Seth Dobbs (he/him): Is your team or organization struggling to move forward because of hidden accountability gaps? What could you accomplish if you embraced accountability, not as blame, but as a tool for growth and change? Hi, I’m Seth Dobbs, and this is the Principle Driven Leadership Podcast where I share principles of leadership, along with examples of how to apply them to help make you be the best leader you can be.

These principles are based on my years of experience as an executive leader in building teams and organizations, and in coaching others to become leaders themselves. I believe that not only can anyone develop leadership skills, but that everyone can and should develop leadership skills. I think they’re essential in helping you achieve your best in whatever way you might be trying to make an impact.

And that’s because leadership skills help you better influence others to effectively create durable results. And leadership is a journey. The step we’re going to take today involves seeing how making excuses for yourself or others in the face of adversity can reduce your effectiveness and prevent you from reaching your goals.

And that by embracing accountability, you can continually improve yourself and your team by facing reality. So for this episode, I want to talk about Tobias. Tobias was an engagement lead for a temp agency offering content writing, image production, and other similar services. He had several clients including a business unit at a large international consumer packaged goods company

we’ll just call Prodco. The work at Prodco had gone on for several years. Tobias had a strong relationship with the hiring manager, Erica, who loved the work Tobias’s team members provided. As far as she was concerned, Tobias and his team could do no wrong. At any given time, he had a team of around 20 or so working for her with folks working six month contracts at staggered intervals, most of which were typically renewed.

The relationship was so good that Erica would only do a brief screening interview whenever Tobias recommended someone for her team, trusting that he wouldn’t let her down. He eventually worked with her to set up a few short-term annual positions to rotate new hires fresh out of college.

He felt that the work and environment at Prodco was a great training ground for new hires, and he offered a discount to Erica to allow this. Now one Spring, Erica informed Tobias that Proco was completing an acquisition and would merge another team with hers. She thought this would create additional demand.

She also let him know that she’d have a new counterpart from this acquisition, James, who would also be involved in hiring decisions. Tobias told her he was excited to hear all that and looked forward to meeting James, and soon Tobias was occupied with a new wave of college hires. So he selected the five he felt were the best fit for Prodco and prepped them for the screening, telling them that it was just a formality and that they’d be starting in a week.

So the first one went through the screening with Erica and then with James. Shortly after, Erica informed Tobias that Prodco was not going to bring on that candidate. So he sent over the next one wondering only for a moment what might have happened with that first one. And then the second one was rejected.

And then the third. So his manager asked what was happening. So he checked in with Erica and found out that James was a bit of a stickler and doing more of a “real interview”. He shrugged and told his boss, uh, this new guy is messing things up. He’ll, he’ll settle in soon. James did settle in, but not in the way Tobias assumed. As various team members’

six months contracts came up for renewal, James interviewed them to see if he wanted to renew them, surveyed their work and only renewed about one in four of them. Tobias’s boss asked again, really what’s happening as the revenue from this client was on a decline. And Tobias said, “well, this James just isn’t with the program.

He seems to have different ideas than Erica,” and he shrugged it off. His boss, however, did not find it so easy to shrug off. They were losing revenue. And on top of that, several of the new hires that failed the screening resigned and moved to a competitor. So he confronted Tobias about all this, who responded

“I told you this. James has a different plan. What am I supposed to do?”

And that brings us to the principle for this episode, which is Accountability Means Not Making Excuses. Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean no mistakes, but rather not to make excuses to soften our mistakes. It means you should work to understand the reasons you didn’t reach the outcomes you desired, and learn from that.

Tobias went easy on himself, basically blaming his client for changes that impacted both his team’s morale and his organization’s revenue. And he didn’t even see any reason to follow up with the team members that were rejected after he had assured them that it would be a given that they were placed at Prodco.

Tobias was faced with a real problem, but he distanced himself from problem resolution by thinking more about where to place blame and to make excuses rather than reckoning with the outcomes. Being accountable means being capable of explaining, or giving an account of, what outcomes were or were not reached. A truthful, honest account that includes understanding our own part and why we didn’t reach the desired outcomes.

