Making An Investment In Your Personal Character

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“We never know what’s wrong without the pain. Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.”
Isaac Edward Slade, from The Fray.

I heard a very interesting story a while ago, told by Gary Kuzyk, Director of Labor Relations with the City of Hamilton. It so happens that when he started his first job as a young eager lawyer, with a significant student debt, he had dutifully arranged for the student loan repayments to be debited from his bank account. When he observed, however, that the first three payments had not been withdrawn, he called the loan office. After making him wait an interminable length of time on the phone, the clerk came back on the line and sternly announced that his file had been sent to storage and his loan was shown as having been paid in full. She seemed annoyed that he would have put her to the trouble of having to verify something that he must already have known.

Gary then described his reaction in this moment as envisioning himself as the classic cartoon character with an angel on the one shoulder and a devil on the other, each advocating opposite responses. He listened to the angel, and told the clerk that there must have been a mistake, that his loan was indeed not paid. She only grudgingly agreed to pull the file from storage. The bank eventually fixed the mistake, and it took him four years to pay off the loan.

I’ve told this story in a variety of settings since I first heard it. There is always at least one person in every group who tells me that Gary should have thanked the clerk, quickly got off the phone, and been grateful for his good fortune. Gary actually goes on to say that he was indeed grateful for his good fortune – because of the incident, not because of its outcome. Paying that debt may well have been the best investment Gary ever made, because it was an investment not in his chequing account, but in his character account.

In our society is a great vault filled with an inheritance left by those before us – many who died for our freedom. That vault is the bank of opportunity. The men and women who have paved the way to our freedom have given us a promissory note. But without character, we cannot access the account, and the cheque we expect from society will eventually come back marked “insufficient funds” because there is nothing to draw from within ourselves.

Regardless of our economic status, at the end of the day we all must look at ourselves in the mirror. What we see is the result of the decisions we have made. Character – the courage and capacity to meet the demands of reality – is required to make a withdrawal from the account of opportunity. Without personal character, we become spiritually and psychologically bankrupt, unable to access the resources required to meet the demands of existence.

What is your experience of investing in your character? What are the results?

Accountability Quotes: A Request Is Not An Agreement

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For more than thirty years, I’ve been helping people be more accountable. As a family therapist in the 1980s, I discovered that accountability – the ability to be counted on – is not just the foundation for succeeding in the marketplace; it’s the foundation for succeeding in your life. Developing accountability with kids is a top priority for parents because when young people are accountable they will be employable. Earning credibility with yourself and others, being known as a person who keeps their promises, who goes the extra mile to get the job done, and who does what they say they’ll do, enables you to reach your full potential, personally and organizationally.

List the people in your life who are accountable, people you know you can count on. Think of what it’s like to be around people who keep their promises, who see blame as a waste of time, who stand up and take ownership for problems, who have no time for excuses, who make sure the job gets done. These people bring energy to a relationship. They make trust and creativity possible. They don’t waste time with regret; they put their energy into solutions. Accountable people put a higher value on character than on comfort. They have the courage to meet the demands of reality – without any room for criticizing or fault finding. Accountable people make integrity real and produce results.

Accountability Quotes

Here are some of my favourite accountability quotes that I have written – or collected -over the years:

An agreement is defined as anything you have said you would do, or anything you have said you would not do. Successful living, working, and leading, depends on learning to be accountable, to make and keep your agreements. Accountability is what makes integrity real.

Accountability is the keystone on the bridge of trust.

If you want someone to be more accountable, start by encouraging them to be more passionate. If you aren’t accountable, you haven’t found enough reasons to be accountable. Vision and Passion precede accountability.

If people don’t own it, they won’t do it.

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” ~ George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, philosopher, and co-founder of the London School of Economics

It’s not greener on the other side of the fence. It’s greener where you water it. Now get busy and turn on the hose.

“Where does change begin? It begins in this room. Why? Because this is the room you are in.” ~ Peter Block

How many of you have ever thought less of a person because they put up their hand and said, “I’m accountable for that?”

If it is to be, let it begin with me.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen and those who complain about what’s happening.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead

A request is not an agreement. Accountability starts with an agreement. It ends by keeping that agreement, regardless of whether it’s difficult, uncomfortable, or  inconvenient.

The Roots Of Employee Accountability

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“There are a thousand hacking at the branches… to one who is striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau

Certain species of bamboo trees in Southeast Asia grow less than an inch in four years, but in their fifth year will grow over a hundred feet. An unseen root system develops below the surface that enables the plant to support its enormous growth in that fifth year.

All systems, whether they are bamboo trees or employee accountability systems, require solid roots to be both enduring and regenerative. After all, it’s not the fierceness of the storm that determines whether we break, but rather the strength of the roots that lie below the surface. Far too many employee accountability and performance management systems don’t have a strong, established root system. Tasks are assigned to employees in a haphazard way, hoping that the worker will “figure it out” and deliver an adequate, even superior, performance, or alternatively, you find yourself coerced into using a rigid, bureaucratic performance review system that is demeaning and disconnected with the needs of the human spirit. If either of these are your accountability process, you will soon realize that neither ‘hope’ nor rigidity are very effective strategies for holding people accountable.

An effective, engaging, and enduring employee accountability process must grow from good roots. After helping organizations develop accountability processes for more than two decades, I have found seven key principles that form strong roots of accountability in a workplace.

