Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

Does the word accountability have a positive or negative association for you?

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Does the word accountability have a positive or negative association for you?

Throughout my career, accountability has been a central focus of my research and teaching.

Here are ten things I’ve learned about accountability:

  1. Accountability is the ability to be counted on. Never make a promise you don’t intend to keep, and when you make a promise, keep it, whether you feel like it or not.
  2. Think carefully before you make an agreement – then painstakingly keep the agreements you make. It’s much easier to say no upfront than it is to get out of an agreement that you no longer want to keep. And when you say yes, follow through.
  3. It’s easier to see a lack of accountability in others. It’s a lot easier to be mad at someone else for being late than to be mad at yourself for not showing up on time.
  4. Accountability is the cornerstone of self-respect. No one takes pride in doing something easy. Keeping a promise always leaves you feeling better about yourself. And when you respect yourself, you earn the trust and respect of others.
  5. Accountability inspires others. Accountability is usually used to hammer rather than inspire people. When properly understood, accountability is meant to create safety, alignment, and trust. It’s inspiring to be around people who can be counted on. You’ll get much further building accountability with a flashlight rather than a stick.
  6. Accountability is about ownership. Blaming and finger-pointing are all symptoms of a lack of accountability. Decide that all blame is a waste of time and your life will change forever. Accountability is ultimately about looking in the mirror.
  7. Accountability is about growing up. There’s a difference between maturity and aging. All beings grow oldbut growing up is the duty of human beings.
  8. Accountability requires a recovery plan. When you can’t keep a promise here’s a three-step recovery plan: a) Let your creditor know as soon as you know if your agreement is jeopardized; b) Negotiate with your creditor to minimize damages and re-commit to a new agreement; 3) Learn from your experience so it doesn’t happen again.
  9. To avoid downstream problems, get the agreements right. The vast majority of accountability problems stem from a lack of clear agreements and understanding the consequences. Courageous conversations upstream will prevent problems down the line.
  10. Accountability lies at the core of leadership. If you want your best people to produce results, stay engaged, be inspired, find value in coming back to the office after working from home, and be loyal, it all starts with a well-designed and delivered accountability process.

Journalling – How To Get Going And Keep Going

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Journalling – How To Get Going And Keep Going

Connection to others is critical in good leadership and starts with connection to yourself. Journalling is a great tool for self-connection.

Here are some guidelines to get you going and keep you going:

  1. Buy a nice journal. I love a good leather-covered one I can feel proud to write in.
  2. Have a regular time to write – in the morning, at the end of the day, or, for example, every Sunday morning as you reflect on the past seven days and the week ahead. I like to spend five minutes journalling when I first come in the office, before I turn on my computer. It helps me connect to myself before the barrage of the world’s demands start hitting me.
  3. Experiment with structure. Sometimes journalling is a brain dump, a process I learned from Julia Cameron. Her journalling method is three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. Other times I use a structure of a) How am I feeling? (Including wins in the past 24 hours, lessons learned, and glitches); b) How will I show up today? c) What am I grateful for?
  4. Write less than you think you “should.” Like exercise, it’s better to have small consistent successes than big failures. Two or three sentences is great while you’re getting into the habit.
  5. Don’t show it to anyone. You aren’t writing to impress anyone. It won’t be graded. It is only for you.
  6. Don’t sweat it if journalling doesn’t work for you. It isn’t for everyone. There are lots of other tools for connecting with yourself.

The Myth Of A High-Functioning Team

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The Myth Of A High-Functioning Team

In forty years of doing this work, I have never come across a dysfunctional team. Every team has elements of disfunction and elements of health and falls somewhere on that spectrum. There is no formula. No template.

I have seen teams that are achieving incredible results that would fail dismally in terms of measuring up to what experts would describe as a “high functioning team.” And I’ve seen teams that can check off all the “High Functioning Teams” boxes but are still failing miserably.

This can also be said for leaders and individuals. There’s no blueprint. From our research and observation, however, six actions will support the health of any team:

  1. Know your why. And make sure everyone is clear, inspired and aligned with that purpose. A clear purpose leads to clarity about how much trust, engagement, and accountability you require.
  2. Connect contribution to purpose. Every team member needs to know that they made a meaningful contribution.
  3. Get the right people on the bus. You can’t train for character or chemistry. You can’t make a good hockey team out of a bunch of tennis players.
  4. Get clear about what you expect from each other. Ambiguity leads to mediocrity. Be sure to include, in the expectations, how you can best support each other.
  5. Turn expectations into agreements. Hold each other accountable for delivering on the promises you make to each other and to the people you serve.
  6. Stay self-aware. Be open for feedback. Keep learning. A team that learns together stays together – or at least stays engaged.

If you are interested to learn more about building a healthy culture, join us for this month’s complimentary webinar: https://lnkd.in/d37Prt4a

 

Signs of burnout: How to recognize and evaluate what to keep doing and what to let go of.

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Signs of burnout: How to recognize and evaluate what to keep doing and what to let go of.

From personal experience, I know that burnout is real. It is not to be dismissed.

