Accountability on Steroids – Part 4
11 Ways to Hold Yourself Accountable to Moral Leadership
“Leaders can no longer hope to scale shareholder value without scaling shared values. Mission and margin, profit and principle, success and significance are now inextricably linked.” Dov Seidman
Cathy McCullough, M.S.
Leadership Coach, Speaker, Author | McCullough Leadership Group
5½ minute read
If you haven’t read Parts I-III of this series, here are links to those quick reads (because most of that information won’t be repeated here). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Those four-to-five minute reads spoke to setting the stage for accountability as a core part of your overall company culture, one CEO’s story about the power Core Values play in taking the guess work out of ‘accountability,’ and to the role of Moral Leadership in creating personal accountability at all levels of your company culture.
If you remember, leaders are craving to understand how make ‘accountability’ run rampant throughout their organizations. My experience is that most all leaders I talk to and/or work with want ‘accountability,’ but they find it to be an elusive concept.
Accountability is desired, but the stage just isn’t being set in quite the right way in order to multiply it. The last blog shared that leaders ask the wrong question, and it shared the what the right question is about building accountability.
It’s a very complex topic and there’s a lot of work to be done before personal accountability becomes a core trait within the personality of your company. Since it all begins with you (the leader), this article contains suggestions, thoughts, ideas, and challenges for where to begin your own accountable journey first…so others will want to really follow you (and do their best work for you).
How to Hold Yourself Accountable to Moral Leadership
If you’re wondering where on earth to begin your own accountable journey, here’s a short list of what you can do to become an Accountable Leader who understands that moral leadership is every bit as important as formal leadership, especially if you want to build culture founded on personal accountability. Recognize the following key points (as a place to begin).
(1) Understand and recognize that you can’t just ‘delegate’ accountability.
Your goal is for people to hold themselves accountable. They’ll do that if they see you holding yourself accountable. In other words, they’ll take personal ownership over what they’re doing if they see you taking personal ownership, too.
(2) Challenge your own definition of ‘leadership.’
How you define key words leads to how you think about yourself and your role, and how you think becomes visible in your behaviors. But the mind can play tricks on you. You might “see” yourself as being an incredible moral leader, but is that self-perspective seen by the people you’re leading? Their perception is what matters, and many times there is a massive disconnect here. Redefining what leadership is and shifting gears to actually leading with an updated definition takes time. You’ll stumble a few times and you’ll have to pick yourself up; however, if you don’t stumble, then you aren’t really growing, because a prerequisite to actualized growth is faltering and course-correcting in real time. It’s just a part of the process.
Question: What does leadership mean to you? What do you call yourself? Are you a ‘boss, or a ‘coach?’ Are you supposed to have most or all of the answers? Are you the final authority on most everything? What is the perception of your leadership persona? How do other people describe you? What are your strengths? How are you using those strengths to support areas that don’t come naturally for you?
(3) Consider What You’re Measuring.
Leaders who celebrate formal leadership (which still reigns!) are more transactional. They tend to measure hours, tenure, ‘showing up,’ compliance with rules, etc. Leader’s with higher levels of moral authority measure goals, achievements, and results. They also measure how the organization got to these goals, achievements, and results (i.e., they measure the degree to which the company’s Core Values are alive and well, they have a living Purpose behind why the company even exists in the first place, they tell the truth even when the truth hurts, and they have high expectations of themselves vs. only of everyone else). They see leadership as a formality that’s needed, but they recognize the ultimate importance of being a leader with moral authority vs formal authority.
(4) Be Consistently Intentional.
Having moral authority doesn’t mean you don’t have some really hard decisions to make. Hold yourself accountable to being intentional about things that matter. Hold yourself accountable for being transparent, open, and honest. Hold yourself accountable for slowing down to recognize that the company gets to the results it’s striving for because of people who are doing the work (after all, the ‘best’ technologies, systems, and processes are only as good as the people running them)
Hold yourself accountable to consistently and intentionally asking yourself, “What did I do well in that situation?”, followed by “What would I do differently next time?”
(5) Be open, honest, and humbly transparent.
Transparency is especially important when you have to make an unpopular decision (or a decision that many people just don’t understand). Talk to people; communicate; smile more; have the courage to show your humility, to admit your mistakes, to share what you’re learning. Create a cadence by developing routines that will set you free (yes…it’s ‘routines’ that can set you free). Set your own three-year Leadership Vision and from there, set your first year’s strategic goals and targets toward that Vision. Formally review your progress and reassess quarterly.
(6) Host Weekly Meetings.
These weekly meetings aren’t rote report-outs. Instead, they should be vibrant gatherings that focus on solutions to roadblocks, surprises, unintentioned consequences, etc. It’s been said that consistency beats intensity. So be consistent and be intentional about everything you do.
