Many leaders want to know how to hold a team accountable. Often they will look at team members and wonder why they aren’t accountable. In order to build accountability in a team, you need two things, the tools and the environment. In last weeks first episode we reviewed the tools required to build accountability in your team.
In this part two of two, we discuss the elements and the environment required to build accountability in your team.
How the best leaders hold people accountable (part 2 of 2)
Episode 73 – The Growth Whisperers
The Growth Whisperers is a weekly podcast hosted by Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence two advisors to mid-market businesses, one Australian, one Canadian, who each work with CEOs and Leadership Teams across the world with a mission to build enduring, great companies. Each weekly episode covers interesting situations and questions from the world of strategic planning, leadership development, talent and hiring in high growth entrepreneurial companies where real results matter.
Podcast shownotes
How the best leaders hold people accountable (part 2 of 2)
Kevin Lawrence 00:12
Welcome to the growth whispers podcast where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies because we’re interested in passionate about it and research it and spend our days working with people that want to build great companies for the long term. I’m Kevin Lawrence. And I’m joined today, as always with Brad Giles, my co host, Brad, how you doing today?
Brad Giles 00:31
Pretty good. Yeah, really good. Finally, we’ve got a break in the weather. It has rained what seems like forever, and I saw blue sky for the first time today. So that’s always going to cheer one up. How are you doing?
Kevin Lawrence 00:44
That was the first time in your life or just the first time in a few weeks?
Brad Giles 00:47
It feels like it’s just been Rain Rain as heavy as can be. Anyway, how are you doing?
Kevin Lawrence 00:55
I’m doing great. Yeah, it’s um, it’s a little more summer loving it. And just a very busy week. So but we’re making time for this episode, which is awesome. So what are we digging into today? I think this is the second of a second in a two series focus that we’re having here? I believe
Brad Giles 01:12
it sure is. It’s a topic that comes up all the time, how the best leaders hold people accountable people, when we talk to look at all levels of an organization are challenged on how do I hold people accountable, or I don’t like holding people accountable. And they’ve got this kind of, they’ve got this kind of thing in their mind about a drill sergeant in the army, perhaps and they’re like, it’s not me. I don’t like it. I’m uncomfortable. So we’re digging into that today.
Kevin Lawrence 01:38
Awesome. It’s gonna be interesting in this Yeah, we work on this one a lot. Everyone or lots of people work on this one a lot. So real quickly, our word or phrase of the day, what do you have today abroad?
Brad Giles 01:49
Look, I have retreat. Retreat. retreat is an interesting word. And I have it because it can mean different things to different people. And in the context that we would conduct a retreat. It’s all about work. And if you’re a leadership team, I’m just what’s on my mind is, you know, and you’re going away, you should be as productive as you can as a leadership team on a retreat, and not just going away to the valley to sip wine and yes, and build relationships in air quotes. So that’s what’s on my mind, right?
Kevin Lawrence 02:29
It’s interesting, because when we go do those retreats, people think we’re going off and having a vacation. Most of them will work like 12 hours a day, like and we’ll have fun too. But they’re usually very hard working. But people back in the office think it’s a mini vacation. So yeah, great one. Mine is speed of trust, or the speed of trust. And there’s a guy Stephen Covey’s son, Stephen. All right, my apologize if I get his name wrong. Stephen Covey, some wrote a book speed trust the book was was okay for me. But the one principle is you talked about when you have trust, things move quickly. And I’m just finishing up a contract with someone on a project, who started off really strong and is ready to fall on our face. And the reality is, the less you trust, the more you put stuff in writing. And the more you follow up, and the more you chase, and everything slows down or grinds to a halt. And so having the right people allows speed, because there is trust, and everything flows easier. So we’re talking about the retreat of trust today, Brad, a little retreat, working hard, actually, you know, what, it’s working hard to have trust so things can move quickly. Yeah. And that’s, that’s and also when we’ve got trusting, it’s just it’s more enjoyable to Alright, well, let’s drop right into this second part.
