Tom Lemanski's

Leadership Breakthroughs

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Tom Lemanski's

Leadership Breakthroughs

Ideas for Leaders Who Inspire

Tom Lemanski

Accountability Conversations

Finger Point

Accountability conversations are potentially confrontational and unpleasant.  So we avoid and procrastinate in favor of more comfortable tasks.  When such avoidance occurs, critical things don’t get done.

  • And who’s really good at having critical conversations?
  • How skilled are you?

 

If you improved your ability to have impactful conversations in an atmosphere of minimal confrontation, how much more would be achieved by your staff?

Hesitant

The Prerequisite for Accountability

This seems so simple  If you’re going to be critical of someone else and hold that person accountable, you first need to be critical of your role in this process.  How well have you facilitated clarity for your accountability partners?  Let’s look deeper at the term: accountability partner.  It implies:

  • That a partnership exists.
  • You have a mutual interest in getting things done that lead to a common goal or desired outcome.
  • Your discussions can and should have a tone of positive, possibility thinking vs. negative, win/lose or lose/lose
  • A need for constructive discussions of resource allocation

What’s confrontational about any of these?  What happens when you can foster a partnership atmosphere where possibility thinking prevails?

7 Prerequisites for Accountability Partnerships

  1. Mutual Agreement on desired outcomes
  2. Agreement on Why they are important
  3. Established promise(s) for on-time delivery of the outcomes
  4. Taking action
  5. Integrity checkpoints
  6. Accountability Conversations to review progress on the checkpoints
  7. Circle back to WHY

What’s Your Mindset: Partner or Cop?

Finger Point

For many of us, embracing a partner’s mindset requires an attitude adjustment.  To help, review the definition.

A partnership is an arrangement in which two or more individuals share the profits and liabilities of a business venture.

With a cop mindset, your assumption is your partner(s) don’t share the same desire to enjoy the benefits or don’t have the same level of engagement.  For effective accountability conversations, you have to to correct that assumption.  Help all partners to keep their eyes on the prize.

Conflict can occur in a partnership whenever expectations are not met.  As with communication in general, the ideal environment is blame free.  Is is possible that your partner might let responsibilities fall through the cracks?  Of course.  When you have an up-front agreement for accountability as a partner, your conversations can focus on honoring that agreement and thereby avoid an adversarial tone.

Your Challenge as a Partner

What are your assumptions?   What’s your role?  What more can you do to support your accountability partners and interact with them in a more productive, less adversarial manner?

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