they don’t fall backward and also that they take the next step forward.

In the context of accountability, what does challenge look like? Challenge includes making it clear that accountability is a requirement for being and remaining on the team.

Requirement? You may be thinking, “But in the first installment of this guide, you said we can’t hold others accountable. It’s a personal choice.”

Indeed.

In an environment of healthy challenge, challenge is often framed in the form of a choice. The choice is between:

1. Embracing accountability and remaining on the team on the one hand, and
2. Refusing accountability and allowing the team to move on without you on the other hand.

Do not think, “drill sergeant.” Challenge in the context of support is not about hard, loud edges or emotionality. Think instead, “physical therapist.”

A physical therapist requires that we get uncomfortable. They’re compassionate. And they’re firm.

“I know it hurts. Do it anyway. Just a little further than last time. Now hold it. Hold it a little longer. No. Don’t let up. Good. Now rest.”

Can you imagine the scene with this physical therapist? Read it again. Imagine.

“I know it hurts. Do it anyway. Just a little further than last time. Now hold it. Hold it a little longer. No. Don’t let up. Good. Now rest.”

In your imagination, is the physical therapist angry about the patient’s resistance? Is the PT raising their voice in response to expressions of fear or pain? Is the PT making space for refusal?

Short Story

I remember the physical therapist in the hospital after I’d had surgery on my leg. She insisted on seeing me walk down the hall on crutches. The crutches were easy. Being upright after surgery, on the other hand, not so much. That was very painful.

“You don’t have to do it right now,” she said. “And, I can’t let you go home until you walk all the way down the hall and back. And you have go up and down three stairs. I have to see you do that before we discharge you. You worry about the crutches and the walking. I’ll wheel your IV bag along beside you and make sure you don’t fall.” The choice was mine. I could a) walk and go home where I wanted to be. Or I could, b) refuse to walk and stay in the hospital longer.

Easy choice.

Very difficult walk.

Easy choice.

Total support. Total challenge.

So what does challenge look like in a work leadership situation?

• This is the standard. Please meet the standard.
• The gap between your performance and the standard is X. How do you plan to close that gap?
• I know growth from A to B doesn’t happen overnight. Here’s a timeline by which I’d like to see you reach B.
• What are your goals? How are you getting in your own way?
• What is the next step in continuous improvement for us? How will you contribute?
• You committed to Z. You didn’t deliver Z.
• You committed to Q. The deadline is coming up. How’s that coming? Please be specific. Are you on schedule?
• “What would greatness look like right now?” (from Cy Wakeman’s book, No Ego)
• Gently refuse to take back any “problem” that is theirs to solve. (You can use our smart leader’s SMART model for doing this.)

How can you challenge without degrading support or breaking trust? Challenge in support.

I once heard someone say — and I loved it — “Instead of calling people out, call them UP.”

In the context of support, when I am held to a high standard and challenged to meet it, then I am strongly inclined toward accountability.

How to Improve Accountability In Your Team?

Let’s review.

Clarity + Support + Challenge = Accountability Culture

Using clarity and specificity, ensure you and your team are on the same page. Get there by separating the components of accountability.

1. Responsibility: What’s the job? What are the expectations? What is the standard?
2. Reliability: Did you do what you said you’d do? Are you delivering on your responsibilities?
3. Effectiveness: How will we know if you are successful? Did you get the results we were looking for?
4. Ownership: Are you ready, willing, and able to look for, identify, and own the connection between your actions and the results they delivered.

Next, support people through care, training, expressions of compassion. Be interested in their lives and their goals. Share your confidence in them.

Challenge people to meet a high standard. Ask them to push their capabilities and to be better tomorrow than they are today. Require them to take on new responsibilities, and to own their effective execution.

Successfully inspiring accountability is not about balancing these ingredients one against the other, trying to find that perfect mix. A little more of this… A little less of that.

Accountability, personal fulfillment, and exceptional performance result from marrying clarity, support and challenge. Strive to be high in all three. Extremely clear. Wicked supportive. Highly challenging.

You will love the results. Your team will love you. They’ll love each other. And, they’ll love themselves more.

I’ll leave you with this new equation. Accountability = self love.

The Accountability Culture Formula

In the first installment of this series on improving accountability on your team, we talked about three surprises. We busted three myths.  And now we’ll look at the “how to” of creating an environment of accountability.