So the first part was really we were talking about the elements of accountability and the different things you could have in place. And you know, we talked and if you haven’t listened to it yet, recommend that you go back and listen to the previous episode Episode 72. And, you know, we talked about, you know, starting with yourself and being accountable, having crystal clear goals, clear metrics, or KPIs, depending what you call them. Clear behavioral expectations, you know, real carrots and sticks, no incentives and consequences. And then real transparent reporting is kind of this, the fundamental elements, and a lot of companies don’t have them in place. Today, we’re going to talk more almost on the emotional side of the leadership side, and it’s basically how do you bring these to life. And you know, the main thing here to start off with ever seen lots of companies that will have all those tools, maybe not good versions of them.
They just don’t use them. They have a performance management system, but then they don’t manage out or manage up the underperformers. they tolerate them so they can check the boxes but not really do the work. Yeah. And what we’re going to get into today is it’s great to have the tools but you still actually have to do the work. And the work, especially around accountability isn’t a job. thing to do. And I’ll just, I’ll just share a little example. Today we had a meeting with a client, and they had to do a reorganization of the department. And within that reorganization, they had to make some changes, some people’s jobs changed, etc, etc. That’s, if you’ve ever done that’s excruciating process to go through, like, it’s not fun. And it’s, this one wasn’t about accountability, but it was making very tough decisions that affect other human beings. And he got if you got to heart, that stuff’s hard. And, and accountability isn’t that same sort of category. Sometimes it takes, you know, resilience and, and rigor and pushing yourself sometimes because it doesn’t make you feel good. And you sure don’t get a lot of love back from the other people. So that’s kind of setting a Brad, what would you kind of add into the overall thinking about this piece today?
Brad Giles 05:49
Well, I agree. But it doesn’t need to be hard. And that’s the thing if you’ve got the tools, and you’ve got the environmental the behaviors, if you bring those two together, it doesn’t need to be hard. And in fact, I would go as far as to say that, if you aren’t holding people accountable, do you really care? Do you really care? Right? Because, you know, we can get them we spoke last week about we can get, you know, we can give them the environment we can get them to own it. But it’s only until they really own it. They take responsibility. So, you know, it doesn’t need to be that hard. It’s not overwhelming. And you can build an environment with those elements that we discussed last week. That is possible. So So yeah, so let’s, let’s kind of dig into it, I’ll probably I’d add a little quick story, consequences, an interesting thing or accountability for me personally, because many years ago, I had my own firm, and we went down, I took the leadership team down, down to the wine region, with their partners for two days over the weekend. And we it cost $10,000, I remember very distinctly to host them, and we went to this, this retreat. And we locked ourselves myself in the leadership team in this room, trying to figure out what were the problems, and we were digging and digging and digging, Why were these problems here. And we came away with one word, which was quite expensive, yet insightful. And that word was consequence, there wasn’t a consequence, for any of the actions that anyone in the organization was doing. So I myself thought that I was holding the people around me accountable. But it didn’t traverse because all of the other people were all friends with all of the people that reported to them.
Kevin Lawrence 07:55
Right. And as if that wasn’t part of the environment, correct. We didn’t
Brad Giles 07:59
have the environment, I thought that we had some of the tools. And I think we did have some of the tools, but we didn’t have the environment.
Kevin Lawrence 08:07
Yeah, and the great thing is that when you have the environment, which really means it’s deep in the culture, the environment manages it. Right instead of individuals managing and that’s why people building a strong culture is so important. Again, it’s also work to build and maintain a culture. But then those cultural norms kick in, and then people take care of it for you. And that’s the ideal thing where it becomes and that’s what we’re trying to get to a little bit today is getting the environment to help take care of it. And the first point of that, is that you know, you yourself need to lead by example to be creating it.