As you gather with your people, ask yourself: What’s my intent?
As discussion ensues, you can also ask the team: What’s our intent with this initiative anyway? What are we wanting to accomplish?
What assumptions are we making? Are those assumptions leading us astray?
What was our original intent for doing this? Is what we’re doing helping us lead in that direction, or not? (If not…stop wasting energy on it!)
(7) Work on Self-Discipline. Move through each and every day with discipline, centered on principles that nurture the human spirit and foster trust, transparency, and respect.
(8) Build Collaborative Communities. You and your executive team don’t have to be the ones who solve all the problems. Trust your people to help solve problems. Pull together a cross-functional team of people to create potential solutions to a big issue or challenge, or to create ideas around your next ‘big thing.’ This also gives your people a sense of autonomy, involvement, and engagement.
(9) Consistently Connect the Dots. As Simon Sinek says, always start with why. Why do we, as an organization, even exist? How does what we do serve the world around us? What’s our Purpose? Consistently allow your company’s “Why” to come alive, to inspire, to engage. Secondly: Stay focused on your overall Vision (and that Vision can be 3-5 years out—that’s fine!). Use your Vision as a aspirational destination point. Stand for something bigger than money and short-term gains.
(10) Dare to Do a Leadership 360 Assessment on Yourself. It can be brutal, but you need data if you really want to know what to hold yourself accountable for. What are you doing well? What do you need to do better? How do people ‘see’ you? How do they describe you? Remember, a 360 is not a report card; it’s a snapshot of all the areas that make up impactful leadership. Leaders I’ve worked with say they learned so much from the 360 process and it gave them tangible points for forward movement. Interestingly, 77% of respondents believe that ‘formal leaders’ can be developed into a moral leaders (Seidman, 2021). And once you do a 360, then you can ask other leaders in your organization hold themselves accountable to key leadership data points, too.
(11) Celebrate! Stop being so serious! As one of my kids once told me (when I was getting all bent out of shape because of a minor incident): Just chill! But, you ask: How do I go about ‘chilling?’ Become your people’s greatest advocate and expect the same from all leaders throughout the organization. Celebrate the company’s strategic accomplishments. Celebrate even more the culture your Core Values, Vision, and Purpose have created. And allow yourself to experience the joy that comes with getting to strategic results differently than through ‘command and control’ leadership.
Keep Moving Forward…An Application Worksheet for you
Grant yourself permission to pause for Leadership Reflection. Block off time on your calendar (because you won’t do anything differently if you don’t give it time, space, and mental energy it needs).
During your Leadership Reflection, consider:
1. As a leader of this organization, what’s my intent? Why as I doing what I’m doing?
2. Go 5-10 years out from now. What do you hope people are saying about you? How do you want them to describe you?
3. Take a Deep Dive: Take two items from the list of eleven presented in this blog and dive into them—full speed ahead! For each item you select: Work on it, tweak it, try it, let yourself stumble and pick yourself back up. Let yourself feel uncomfortable (or you’re not taking a deep enough dive). Learn, observe, watch, and allow yourself the joy of being surprised at what begins to transpire with each small success.
Item 1: _______________________________________________________________
(a) What do you already do well here?
(b) What do you need to do to take a deeper dive here?
(c) How will doing this build a bridge to your intent (Item #1 above)?
(d) What two specific opportunities do I have in my daily routine to stretch myself relative to this initiative?
Opportunity #1: ___________________________________________________
What (specifically) will I do?
How will I do that? (What behaviors do I need to exhibit? Do I need to slow
down my speech? Do I need to talk quieter? Do I need to ask more
questions vs making statements?
Opportunity #2: ___________________________________________________
What (specifically) will I do?
How will I do that? (What behaviors do I need to exhibit? Do I need to slow
down my speech? Do I need to talk quieter? Do I need to ask more
questions vs making statements?
Item 2: _______________________________________________________________
(a) What do you already do well here?
(b) What do you need to do to take a deeper dive here?
(c) How will doing this build a bridge to your intent (Item #1 above)?
(d) What two specific opportunities do I have in my daily routine to stretch myself relative to this initiative?
Opportunity #1: ___________________________________________________
What (specifically) will I do?
How will I do that? (What behaviors do I need to exhibit? Do I need to slow
down my speech? Do I need to talk quieter? Do I need to ask more
questions vs making statements?
Opportunity #2: ___________________________________________________
What (specifically) will I do?
How will I do that? (What behaviors do I need to exhibit? Do I need to slow
down my speech? Do I need to talk quieter? Do I need to ask more
questions vs making statements?
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