#48: You're Not "The Bad Guy": Accountability as Partnership (Not Policing)

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Eric:  Welcome to the Empower Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of Empower. Coaching leadership isn't about titles or positions. It's actually about the influence and impact we have on our environments. This is where we get to learn how to operate well under pressure, lead with confidence, and drive meaningful results.

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But one that I think we very often just kind of go gloss over. So lemme say that  statement again. Accountability is one of the most difficult practices, but necessary practices of leadership. And not because we don't believe in it, but because of what it brings up for us. Most of us hesitate because we're worried about how we'll be perceived.

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And over time, accountability starts to feel less like a leadership responsibility and more like a personal risk. That's when we begin to delay conversations that we know we need to have. We soften our message and we hope that the issue will just  resolve itself. Dear listener, you know who you are, if this resonates.

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And somehow for us, accountability we're afraid is going to  jeopardize that for our teams.

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Eric: Yeah. So let me just start by with kind of some, some, uh, what I think are  helpful qualifiers context. I'm not sure what the right word is here, but just to give our listeners a real sense of why this is so difficult.

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Eric: So, I think it's just good at the outset of this  conversation to recognize that most of us have, have not had accountability modeled well to the point where.

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Eric: Um, so we've, we've gotta, we've gotta press into this conversation as, as uncomfortable as it may make us feel. Um, and I wanna encourage our listeners at any point you can pause, take a deep breath, if anything we're saying sounds scary or is kind of bringing up past memories, um, triggering any, any kind of wounds that you've experienced, um, to, to do yourself the favor of.

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Eric: Right. We're, we're, we're carrying this weight of, of, you know, I'm  responsible for how the other person is gonna feel. Um, I'm responsible for, for, you know, whether they'll like me afterward. Um, I'm responsible for whether this relationship will suddenly change because this person is upset, frustrated, or, um, not happy with the feedback that I'm offering them.

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Eric: and, and so I think just owning that, I think all of us suffer from codependence in different areas of our life. Um, and this is probably an area where in working with so many leaders over the years, this is a very common feature. So, again,  dear listener, you're not alone. Um, and, and, and a little bit later in this, in this podcast.

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Dawn: Yeah. Well, and when you put it like that, Eric, it's no wonder that so many of us leaders. Avoid accountability or even  leaders that I talk to, they use literal language of fear around.

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Dawn: And. You can see that that parenting is the perfect analogy here because  avoiding accountability teaches our children that there actually are no rules.

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Mm-hmm. They don't have the rules don't matter. Right. In fact, the exception  becomes the rule. Right? And I was having this conversation with a leader just this week. Exceptions to a rule are totally fine, but when we avoid accountability to the point that we're just doling out exceptions like Oprah.

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On teams. Mm-hmm. And so this is one of those interesting areas of leadership that again, is one of the, what I call an upside down reality. Whereas leaders, we think accountability is going to break trust. Mm-hmm. But  actually avoiding accountability can break trust. So talk to us a little bit about where you've seen that, Eric.

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sometimes we forget that at the very core of the fabric of our culture in society, what protects us from chaos and pandemonium in the everyday affairs of our life. Is the reality of accountability. So for, for example, lemme just give us a very simple example. I'm so grateful that when I get in my car and I'm driving from my house to the office, which is only a few exits on a off a  freeway, you know from a house that people generally feel a sense of accountability to follow the laws of driving on our roads.

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Like we wait till we get to the intersection before we make a left hand turn. Like those, these are simple things that we kind of overlook the value of them. Because once, once people, you know, if, if one, if there was no  accountability, if no, the police were never out there pulling people over, giving them speeding tickets saying, Hey, you.

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Right. Um, so that the exception becomes the rule and people are just operating now, um, in, in  whatever way seems best to them.

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In these spaces. So I'm, I'm just sharing that so that we understand that this, this conversation really does matter. Um, yeah. So a, a few things, uh, mindset shift.  Um, we have to understand that accountability is not about punishment. Mm-hmm. It's, it's, this is not a punitive issue. Um, as a matter of fact, um.

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Uh, accountability is not.  Opportunity to just vent, right? We've, we've all had the leader who pulls us in their office and just, you know, lays into us and tears us a new one and belittles us and, and we just feel small and, you know, beat up and devalued. So, you know, we're not, accountability is not that. Um, and I have worked with many companies who have suffered from that kind of.

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Eric: This is one of our tools in our leadership toolkit. It's in our newest book up, uh, upgrade Your Leadership. It's in our online content, our video  training content. Um, as a matter of fact, for most, if not all the companies we work with, they adopt the, the acronym RMS.

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And so accountability is,  is simply naming when behaviors are outside of the lane and somebody's gone into a gutter on either side. Which, which happens, right? Accountability is the process of reconnecting people with a clear vision and the standards that we believe will give us the best chance of reaching that vision, right?