And if you don’t, then people will follow and I always remember this one company I worked with, you know, the CEO had one of those briefcases on wheels, like a lawyer bag on wheels, not the suitcase that you see on but it’s almost like a lawyer bag on wheels hook. Most of the executives have the same damn things. I work with a lot of executive teams. I’ve never seen an executive use one of those to regular office meetings only when they might travel. So lawyer bags with wheels, another company, all the executives in the meetings in the boardroom had iPads. They worked off early when iPads were first out what maybe three or four years ago? Well, it’s because the chairman had an iPad. And next thing you know, all the executives have iPads, right? So people model and follow senior leaders in all kinds of ways. Those are just two kind of almost silly ones, but they are starting off with your own accountability and basically, both in terms of your behaviors, and your conversations, and talking about and focusing on things you want where a lot of leaders can get sucked into it is talking about problems too much, or focusing on problems too much well, then the whole room or companies energy focus is on knows, but there might be bigger opportunities that are better for you. So it starts with setting
g it by example, not just in terms of accountability. But the things that you focus on the things that you recognize the things you reward, because generally those things will start to expand because there’s more energy on them. I know, Brad, you showed the example of, you know, saying Happy birthday and people will follow.
Brad Giles 10:12
Yeah. So in any social environment, people will follow a person’s lead within reason. My name is not, it’s not necessarily normal to just break out into song in a normal social environment yet, if someone sets the lead, let’s say in a boardroom, and if the chairman’s of the board said, Okay, well, now it’s person A’s. It’s Kevin’s birthday, we’re going to sing Happy Birthday, it may be completely weird. But if the chairman starts at everyone else will follow through with that very short song to respect Kevin’s birthday. We did that yesterday with an executive that had their birthday,
Kevin Lawrence 10:50
said something and started singing and we all did it. Yes. And it was and it was horrible. Because we were on zoom, and we weren’t in sync. Like, it might have been the worst rendition of happy birthday ever. Because we couldn’t we there was no, it was hard to keep time together. Let’s decide No, go ahead.
Brad Giles 11:05
Yeah, it’s a thing. And so that’s relevant to singing happy birthday and some cultural stuff. But it plays out in terms of behavioral expectations. And in terms of holding people accountable, and creating an environment of accountability. That’s the kind of the gold standard, an environment where we don’t tolerate and baloney for one of an American term.
Kevin Lawrence 11:30
Yeah. Yeah. And I was the one when the company where the CEO when someone didn’t achieve things, almost made excuses for them. Or when they didn’t, they lied and misrepresented. And so they were just setting a bar of not where another one would deliver the straight goods, say I accomplished this, I missed this, I’m gonna fix it. I feel kind of bad. I should have done better. Right? That’s a very different example. So that’s, that’s starting with you and creating that environment and what you focus on gets more energy and attention and being really aware of that.
Brad Giles 12:05
Yeah, there’s got to be some we’re going to talk about this in a moment, there’s got to be some kind of consequence. There’s got to be some kind of repercussion, to set the expectations, the environment, something will happen, we won’t just pass. And certainly that’s, as I mentioned, what was happening in my firm, I thought I was doing it, but no one else was. And so that still came back to me, don’t get me wrong. But, you know, people weren’t trained, they didn’t know how to do it.
Kevin Lawrence 12:34
Correct. All right. Well, the second one we’ve got Liz is basically conversations, and how you actually have accountability conversations and how that cascades throughout the organization. And, you know, we were talking we’re preparing Brad and I love that maybe you can share the example of both the role playing because that’s, you know, Brian is perfect example, hopefully in a minute. But you know, in a world of sales and many other things, people practice, no firemen do drills, salespeople, roleplay athletes have practices. And one of the most important management tools is accountability. And I don’t know I’ve ever heard of people practicing it, yet. It’s an insanely valuable skill. So Brad, you had a great example of how someone had done that.
Brad Giles 13:20
Yeah, that’s right. No one ever practices it. And I guess many people, be it a supervisor, or a manager or an executive, oftentimes, this is the highest level in an old chart that they’ve ever been, they’ve often never really been in this situation before. So I found it quite useful within a leadership team, or a management training to run this really simple exercise, and what we do is we break the group into groups of three. And so then there would be one person who is playing that manager or the supervisor, there would be another person who is playing the subordinate of that manager or leader and then they’d be the third person who is a scribe. So they would have a blank piece of paper and they’d be taking notes about the interaction. Now, the job of the manager is to endeavor to get an outcome from the subordinate to kind of hold them accountable to create a consequence.