And this last part in particular is crucial. We have to recognize that if there are issues in a system that we’re a part of, we are probably a part of those issues. Now this can take a bit of vulnerability and overcoming a fear of being blamed, of feeling stupid or any number of reasons that we avoid facing the reality of the outcome of our actions.

But at its most basic, this principle is about asking yourself what you could have done differently to reach a different outcome. Sure, other people make mistakes. They make decisions that get in the way of your plans, possibly deliberately. All sorts of factors outside of your control can interfere with your work.

But that’s just it. They’re outside of your control. You can control you, your decisions, your actions, and yes, it’s certainly possible that in the analysis there isn’t anything you could have done differently, but do the work to be sure that that’s the case. Don’t let yourself off too easy. You can think of this as having a difficult conversation with yourself, which I talked about in season two.

You can recognize when you or others are avoiding accountability when you or others are using phrases like “they think you’re doing a bad job”, or “the other team was supposed to do that”, or “she won’t deal with this issue”. Or as in Tobias’s case, “James has different ideas.

He has a different plan.” He even recognized that James was doing things differently, but he didn’t take the time to find out why or what James wanted. Ideally, when he first heard that James was joining the team, he should have done that, but instead he just behaved as if the change was an uncontrollable thing that he wasn’t going to let affect him.

But instead, after the first rejection of his first candidate, he should have asked himself what he could be doing differently. How come this broke the trend of what they’ve expected over the last few years? And he probably should have apologized to the new hire that was rejected, and perhaps more importantly found out what had changed so that he could handle it better.

This is why accountability is so important. It gets you to do the analysis to ideally prevent future problems like your current one from occurring, but it may also give you an opportunity to course correct and improve that current situation. Seeing more honest conversations where people recognize mistakes and make plans for improvement is the surest sign that you and your team are embracing accountability.

And that’s what this principle gets down to. Being able to face reality and handle all its implications. It’s hard to be effective. It, it’s hard to build an environment that embraces problem resolution when you won’t hold yourself or others accountable. And again, this isn’t about blame. This is quite the opposite.

Blame throwing, finger pointing, all that kind of stuff actually reduce the effectiveness of an organization and tend to be quite the opposite of accountability as it leads people to hide things, to bury mistakes and so forth. Being accountable is as simple as looking at a desired outcome that wasn’t reached or a realized outcome that wasn’t desired, and asking yourself what you could have done differently.

Ideally talking about that as well with those that may have been negatively affected, really can bring it all home and and get you on a path of improvement. Now, years ago I was training a few colleagues in Principle Driven Leadership and I had just had a session on accountability when something went wrong in a couple of the trainees’ department.

And a couple of them spent an hour just complaining to each other about how everyone else that had made mistakes, how no one seemed to be able to get things right. And, and that’s why they were faced with what they were faced with. I think it felt good for them to vent. But over the weekend, one of them thought about the lesson on accountability,

and when they returned to work on Monday, he regrouped with his peer and talked about what they could do differently. And it worked. They were able to regroup, to rethink. the venting was done, and really figure out how to take accountability and make a good change. The thing is, no one is perfect regardless of what your level is, your years of experience, you’re gonna make mistakes, and a good leader isn’t measured so much by the mistakes you make, but rather by your ability to hold yourself accountable and drive change.

Getting this right will make your organization far more effective. So I’d like you to think about, do you tend to make excuses for yourself or others rather than facing reality? And how do these excuses impact your effectiveness or your organization’s effectiveness? Try identifying a current challenge or problem that you’re facing, and what actions can you take to hold yourself accountable for the outcome, even if some factors are outside of your control.

Thanks so much for joining me. Please subscribe, follow, comment, and share with a friend if you liked it, and send feedback and questions to contact@pdlpodcast.com and I’ll try to address a few towards the end of the season. Join me next time where I’ll share a framework that’ll help you apply the key principles of problem resolution from the past few episodes.