To be entirely too simplistic about it, there’s an Accountability Culture Formula. Leaders who implement this formula create an environment that inspires their team to profound accountability.

Let me be clear. This formula is not correct. Rather, it’s useful. The factors contributing to or degrading accountability culture are entirely too complex to cover exhaustively in a short leader’s guide. Therefore, this formula alone will not get you all the way to a culture of profound accountability.

Fear not! What this Accountability Culture Formula will do — we’ve seen it again and again — is help you come to a breakthrough in accountability among the people on your team. And that breakthrough alone will make a big difference in:

• your company’s performance metrics 
• your company’s revenue and profits
• your company’s talent retention
• and in your personal quality of life.

And who doesn’t want a better quality of life?

We’ve simplified the interdependent factors that lead to accountability. After all, simplicity leads to action. And this guide is worthless if it doesn’t lead you to action.

So here it is, a simplified accountability culture formula you can put to use today!

Clarity + Support + Challenge = Accountability Culture

With the rest of this guide, our aim is to give you insight into the components of this formula. Then, with that insight, you can act to operationalize clarity, support, and challenge. If you embed these components in the way you and your fellow leaders think about your operation, then I promise you a breakthrough in accountability on your team.

Clarity First

Reaching true clarity and mutual understanding is among the greatest challenges for any team. 

And gaps in clarity cost you traction.

The great wit and playwright, George Bernard Shaw, famously quipped, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

That’s not just funny. It’s also true. For example, how often has someone told you, “Ok, I’ve done task X that you asked me to do.” And when you see their work, you can only think, “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I asked for.”

Communication is hard. To illustrate this, Peter Drucker told us, “Communication is in what the listener does.” This means, we never truly have control over what we’ve communicated. Once the words leave our lips, our listener hears and interprets. They’re hearing and interpreting through the lens of their own understanding and experience. Their mood and their distractions color their interpretation. They’ve got their own context. And context creates meaning.

To Illustrate

Imagine a gun. Now put it in the hands of an aggressive criminal. That gun takes on a threatening meaning. 

Now take that same gun and put it behind glass in a Museum of Human Ingenuity. Its meaning is entirely changed. 

We leaders must remember that each mind — your mind, your direct report’s mind, your other direct report’s mind — each mind is its own complex context. Each mind receives the same message differently.

Once the message leaves our “email outbox,” we don’t know or control how it will be read or understood.

Therefore, we’ve got to take great care to ensure a high likelihood that what the listener takes from us is the message we’ve intended. As Steve Sims (the Real Life Wizard of Oz) says, “I don’t communicate to be understood. I communicate so it’s impossible that I’ll be misunderstood.”

We must communicate with thoroughness and precision.

To that end, let’s define some terms.

Clarity on Accountability 

Accountability means different things to different people. Heck, it means different things to the same people in different moments.

When you ask someone to, “be accountable,” you know what you mean. They think they know what you mean. Chances are very good, however, that your intended message and their perception of your message are not the same. You’re using the same word, but when you investigate one layer deeper, you’re likely not on the same page.

In fact, you’re not only on different pages about whether they’re accountable or not. You’re not even on the same page about what “accountable” means in this context.

Conflict ensues. Or people bury their feelings. Disagreement is hidden and resentment builds. And resentment degrades relationships — and performance. 

It can be hard regain the trust you’ve lost in one another.

What happens to trust in the context of misunderstanding and mistrust?

As a leader, you no longer have trust in their willingness to be responsible, honest, and forthright. And they no longer trust you to be fair, to have their back, to employ reason in your assessment of their performance.

Without repair, this marks the beginning of the end of a healthy relationship.

The Accountability Culture Formula-Within-the-Formula

Accountability — the great white light of responsible action in a relationship. Honesty, integrity, it’s the holy grail of employee characteristics. Without accountability, there can be no trust. There can be no confidence. There can be no transparency and teamwork.

 Agreed. And…

Accountability is white light indeed. It is illuminating. There’s a kind of purity to it. It sheds light into the dark places in our relationships and in our companies. And like white light, accountability is actually made of different components. 

We’d better define accountability.

Better yet, let’s break it down into its constituent parts.

When you break down actual white light, you reveal the rainbow’s colors — ROYGBIV. Accountability — at least the kind we want in our workplaces — is also a combination of components.

RREO

R: Responsibility = What is your job? 

The first ingredient of accountability is RESPONSIBILITY. Without clarity of what’s expected from your people, they will deliver what they believe is expected.