And to get the person to be able to see that maybe the error of their ways or but to kind of bring him back on track, but then by give them some notes, to prepare that they have to read first, about a hypothetical situation where what the subordinate, the subordinate is, you know, quite, how would you say quite difficult to deal with? They’re like Teflon, nothing touches them. Yeah, the situation is that nothing touches them, they darken wave and i prime them on certain things. To say about the situation, and the manager gets a brief also about the situation. And then so they read it for a couple of minutes, we jump into roleplay. And so the manager is saying, if you and I roleplay. So So Kevin, tell me about what happened when there was that fifth at that, that particular site. And then Kevin saying, Yeah, I don’t know someone else had that problem. Oh, so. So we roleplay like this back and forth. And it’s, it’s a situation that they’ve never been in before. So we would do that, then we would come back together for, let’s say, five or 10 minutes, talk about what worked and what didn’t, and then we’d switch again. And then yeah, so then, and then we’d switch again. So each person gets to play each of the three roles. Because often times they’ve never been in the situation where they can actually practice accountability.
Kevin Lawrence 15:50
Yeah, and they might just sidestep in real life, or do a crappy job or yell at the person. And yeah, it’s look at role playing and practicing we do when we, when we teach people how to train, how to how to interview, you know, using top rating, same thing, three people think that the candidate, the interviewer, and the scribe, and the scribe is watching and gathering feedback. And until and you keep rotating, it’s just, it’s role playing is a very, very valuable thing. It really helps another tool. And that also helps in my book, your oxygen mask. First, I’ve got this conflict resolution model for steps. And if you’re going to have a sensitive conversation which accountability might be, it helps you to prepare and break down your thoughts into four things, which is getting permission, making sure they’re ready for the conversation, a couple of facts, you know, how you feel about it, like the tension that it creates within you. And then resolution? Again, just, it’s, and what we often do with that is that we will help you get people to pre write the script.
And we even roleplay that a few times, actually, remember that when you’re explaining the example, Brad, the main thing is to be prepared for tough conversations so that you’re more effective when you do it. No different than driver training, or sales training or anything else. It’s a great tool. So the third one is okay, that’s, you know, role playing and getting ready for those conversations. What do you actually do when someone misses expectations? And, you know, there’s lots of different things you can do. But doing nothing reinforces that missing expectation is okay. And you know, my favorite base, about when someone misses in, we’ve talked about this in a previous episode is the flinch. You got to have a reaction. And if you’re actually smiling, that’s a problem. So the reaction can be as simple as Oh, really? I thought that was done?
Or, Oh, you’ve got like two days left? Or Oh, did you tell the client or Oh, did you let Mary Jo know and finance that? You know, like, some sort of Oh, right. And, and I remember I shared this story for a friend that was in used car sales when I was in college. And he had a technique for negotiating the trade in values, which the dealership obviously wanted to be low, you know, he would look at the car and he pointed all the scratches to make the person uncomfortable. And then when he says, oh, what do you want for it? And then they give him a number every his answer was the same every time Whoa, gold brick in the trunk. You know, it was a cheesy used car salesman line. But he was flinching to what they were saying to make them uncomfortable. And psychologically, it works. So somehow, there needs to be some something that’s authentic. That even without words, gives there or without explanation makes them see that it’s not okay, because the idea of accountability is the one of the key elements is internal tension. They should if they aren’t already, some people already feel it. But if they aren’t feeling internal tension, our job is to make sure that that comes to the surface, and they can soak in it for a minute or so. That’s how people learn and we learn from those kinds of situations.
Brad Giles 18:52
Yeah, one of course, one of the best, the best ways to flinch is silence. Just don’t say anything, but that may not be your tool of choice.