Here are some signs:

  1. Lack of enthusiasm and vitality
  2. Difficulty getting up in the morning and falling asleep at night.
  3. Speaking in a monotone.
  4. Feeling bored and listless.
  5. Feeling alienated from your family, co-workers, and friends
  6. Feeling hungry but lack an appetite.
  7. Becoming depressed (the line between burnout and depression is very thin).

If you notice some of these symptoms, here’s a suggested strategy to start a recovery path:

  1. Be honest with yourself. Most people cross the line into burnout at some point in their life.
  2. Have a heart-to-heart conversation with people who depend on you. Ask them what absolutely needs to stay on your plate and what you can let go of.
  3. Get clear and ask for the support you need.
  4. Take an Energy Inventory. Assess what activities, in the last week, gave you energy and which depleted you. Ask yourself if your tiredness is “bad” tired or “good” tired. Remember: Burnout is not about hard work; it’s about heartache.
  5. Delegate everything possible that you hate doing to someone who would love doing it.
  6. Accept that guilt is inevitable for conscientious, accountable people. Just don’t put guilt in the driver’s seat. Walk through with grace.

Four things to remember when leadership feels hard.

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Four things to remember when leadership feels hard.

Leading – whether in your family, your team, community, or company – is like life: it’s hard at times.

When you decide to step up and stand for something, you open yourself up to be attacked, dismissed, criticized, silenced, and sometimes even assassinated. It is not uncommon to bear the scars from your efforts.

Leaders represent change, and with change comes loss, fear, confusion, and anger. And those brave enough to go against the crowd risk backlash. Change can make people cruel: empathy, compassion, and grace are often sacrificed when craving order. Irresponsible scapegoating of the authority figure is certainly unfair, but it comes with the territory.

Leaders are also always letting someone down. Somebody’s bound to be disappointed in decisions that are made, and stepping into leadership means shouldering the agony and aspirations of a community.

So… when leadership feels hard, here’s a few things to remember:

  1. Remember that hard comes with leadership. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be leading. Once you understand and accept that leadership is hard, then it is no longer hard, because it no longer matters. You are on a more important mission than being comfortable.
  2. Ask yourself, “Is this a good hard or a bad hard?” Good hard means you are pursuing a worthy cause and accepting that obstacles are a predictable prerequisite. Good hard means your heart is open and you feel the pain of the people you serve. Bad hard means you have lost contact with yourself, others, and the vision.
  3. Preserve a sense of purpose. When you cannot find the inspiration and when discouragement and despair emerge (that only later are recognized as seeds of creativity) you just have to keep walking. It doesn’t have to be fast or spectaluar, but just keep stumbling forward toward the cause that you believe in.
  4. Find a life practice. To sustain your energy, every leader requires a daily practice – a habit that connects with and taps into the power of the life force that runs through us. A life practice is anything that you do over an extended period of time that consistently and reliably deepens the connection to your experience and expression of being alive.

What do you keep in mind when leadership feels hard?

Does the word accountability have a positive or negative association for you?

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Throughout my career, accountability has been a central focus of my research and teaching. Here are ten things I’ve learned about accountability:

  1. Accountability is the ability to be counted on. Never make a promise you don’t intend to keep, and when you make a promise keep it, whether you feel like it or not.
  2. Think carefully before you make an agreement – then painstakingly keep the agreements you make. It’s much easier to say no upfront than it is to get out of an agreement that you no longer want to keep. And when you say yes, follow through.
  3. It’s easier to see a lack of accountability in others. It’s a lot easier to be mad at someone else for being late than to be mad at yourself for not showing up on time.
  4. Accountability is the cornerstone of self-respect. No one takes pride in doing something easy. Keeping a promise always leaves you feeling better about yourself. And when you respect yourself, you earn the trust and respect of others.
  5. Accountability inspires others. Accountability is usually used to hammer rather than inspire people. When properly understood, accountability is meant to create safety, alignment, and trust. It’s inspiring to be around people who can be counted on. You’ll get much further building accountability with a flashlight rather than a stick.
  6. Accountability is about ownership. Blaming and finger-pointing are all symptoms of a lack of accountability. Decide that all blame is a waste of time and your life will change forever. Accountability is ultimately about looking in the mirror.
  7. Accountability is about growing up. There’s a difference between maturity and aging. All beings grow oldbut growing up is the duty of human beings.
  8. Accountability requires a recovery plan. When you can’t keep a promise here’s a three-step recovery plan: a) Let your creditor know as soon as you know if your agreement is jeopardized; b) Negotiate with your creditor to minimize damages and re-commit to a new agreement; 3) Learn from your experience so it doesn’t happen again.
  9. To avoid downstream problems, get the agreements right. The vast majority of accountability problems stem from a lack of clear agreements and understanding the consequences. Courageous conversations upstream will prevent problems down the line.
  10. Accountability lies at the core of leadership. If you want your best people to produce results, stay engaged, be inspired, find value in coming back to the office after working from home, and be loyal, it all starts with a well-designed and delivered accountability process.