“Everybody wants a team that’s accountable but nobody wants to be held accountable.” That’s because most people equate being held accountable with getting in trouble or being controlled. Joe redefines it entirely. Accountability is three questions asked with genuine curiosity: What made that not get done? What are you going to do to get it done? How can I or the team support you?
The tone is everything. “What made that not get done” can be threatening or it can be a warm invitation to understand — same words, opposite effect. And you don’t have to accept excuses to be curious; you can be full of wonder and still notice when someone is handing you twenty excuses. Excuses lower confidence because they signal the person finds the problem sexy but solving it “somehow not for them,” whereas “I fell down and I’m going to get back up” raises it.
“Excellent accountability is when I’m not doing it, when the team is doing it to each other.”
The deepest version is structural: when the team holds itself accountable, because in reality a failure isn’t a failure to the leader-coach but to the whole team. A player who misses every three-pointer failed the team and the fans, not just the coach. Done this way, accountability also teaches people how to win in the relationship, not just how to hit the objective.
Related Concepts
- Make it safe and expected to say no
- Schedule time for the hard conversations you’re avoiding
- The leader’s job is not to take care of everyone
- Safety enables productive conflict rather than preventing it
- Peer accountability outperforms hierarchical accountability