Our December 2023 Book of the Month for Equis was Uncommon Accountability. I am convinced that this approach to leading in your businesses could be an absolute game-changer for many of you! Below is a bit of a synopsis:
Holding ourselves and others to account is critical. The challenge is with how we've been taught to do that. Holding others accountable, or having others hold us accountable, sounds responsible, doesn’t it? But the reality is, accountability, in the traditional sense, is extremely unpleasant and dirty business. That’s because our current understanding of accountability relies heavily on negative consequences. For this model to work effectively, there must exist a negative consequence so detestable, that we choose productive behavior over unproductive behavior. So, when faced with either accepting a negative consequence or taking a positive action, we take the positive action. Just in case it needs to be said out loud, this is a terrible way to motivate good behavior. It’s no wonder people avoid accountability like the plague. Accountability coupled with negative consequences is a recipe for subpar success. Not only is this approach miserable and moderately effective at best, it actually creates the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. When we try and hold people accountable with negative consequences, we get minimum performance. We get just enough to stop the consequence. If you continue with this approach you will never get discretionary effort, that little extra effort, from this person. Additionally, and this is important, there will be collateral damage 100% of the time… and it's unpredictable. It can materialize in the form of potential anger, resentment, pushback, and excuses. It creates the opposite of what you're trying to create in a culture. It's creating a victim mindset. It's creating an excuse culture versus a high-performance culture. And eventually what this leads to is either acceptance of poor performance, someone quits, or someone gets fired, all based on trying to hold them accountable with negative consequences.
Stop holding people accountable. Instead, start holding them CAPABLE. This new approach changes everything and is much more effective and enjoyable. You can't force people to do what you want them to do. They have to choose to do it. So, when we talk about holding someone capable, what we're talking about is confronting them with the choices they have as opposed to confronting them with negative consequences. You are going to confront me with my freedom to choose for myself so I can consider the consequence of my choice. Do you see how with this approach, you're not the bad guy for creating consequences? You're not the puppet master pulling the strings. You've simply put it back in my lap to say, "Okay, here are the choices you have. Here are the consequences of those choices. Which one do you want to do? Which choice do you want to take?"
And here's the key, when choices are highlighted for people, typically they make the productive choice. When we confront with choice and help people understand the consequences of those choices, typically they'll make a productive choice. Now it may not always be what's productive for the firm or the agency, so you need to be prepared for that. It may be that the most productive thing for someone to do is move on, in which case, that's probably the most productive thing for the agency as well.
**Concepts and quotes are taken directly from Uncommon Accountability by Brian Moran & Michael Lennington.