Kevin Lawrence 19:02
Depends on the look on your face, though, Brad. I’ve got CEOs No, I’ve got some CEOs that are silent about it. And and and and there’s a way of being silent. And but being silent and having no reaction. Also, I’ve seen it be a situation where can endorse it so that there’s it there’s strategic silence that can have an impact. And then there’s just pure silence that doesn’t so
Brad Giles 19:26
yeah. Oh, no, no, I agree. Also, there’s something like so what do you plan to do about it? Is that going to succeed but, but the best one that I’ve heard came from the local chief of police in my state, and it goes a little something like this. Can you help me to understand how that happened? whatever it might be. That’s a good one. Can you help me to understand it’s, it’s such a it’s it just cuts through what you’re saying? is I don’t understand what you’re saying is, I’m not accusing you of being wrong. But I don’t understand it’s got such a liar. He is in many situations where he needs to hold people accountable at multiple levels.
Kevin Lawrence 20:16
Yes. And he doesn’t want to turn into an idiot and yell and scream and lose his cool.
Brad Giles 20:21
Yeah, that’s it. And so it’s just it’s the comeback line that just cuts through everything. Love it. Can you help me understand why you didn’t lock the car? Can you help me understand? Why? You? You know, you gave that person a blank check whatever it or
Kevin Lawrence 20:37
you didn’t get back to the customer or your you didn’t get? Yes, that’s good. It’s another great one from a coach that you and I both know a guy named Dave beanie. Hey, and showed up to Dave’s great coach down in Las Vegas was on someone doesn’t deliver on a quarterly goal we call rock. He goes okay. So was that bad strategy? Or was it bad execution? Basically, were you thinking wrong? Or real lazy? Yeah, bad execution means you didn’t do the work, or you didn’t plan it. You didn’t plan your work? Well, not just lazy. But it really is. I had a great chat with Dave because it’s one or the other. He didn’t think well up front are gonna have a good strategy. Or you didn’t plan the work? Well, it’s one of the two. So which one is it?
And let’s learn. So those are kind of, you know, great ones in terms of questions. Sometimes it can be things like, like, in a meeting again, there’s the flinch. Or the or the long silence, okay. And then it’s like, Okay, um, we’d better have a separate meeting about this. This was this is a really important one. How about you? You come with me and meet me in the CFO later on? It’s the adult version of sending the kids to the principal’s office. Yeah, right. But it’s also calling a separate meeting or telling them to stay back after the meeting. The other thing is, jeez, I think you’re gonna have a long night, we got to have it. I need it by tonight. I need it by nine tomorrow, football full knowing they’re probably going to pull an all nighter or, you know, I hope you didn’t have a lot of plans this weekend. I’m really, this is this is just this is not, there’s no flexibility on this.
This, you know, it was supposed to be in today, we got to have it for Monday, I’m going to call the CEO of the other company, make sure but that we got to have it. Let me know what you need to get it done. You know, things like that, where you basically hold the standard up. Yes. And and and let them feel the consequences and don’t save them don’t have empathy, they’ve got to feel because if you don’t create the tension and hold them accountable, and they get away with it, they their work, though some of them will start to work here, they’ll realize that you’re soft, and realize they don’t have to deliver, they can make up a BS excuse, or whatever it happens to be
Brad Giles 22:51
and get away with it. There’s got to be a consequence. Now. Yeah, some times some leaders will think that consequence means firing someone. And that’s it. But the point that we’re making here is that there are actually about 100 different ways maybe even more, that you can hold someone accountable, or Yeah, create a consequence without firing because I reckon that firing is actually failing. When you have to fire someone, what you’ve done is you’ve failed to create that environment of consequence using the tools to get them there. Now, maybe not every single time I’m alone by that, come on, come on by a little bit. Now
Kevin Lawrence 23:34
a little by little bit by anything a little bit. Oh, by the World is Flat a little bit. I agree with you, I agree with on some of that. But there’s some people who are just not accountable. And, and they’re or they’re or they’re just not a good fit for your organization or a role you have. And I believe in trying to make it work, Brad, but at some point, there’s some people that get their homework done. And there’s some people who make excuses.
Brad Giles 23:59
That’s correct.
Kevin Lawrence 24:00
Yeah. And I don’t think and you can’t fix them all.