  1. Clarity. Ambiguity breeds mediocrity. People need to have pristine clarity about what is expected of them in terms of operational results as well as expected behaviors. Whenever possible, write down what you expect from each other. Visibility drives clarity. But the most important thing to be clear about is the results expected. If it’s in your area, function, or project, you are accountable. The organization is depending on a set of results. Accountability – the ability to be counted on – is about making a promise to deliver.
  2. Agreements. A request is not an agreement. Clear expectations must be followed up with a mutually decided upon arrangement. Every request needs a question, “Can I count on you to meet my expectation?” Be sure the person you are holding accountable has the resources, the capability, and the willingness to come through.
  3. Support. Accountability without support is pressure. To be sustainable, every agreement must come with support requirements. Whenever you expect something from someone, it is vital to ask how you can support them. Support requirements make the accountability agreement mutual and respectful.
  4. Connection. Accountability without connection is compliance. In the age of the internet, everybody is communicating, but few are actually connecting. You can’t hold employees accountable by emailing them your expectations. You have to get out of the office, get in front them, and make the connection. Connection is about listening, supporting, and being genuinely interested. You’ll have a hard time holding anyone accountable for long if they don’t believe you care – not just about the results they produce, but also about who they are as a person.
  5. Authenticity. Accountability without passion is drudgery. Often, if people aren’t accountable, it means they don’t have enough reason to be accountable. It’s a whole lot easier to hold someone accountable when you have helped them identify their passion and make the link between meeting your needs and meeting their own. Commitment has to be authentic in order to last.
  6. Consequences. Accountability without consequences is meaningless. But consequences are not the same as punishment. Consequences are the result of delivering – or not delivering – on your agreements. If you do what you say you are going to do, there are positive consequences. If you fail to do what you agreed to, there are negative consequences. It’s important to negotiate and clarify consequences as early as possible in the agreement process. Consequences are the some of the key motivators to accountability. Be sure to explore both the internal and external consequences of honoring your agreements.
  7. Follow up. What is the required follow up? How often – and when – do you need to meet to ensure the accountabilities to each other are met? These are vital questions in the accountability process.

You might have noticed that the fundamental principles that form the roots of an effective accountability process with others are also the principles that underlie accountability agreements with yourself. Whether keeping agreements to others or yourself, or holding others to account, be sure to take the time to ensure good roots.

Where Did Accountability Go Off The Rails?

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Somewhere down the line, something horrible happened to accountability. In the words of David Weinberger (a research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society), it has become,  “accountabalism,” the “practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to magically ward off evil.”

Recently I worked with a sophisticated, seasoned group of senior leaders in the federal public service. Due to the regulating of the expense account process, they were not allowed to budget for a lunch for their group, but instead had to bill it to their separate room accounts and claim for it individually. Under the guise of “accountability” their judgment and trust has been relegated to a set of bureaucratic rules and regulations.

Such an emphasis on accountability is an understandable response to some terrible scandals in the private and public sectors. But the notion has grown to an extreme, suggesting that there is a right and a wrong answer to every question, and eliminating the possibility of good intention. Accountabalism bureaucratizes accountability, takes away individual choice, and drives out human judgment. Accountability – the ability to be counted on – the foundation of labor and life – has been relegated to an organizational buzzword at best, and, at worst, a hammer to control and punish people. While claiming to increase individual responsibility, accountabilism actually drives out trust. For example, when a sign-off is required for every step in the work-flow, a process is broken down to its smallest parts and the vision of the whole and the ability to see the big picture is lost. It sets up finger-pointing and blame when something goes wrong. And something will inevitably go wrong. No system works perfectly. But it doesn’t mean that the system is broken and needs fixing with more rules. If one employee cheats on an expense claim, there’s no need to distrust everyone and set up a whole new time-consuming, inefficient reporting process.

What’s needed is the return of a common sense approach to accountability that builds trust, ownership, and a renewed commitment to the greater good. Not more extremism of accountability or “accountabilism.”

Accountability: How One Person Can Transform A Culture

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Ron Bynum was the leader of a training organization that used a former summer camp as one of its facilities. One night his phone rang with horrific news. One of the buildings at his training center had caught fire and burned down quickly. Someone had left a towel near a heater in a dormitory where some of the staff lived. The old wooden building had gone up in flames like a pile of dry sticks.

When he got to the center the staff of nearly one hundred was in an uproar of finger pointing, criticism, trying to find who was to blame for the fire. As the furor began to subside, an accountable employee stood up and said, “I’m responsible.” Dead silence filled the room. “Wait a minute,” someone said. “You weren’t even here this week. How could you possibly be responsible?”

“I’m responsible because I’m claiming responsibility. That’s all that really matters. If you’re looking for details, I’ve been in that dormitory a dozen times this summer, and I could have noticed that the towel rack was too close to the heater. But I didn’t. So for that one reason I’m responsible. The details are irrelevant. How about if we all took responsibility rather than blaming ourselves or somebody else? Then let’s find out what needs to be done.”

The atmosphere in the room shifted in that one brief moment. Blame and recrimination transformed into searching for constructive solutions. Stepping into accountability got everyone heading in a productive direction. Now that’s leadership, and he didn’t need a title, only a decision to be accountable.

Thanks, Gay Hendricks (The Corporate Mystic), for this story.

What are you doing to inspire others around you with the courage to be accountable?