Alicia Davis
So if you’ve been watching our videos, you know we’ve been doing a series on the topics that are in our Elevating Skills of Experienced Leaders program, and we end the program with accountability. Now, as you might imagine, or as you might feel for yourself, sometimes even holding ourselves accountable, or maybe, you know, raising up accountability on our team as a topic, or with an individual person, sometimes not so easy, right Stacie?

Stacie Watson
Yeah, you know, in some ways, I feel there’s a deep connection between this topic and one we’ve talked about recently – difficult conversations, right? Sometimes it can be awkward or uncomfortable to talk to someone about their lack of accountability, especially if it’s been something that’s been persistent, right? An ongoing issue, and you know, in the session, we try to offer some reasons that accountability, you know, can be tricky, and some of the things that sort of get in our way, and some of the things we highlight have to do with, you know, perhaps it’s a tight job market, and so we don’t want to lose staff that you know are filling an important role, right?

Alicia Davis
That’s right.

Stacie Watson
Sometimes, I think also, and this one, I think, doesn’t always seem obvious, but I do think it’s worth making sure that there is aligned expectation about what the expectation is, or aligned understanding about what the expectation is, because I think sometimes the manager just imagines that everyone understands exactly what’s expected, but the specifics of what that looks like might vary, and so taking some time to do that is a way to sort of support accountability and also checking for clarity, right?

Alicia Davis
That’s right. Clear is kind, as Brene Brown says, right? So, really clear. And, you know, I think sometimes we also we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. I mean, we’ve certainly heard in sessions that, you know, people want to be friends, you know, they want to be seen and liked. And, of course, and yet, we can be kind, we can be direct, we can be clear. And if we also come into a conversation with somebody with curiosity, curiosity is kind of the magic approach, asking questions, helping that person understand what they can do differently, and how they might go about doing that differently is really important.

Stacie Watson
Yeah, you know, the one other thing I would just offer is that when we have people who are not accountable on the team, it’s really a morale drain. So, you know, beyond the importance of having that one person kind of meet the expectations, it’s also important that the team sees that that’s important. So just another way to think about that.

Alicia Davis
Absolutely, absolutely. So share with us some thoughts about accountability – info@TLStransforms.com – and I’m Alicia Davis…

Stacie Watson
I’m Stacie Watson.

Alicia Davis
Thanks so much.

Stacie Watson
Thank you.