Brad Giles 24:03
You can’t fix them all. That’s not what I’m advocating. What I’m saying is that there are 100 opportunities that you have until you fire someone. And what that is that if you get to the point where you have fired someone, right, you have failed to utilize those 100 opportunities if you
Kevin Lawrence 24:20
haven’t used the 100 Yes, if you’ve used the 100 and they still hasn’t worked. Oh, yeah, yeah, and a lot of math and that’s why when someone wants to fire someone, I like to double check first, that they’ve tried a whole bunch of things first, because often the leader hasn’t done a bunch of the right things the person you know, they’re they haven’t tried a number of different techniques to get it work, get it to work, because there’s some people who are accountable without any work at all they just are and there’s some people that need some support to get there.
And some of them will be a couple other ones we haven’t been really you know, at some point, putting a warning letter in writing or a penalty, or a meeting with HR and the CEO Putting on a performance improvement plan or a final warning, or send them off for training to get, you know, if they, if they’re having inappropriate behavior, you know, send them off to some sort of training, that’s about having appropriate behavior, whatever it happens to be. And then obviously, you can if that doesn’t work, if someone’s not accountable, I mean, there’s no point in changing their role, because that’s probably not going to change and fix it unless they hate the work they’re doing. Maybe you demote them, maybe they’re too senior, or maybe they leave. But like, as you’re saying, that’s the last resort, you got a lot of other things you can try first. And often. People aren’t good at doing those things with their people, which is unfortunate.
Brad Giles 25:39
Yeah. And one of the issues that I’ve certainly seen before is that, that people, maybe, let’s say, more junior supervisors, or managers still want to be the person’s friend, or they see it as a friend relationship first, and therefore, they don’t want to overcome that. But there, there may be a third option that one might not have considered. And that is, Kevin. I like you, Kevin. But, you know, you said that you were going to deliver 100 widgets. So what I’m doing there is trying to introduce the third element to the conversation, unlikely given like, you’ve been doing a good job on everything else. But you know, you’ve really let the team down over here. What are you planning? You know, what are you doing about it? So rather than kind of directly by writing you on trying to work this third element to say, this is a bit of a shared problem, but mostly your problem? And what’s your plan over there?
Kevin Lawrence 26:40
What’s your plan? And is there a way I can assist? Yeah, right. Awesome. All right. The next one is meetings to review goals and key projects and accountabilities. And you know, what’s interesting, I will note here is that meetings are leading, it’s your opportunity to lead your people and reviewing is remembering, right? When you go and review goals, people forget. And there’s the people who just don’t do the work. And there’s people get so busy, they forget. And as a simple thing on our team on our weekly meeting, we go through the company level goals every single week, generally, we get about 11 weeks, a quarter, we get to review it because of holidays and such and our meetings are on Mondays, and we don’t have enough as a holiday. But it’s a reminder of it. So what is the system that you have to keep things moving ahead? Same with critical projects, if you’ve got critical projects?
And what do people do, they have a weekly meeting, or a bi weekly meeting or a three times a week meeting to review those critical tasks. And lo and behold, it helps the project Move, move ahead more smoothly, or even a daily meeting. So it’s the meetings or are a mechanism to really help this. And ideally, you know, you’re not ill, as a leader holding everyone’s hand on it, you’re getting your direct reports to make their own updates or their own progress reports. But it’s setting up the communication rhythm that makes it work much better. And that’s why, as an organization weekly meetings, reviewing the goals every week reviewing the key numbers every week, dramatically makes a difference. Yeah, it does the the meetings is so important around this accountability, and ideally in an environment of peer accountability.
Brad Giles 28:22
Peer accountability we’ll talk about in a moment. But you know, one of the things that I advocate for is a that people verbalize this status update. So they’re going to verbally say on read, and then to build a system around this thing I called last seven, next seven. So I’m read, this is what I did in the last seven days, nothing, this is what I’m going to do in the next seven days, I’m going to call 14 prospects, or whatever it is. So making that a part of a simple update around the things that need to be actioned so that you’re not holding the person accountable, but the environment or the system is creating that accountability. Yep.