A team member’s responsibilities include (and are certainly not limited to) their job description. Responsibility is the sum total of what’s expected from you in your role. It’s those expectations that have been laid out for you in writing and verbally. And, unfortunately, it’s also all those things that are “common sense” and go without saying. 

Thing is… Nothing goes without saying. And everything worth saying is worth repeating.

You will have to repeat yourself if you want your team to clearly understand and remember their responsibilities. Period. 

I know, you want to say something once, and have your team take it up. I know you feel like a broken record when you have to say the same things over and over again. I know that what I’m suggesting here flies in the face of the leadership conventional wisdom that we all learned growing up. Whenever they had to repeat themselves, our teachers told us, “I’m not here talking for my health.”

When you accept that repetition is simply a part of great leadership, that our human brains retain that which is repeated, that repetition is a signal to the brain of importance (and that our brains interpret something not often repeated as not important), your frustration at having to repeat yourself will ease. Just like you’re not frustrated by the need to repeatedly brush your teeth.

Repetition is maintenance.

A leader’s responsibilities include clarifying and re-clarifying the responsibilities of those in their care.

You’ll have to iteratively spiral in on mutual understanding of what the responsibilities are of those on your team.

And every time the job responsibilities shift, there’ll be a new gap in clarity you’ll have to iteratively narrow. 

In order to inspire accountability, you need clarity around responsibilities.

R: Reliability = Do you do what you say you’re going to do?

RELIABILITY is the second ingredient of accountability. It’s every person’s job responsibility to track the commitments they’ve made and to honor those commitments. 

If I’ve told you, “I’ll bring you a red X by Wednesday at 3PM,” that’s a complex commitment.

To demonstrate reliability, I’ve got to do all of:

• Have an X for you. A Y is not an X. I committed to an X, so nothing else will do. Not even an x.
• Ensure it’s red. I told you it’d be red. A green one will not do. Green may be just as good to serve the purpose. Because it’s not consistent with the commitment, it does not reflect reliability.

• Bring the X to you. If I have the X at my desk, I’m not done. I committed to bringing it to you.

• Be on time! I told you it’d be done by Wednesday at 3PM. That’s part of what I said I was going to do. To be true to my word, timeliness is part of reliability.

Or…

• Renegotiate. None of us can deliver every one of our commitments every time. The reliable among us will notify, renegotiate, consult about alternatives in advance of the deadline. A reliable person will communicate as soon as it seems remotely likely that there may be a problem with delivering 1) an X 2) that’s red 3) to you 4) on time.

You need clarity with your team around the expectation for reliability. Define what reliability means and that reliability is a responsibility. And you’ll need to recognize — out loud — both reliability that you see from your team — and its absence — every chance you get.

Of note, your team is reliable far more often than they are not, even the lowest performing among them. Ensure your feedback reflects that.

E: Effectiveness = Are you getting the results you intended?

EFFECTIVENESS is the third ingredient of accountability. As a leader, you’ll be more effective when you delegate the desired outcome (accomplish this result) rather than the means or method for getting there (do exactly this, like this). Either way, to be effective as a leader, you must impart to your team the desired outcome of the task, even if you’re also assigning the means.

If you and your people don’t have mutual understanding (in advance) of what results mark success, how will you come to an agreement about whether success was reached or not?

You need clarity around desired outcomes and how they compare to actual outcomes. You need clarity, that is, around what effective looks like.

Have you clearly outlined together, what will be the metrics of success? Once you have, you’ll be able to objectively assess together — minimizing the chances for destructive conflict — whether or not you’re looking at a successful effort. Clarity eliminates the need for judgment.

Effectiveness is. Or effectiveness is not. And the margin — the excess or the shortfall — can be measured. And corrective action can be planned.

O: Ownership = Are you willing and able to own a relationship between your actions and your outcomes?

When you take OWNERSHIP (ingredient four), you commit that it’s your responsibility to:

• Ensure you have clarity on what your responsibilities are
• Commit to your job responsibilities — fully and without secret reservation
• Deliver and communicate on your commitments
• Look at your results and compare them honestly to the desired outcomes
• Make connections between your results and what you did — for better or for worse
• Make adjustments to the actions you take going forward in order to close any gaps between the desired outcomes and your actual results

Ownership is a key and critical component of accountability because it is possible to know our responsibilities, be reliable to do what we said we were going to do, and still not be effective. Failing happens. The question of ownership is whether you blame circumstances or whether you embrace the truth. As Cy Wakeman puts it in her book, No Ego, “Your circumstances are the reality in which you must succeed.”