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But, but we have, we have some radical minimum standards of how we have, how we engage conflict, how we make decisions, how we collaborate, how we partner with one another, how we handle our diff our differences and, and, and, and difficulties. Right. And again, it's reconnecting people.  A vision of how we wanna operate so that we can win more together.

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This is the lane that we are going to commit to operating in. Why not because the boss said so, but because we agree that it is going to give us the best chance of achieving the things that we are fighting for together. Yep. W when that is a starting point for us as leaders, suddenly  accountability, uh, the stakes become way lower.

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Suddenly, I'm just reminding my teammate, Hey, remember we agreed  to this? Why? Because it's gonna position us in the best way possible to succeed.

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Eric: Yeah, absolutely. Um,  I think when we understand that accountability is not about policing other people, but about partnering with them, in other words. We've determined the radical minimum standard, like, this is how we wanna operate. This is a lane we wanna run in together because we believe it's gonna help us win together more often.

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I'm here to partner with you to help  you operate. More effectively and to recognize we've all made these mistakes. We all drift, we've all been on the freeway and suddenly realize, oh my gosh, I'm not paying attention. And now we're slammed in our brakes 'cause we weren't looking at the cars in front of us.

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And, and what that does also.  It mitigates against the, the traps that we experience, um, when there isn't accountability.

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Um, and sometimes it's even our high performers, like you mentioned earlier. Who, because they're high performers, we don't wanna hold them accountable for their bad attitudes. And therefore what happens? That becomes  the new standard. The, the exception becomes the rule when there's, when there's a lack of accountability.

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Eric: right. Or didn't  agree to. Right. So there's no point in getting mad at your children if you're holding 'em, trying to hold 'em accountable to something that you never spoke to them about and say, Hey, here's a standard that we expect.

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Eric: Um, 'cause we need to be very, very careful that we can point at clear evidence,  behavioral engagement when we're trying to hold people accountable, right? And we can hold people accountable for both attitudes and behaviors. Right, because people's attitudes get expressed in their physical bodies and words and tone of voice and all stuff.

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Dawn: Yeah. We can't drag somebody over the line of the radical minimum standard, but as leaders, we are  responsible for giving them every opportunity. To get back in alignment.

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Eric: Um, and it  keeps the focus on behavior and outcomes rather than on any personal dynamic.

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Dawn: Where have you seen this play out?

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Um, and he just, he would not. He would not let me get away with that. Mm-hmm. And he just kept saying, Hey, this is what I'm talking about. These are the, these are the behaviors that you've engaged with. This is where I think it's undermining the team's performance. Um, and finally, like my last attempt  at self-justification was, listen, boss, you don't know what's in my heart.

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Eric: now. Your behaviors are the overflow of who  you are as a human being, but I'm not attacking your personhood here, Eric and I was like. It was no escape. It was like, okay, I can't argue with my behaviors. He's right. Mm-hmm.

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That's right and it's,  it's just one of those moments where like when you're on the freeway, if somebody gives you a gentle haunt, 'cause you're drifting into the next thing, you can respond in one of two ways. You can either be like, oh, what's your problem? Your big shark, I just drifted a little bit and screw you and give a flip on the bird.

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What that did for me was set me free to say, okay, what  about my attitudes and behaviors as I'm engaging with those team members is unhelpful? And as we've talked about so many times on this podcast, I was so grateful that at that point in my journey, I had already learned that I get to choose the attitudes and behaviors I show up with.

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The  greatest opportunity for my own personal transformation.

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You are creating all sorts of unhelpful ripples in your organization. But this  person's fear was PR specifically around delivering hard feedback, holding people accountable, and we had to do the work of first understanding what we already talked about. Do they know what the standard is? Have they then agreed to operate according to that standard?

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Trickling, kind of just seeping into the organization as a whole. Um, that reframe for her has really committed her to doing the work of  clarifying vision and values, strengthening that RMS, the radical minimum standard, and then engaging in the hard conversations. And this is work. I've been very clear with her.

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Mm-hmm.  And as members of teams, how is it that we can view accountability and engage it in a way that actually gives us the greatest chance to benefit from it? Even when our leaders don't always provide it perfectly. Sure. And how we build trust by our, the way we engage accountability. Um, yeah. Which is also another feature that we have to deal with a lot in, in working with different teams and organizations.

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We'll give you just a few moments of silence to consider what that one thing is. Grab it in your mind, write it down. Create a voice memo, send it to a friend. Um, and, uh,  and so we'll just give you a few moments to do that.

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Dawn: Yes, and if you wanna keep developing your leadership skills, as we always say, it is not one and done. We are continuing, continuing  to develop always our next Empower Masterclass is a place to slow down and practice holding vision and standards without overthinking or avoiding them. You can save your seat at m pwr coaching.com/masterclass.

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