Kevin Lawrence 29:04
I agree. Totally. And, and, and that works with our team, we talk about what’s the progress stucks. And then next steps, same kind of an idea, but it’s verbal, weekly, which makes it fast, but then you’re staying on top of it, and he got 1012 reminders every quarter. So what’s the system to keep it Top of Mind, and, and even a short meeting to just troubleshoot any issues? It’s a It works very, very well. It’s just under utilized.
Brad Giles 29:30
It’s verbal, sorry, just to very quickly made the point of verbal matters. Because if I see on a dashboard, a read, it’s very, very different to have to stand up next to my peers and say I failed on that, or I’m well behind, and that like it really makes a big difference. It does. And
Kevin Lawrence 29:48
that takes us into this next one, which is the pure accountability and we’re both massive fans of having people provide updates quick updates of sharing worthy At any one, we do a quarterly meeting, we review company goals, the goal owners give a status report where they got to. And if there’s anything lingering what they have to do to wrap it up, or the next step, when we go through the individual leaders in the company, we go through their KPIs, their critical number on the rocks, we can do it in five minutes a person because it’s pre populated, and it’s a system, but they stand and deliver their own report card every 90 days. And ideally, they do even a monthly version of it as well. But it’s just it’s it puts the onus on the shoulders of the person responsible or accountable to do the work, pardon me. But they’re doing it in front of their peers, which can create, you know, great transparency, great team environment. It’s just it’s, again, it’s a simple mechanism, I think people under utilize it and do too much stuff in silos where people can hide in silos.
Brad Giles 30:53
And peer accountability really is, you know, the level above the leader holding people accountable when you’re in a group and everyone holds one another accountable. And then only the leaders role of that group is to be the final arbiter, rather than controlling every single interaction or, or managing every interaction, it’s much better so that anyone in your team should be able to step up and say, given I thought you said you’re gonna do it by Tuesday. And they doing that, because they believe in the goals of the team, and they believe in the team success, rather than Who cares if Kevin didn’t like the number? Yeah. And so one example of peer accountability, which is a little bit different is a company called Spotify, who you probably aware of. So just a simple tool that Spotify use, they work in small clusters, or groups, and what they do above each set of workstations, they’ve got a whiteboard, and on that whiteboard every day, the group needs to write where they’re stuck. It could be, I’m stuck with technology, I’m stuck with an individual who has been away or I’m stuck with anything else, or we’re trying to solve this problem in the project. But it’s a transparent level of accountability, that is a different way to think about it. Yep,
Kevin Lawrence 32:22
yeah, all of these things are creating an environment where the weight is more on the shoulders of the people accountable for the work, where they have to get done, and the team and just making it more normal to have these things. And when you have a system with reporting and talking about your stocks, or where you need help, or whatever it happens to be, things just happen more naturally. And as a leader, if you just keep holding up the bar high, making sure those clear, but important goals that stretch people enough to be relevant. The system runs a lot better, and you just got to flinch. And you just got to make sure there is consequences. And if there’s a person who is obviously not delivering consistently, you got to deal with it.
Otherwise, the whole team starts to drop their game because they say why would I bother if I can, you know if I can do all this and deliver but if Kevin is doing a crappy job, and he’s still getting his paycheck every two weeks, and he still gets a piece of the bonus, like come on. So that’s the part where you can kill the whole system. So great conversation. So the part two on accountability, Episode 71, we had the elements here is more the behavioral piece of it, and the emotional piece of actually bringing it to life and ideally creating an environment of accountability. Kind of four main points, set the environment, have the right conversations, have the right reactions when people miss expectations, have great meeting rhythms to remind people of what needs to be done. And then finally, a culture of pure accountability. And I just said, Brad, it’s the highest form of accountability, where people are accountable to each other, and the boss doesn’t have to sit there and crack the whip.
Brad Giles 34:01
Very good. Very good. Yeah, we’re gonna have both the elements plus the environment dude episode today. So thank you very much for listening. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. As always, Kevin is available at Lawrence and co.com. And you can find me Brad at evolution partners.com do have yourself a good week. We look forward to chatting to you again next week. Take care
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