Why do some people fail and others succeed in the same circumstances with the same skills?

Ownership. 

Only when one owns their influence on their outcomes will they adjust their strategy and tactics in order to achieve better outcomes.

Supposedly, Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That he never said it doesn’t matter. It’s not true anyway.

What’s true is that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a symptom of a lack of ownership. 

Once you embrace the reality of your circumstances… When you commit to adjusting yourself to unchangeable reality rather than excusing failures (past and future) because of circumstances… Then and only then are you fully accountable and therefore capable of achieving ever greater effectiveness.

Ownership Makes Iteration Inevitable

Remember the potential exists that people can renegotiate the shared understandings between them and come to new ones.

Responsibilities may change. 

For example, we worked with the leaders of a company where a top performer was failing to meet some of his job responsibilities. He not good at taking notes and reporting on his activity and outcomes. The sales leader and CEO were both frustrated that this top-performing sales person was neglecting an important part of his job. Therefore, leaders in the org agonized over whether to keep him.

Even though keeping records of his activity was Ryan’s responsibility, he was unreliable in meeting this obligation. And Ryan was also ineffective at it. When he did take notes, they were hard to follow and didn’t add much value to the organization. Ryan’s ADHD made this responsibility tough for him because the challenge was hard-wired. His reliability and effectiveness with record-keeping were therefore unlikely to change, even with great intention and effort. 

The solution, hidden in, “this is how we’ve always done it,” was simple. The company accommodated Ryan’s neurodiversity. Someone else in the company who was great at note-taking interviewed him about his activity once a day and took cogent notes in the CRM. Together, they were very quick, thorough, and effective.

In other words, they renegotiated Ryan’s responsibilities.

After that change of responsibility, Ryan became nearly 100% reliable. He met all the expectations that his leaders now had for him. His sales performance — already excellent — improved. So did his overall accountability.

Other folks may buck the system — the responsibilities — for completely different reasons. Some people are not reliable to the system, but are reliable to the results. They’re effective without being reliable. We call these people Mavericks. 

You have to decide for yourself whether you’re willing to tolerate Mavericks on your team. 

We have a soft-spot in our hearts for Mavericks at The Yes Works (most of us kind of lean that way ourselves). That said, you cannot allow Mavericks to run roughshod over their responsibilities and still expect to have a culture of accountability.

You’ll need to have a frank conversation. You’ll have to negotiate with them to devise a set of responsibilities that work for you both.

In other words, if you want the results a Maverick can deliver without compromising your team’s culture of accountability, then you must renegotiate the Maverick’s responsibilities.

Story Time

A friend who was a president’s club sales rep for a Fortune 1000 company was required by policy to be in the office to make sales calls every day at 8am. This chaffed for him. He often didn’t do it. Because, he said, it meant his day was less productive. He couldn’t make as many sales.

He had to waste time in driving to and from the office that was better spent driving to and from prospects’ offices.

So there was a constant tension between him and his boss and between him and his peers who didn’t sell as much as he did — and who were at their desks every day at 8am.

What his boss finally did was to change the responsibilities for sales reps — not just for my president’s club friend.

Anyone with sales under $X in the previous quarter was required to be at their desks at 8am. Anyone over $X had demonstrated they had a system that worked better for them, and so they were given greater latitude to bring in the business their own way.

Accountability came back into integrity in the office because Mr. President’s Club — the Maverick — was now reliable to his responsibilities, and ALSO effective.

If others wanted the same latitude he had, they knew how to earn it.

Clarity + Support + Challenge = Accountability Culture

In this second installment, we’ve covered clarity. Next time, we’ll get into Support and Challenge. And the equation will be complete. You’ll be ready to build a sustainably and thoroughly accountable team.

Why’s that matter?

With profound accountability, your company can take a leap in capacity almost overnight with the resources you have now.

 

Coming soon…

(This was installment 2 in this series on creating an Accountability Culture. See here for the first installment about three surprises about Improving Accountability in Your Team. Next, we’ll have a look at both support and challenge. We” investigate how they work in concert to free the brains of the people on your team to outsource self-interest so they can focus on contribution and communication so your company can surpass it’s current capacity.)