Accountability Isn’t the Answer You Think It Is (#303)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
While his statement was genuine, there was something else going on.
He wanted results, but he wasn’t that inclined to change his ways to make it happen.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” – Joe Louis
This Week’s Edition
This edition is about the one question that decides whether any accountability structure will hold: do you want to improve, or do you just want the results?
Clarify Your Thinking
Somewhere under John’s confidence was the quiet fear that maybe the lack of results problem was him.
Successful leaders have a pattern. That pattern was effective in generating the initial success. But that ingrained pattern needs evaluation to determine if it needs to be adjusted to get new results.
The saying goes: what got you here won’t get you there.
To take your leadership game to the next level and to scale, the leader has to adapt, evolve and change.
Change is hard. Typical humans resist it. We like patterns. It’s efficient. Change disrupts that efficiency. And… some of us have lost our flexibility.
As times change, we must change with them.
BUT… if we don’t have a true desire to change, then accountability (oversight by someone else) won’t work.
Accountability is meant as a force multiplier (not outsourced motivation).
Think of it this way: a multiplier times zero (no desire) is still zero.
Old Thinking: If someone is watching, then I will finally do what I haven’t done yet that I know I need to do to get the results I want.
New Thinking: Accountability only multiplies a desire I already own. My job is to create/find the desire first (then enroll someone to support me from that point).
Thoughts Lead to Actions
Inviting “accountability” appears humble, responsible, and the right thing to do. Meaning, you’re acknowledging that support would be helpful–a force multiplier.
Here is the rub. Too often, I see leaders hoping that outside pressure will somehow manufacture a desire that was never there.
It is a paradox that we can desire the outcome yet have no desire for the process that generates it.
You can want to be a better leader the way you want to be more fit, right up until your alarm goes off too early and you hit snooze.
To clarify, the problem isn’t discipline; you need accountability. The problem is a lack of desire.
So, before you look to your “accountability” partner to do something for you that you should do for yourself, first take these steps:
Step 1. Ask yourself: “Do I want to do the work, or do I just want the result the work produces?”
Sit in the answer for a second. If it’s the second one, no coach on earth changes that. Only you can.
Step 2. Find your WHY.
Pressure from a coach, a board, or a spouse is borrowed motivation. It works until it runs out. Name the reason you’d do this even if no one were paying attention. That’s the real work this week.
Step 3. Then, and only then, build the structure of support.
Once the desire is yours, accountability stops being a crutch and starts being a lever.
If you’ve got the desire, you’re already most of the way there. The structure is the easy part.
Boost Your Performance
Let’s dive deeper into the true issue: lack of desire to do the work even though we want the results.
What’s Your Opinion?
What is something you’ve been saying you want to improve, but haven’t fully committed to doing the work required to achieve it?
I’d love to hear what you’ve discovered about your own motivation: robin.pou@robinpou.com
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
