Have you ever tried holding people accountable… only to damage the relationship?
Most people I know find it hard to hold others accountable. They believe accountability is all about conflict, so they steel themselves for the conversation. They get emotionally worked up, rehearse what they want to say, and enter into the conversation with a lot of negative energy. Then, when the moment comes, they either go too hard or back off entirely, and the relationship takes a hit.
A leader I’m working with right now, whom we’ll call David to protect his identity, came into our most recent session frustrated. One of his directs had missed a deliverable for the third quarter in a row, and David was pissed. David had been giving him feedback, but it wasn’t sticking. He told me he was finally ready to “have THE conversation.”
I asked him what THE conversation looked like in his head, and he described a forty-five-minute one-on-one. He had prepared notes and planned to use this meeting as a shot across the bow to let his direct know that this was serious. He planned to be direct, firm, tough, and forceful, to the point, and he wanted to have all his ducks in a row so his directness would convey the consequences of his actions.
When he mentioned that this was how he always prepared for conversations like these, I asked him how previous conversations had gone.
“Honestly…they usually don’t go so well,” he said, “and then we both walk on eggshells for a few weeks. Performance improves for a short period, but then it slides back again.”
David’s last statement says it all about his approach!
What holding people accountable actually looks like
Accountability isn’t a gotcha moment. In fact, that is the worst way to look at accountability, and it speaks to the flawed mental model that too many of us hold. Catching someone doing something wrong after giving them enough rope to hang themselves with isn’t the right frame for accountability.
Instead, accountability is something simpler and more supportive. Some even argue it is compassionate. It is the steady, ongoing attention you pay to the people and commitments you care about.
Accountability happens consistently and gradually over time, and I’d argue that the best type of accountability is subtle and nuanced. It shows up as a subtle statement you make when you are chatting with someone about something you care about. It happens when you notice something worked well and comment on it. It’s the question you ask a week later about how a tough conversation went. It’s the offhand observation that someone has gotten quieter in meetings lately.
Leaders who do this consistently almost never have to have THE conversation, because the small conversations do the heavy lifting.
David didn’t have an accountability problem with his direct report. He had a cadence problem. The conversation he was dreading was the bill that came due after twelve weeks of not saying the small things in real time. By the time he sat down to plan the big one, the relationship was already fragile, and a forty-five-minute meeting with prepared notes was only going to make it worse.
The subtle shift:
So here is the subtle shift to make: Stop assuming that accountability is a confrontation.
Assume instead that it is simply a contribution that you make through an ongoing conversation.
Here is what that looks like at work.
A project gets handed off in a meeting, and before everyone moves on, you say, “Excellent, so Sue will have X to Bill by Wednesday at noon, and Bill will finish Y by the end of the day.” A week later, when Bill mentions the hand-off went smoothly, you tell him you noticed, and you appreciate how he stayed in touch with Sue to make it work. And when something does slip, the conversation is already easy, because you’ve been having it all along: “Sue, you told Bill you’d have that to him by Wednesday at noon, and it didn’t come through. What happened?” None of those moments feels like accountability in the heavy sense. But together, over weeks and months, they build an accountable team. The standard is visible, all of you are tracking it, and nobody is bracing for THE conversation, because the small ones are doing the heavy lifting.
Do this consistently, and missed commitments decline, people start operating with more responsibility, and you will stop having to have THE conversation you really don’t want to have.
