Jesse DePriest  00:00

Leaders and team members need to reframe the word accountability as an act of love, and that we care so much about our people and our process and our products and what we’re doing for our clients that that I am more willing now, as an act of care, to correct the performance and behaviors, so that we can all be successful together.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:38

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Lean Solutions podcast, I’m your host Shane, and I’m super excited to have you here because I have a fantastic topic and a fantastic guest that we’re going to be working this topic through. Now, this topic that we’re talking about today is going to be on a huge word. Not only does it have multiple syllables, but it has multiple implications: accountability, and when you think about accountability, some people get really excited about accountability. Like, yes, I want to be held accountable, or I want to hold my team accountable. Others, not so much. There’s a fear involved, and there’s a sense of blame, possibly. So, when does accountability go wrong, and how can we change that? That’s the topic we’re going to be looking at today. Basically, the mistakes, the accountability mistake, is what we’re calling this one. I’m super excited to invite a great friend of mine and a guest here, a new guest here on the. Have you been? I don’t know. I hope you haven’t been on the podcast yet because I just said a new guest. So we’re hoping Jesse DePriest, ladies and gentlemen, I am super happy to have Jesse on. Jesse is the co-founder and principal consultant of 5l Performance Group. He and his team work with leaders across the Midwest to improve their businesses and teams using lean leadership and principles, lean leadership principles and methods. So, Jesse, welcome to the Lean Solutions Podcast.

Jesse DePriest  02:05

My friend Shane Daffinbaugh, I’ve listened to a couple of episodes with you hosting, and I’m thrilled that you’re my host. You are such a pro. This, my man, I’m serious.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:15

I appreciate you, your

Jesse DePriest  02:17

energy, and this is gonna be fun. Let’s get into it. Yes, I’m presenting this as a little breakout at the Iowa Lean Consortium conference. In the the title of the stick is “Accountability is not a four letter word.”

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:31

Oh, come on now! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shouldn’t be.

Jesse DePriest  02:34

Shouldn’t be 14 letters actually. But make sure I hit this at the very, very end because I get a surprise the very end around this okay when accountability is actually 14 letters okay we kind of think of it as a four letter word right

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:51

okay I just wrote a note surprise at the end

Jesse DePriest  02:53

yeah surprise to loop it back

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:57

okay so so let’s get started with this the whole this 14 letter word, it does create a sense of fear, or it seems like people use accountability to just kind of run over people, you know. Hey, Jesse, I’m holding you accountable, so I’m just gonna like chew you right through trying to get to hey, how do we solve this problem? But when it when it comes to accountability, where are leaders kind of going wrong, or kind of veering from the track where it could be? Because we’ll talk about where it could be, but where are they going wrong? I

Jesse DePriest  03:30

think we should think about this from both sides of the equation: the leader and the team member. Okay, so from the leader’s perspective, what are we trying to do? We’re trying to move our team to do something to create some advantage, right? It’s all about strategy and execution. You’re thinking about what is available to the leader to help inspire and move and motivate people. Well, I think about that as influence. Leadership is influence, and there’s a spectrum of things we could do on this influence scale. On one end is coercion. It’s leading through threats and fear. Do it or else. Right. And the other end is manipulation. It’s all the things we do with incentives and carrots. And if you do this, it might be a prize in it for you. Was a thing right in the middle that will again loop back at the very end of the show that I think is really good accountability. But leaders, just in my view, opinion is that first of all, leaders accountability is a skill, and leaders don’t have skills to do good accountability. We’re defaulting to what we know, and that’s coercion, leading through fear, do it or else, command and control or manipulation, and we don’t have any other better tools. So I think we want to propose here’s some better tools and methods we could do that. So from the leader’s perspective, they’re trying to move people the only way they know how, and probably the thing that has gotten them some some action is around this kind of command and control fear. Do it or else. There’s a threat behind it, right? There’s an implied threat, and maybe get people to move for a little while. But at best, you’ll get compliance. At best, you’ll get compliance. But if we look at this from the other perspective, the team leader, and let’s say we’re a team leader, we’re sure we’ve already had this experience where we’ve been doing some work or we led a project or something, and it failed, and as soon as it failed, what just go inside our head as the person experiencing that, and what’s this? What’s going on in our head? And we’ll jump again to the next question here. I think probably around the the responses that come from that environment where I feel like there’s going to be some blame and shame going on here. And what am I doing in this context of this project failure that I’m involved with? Or I would say mindset, or how how we view accountability. If you just think of accountability as a dirty word, okay, and that’s what it means. Then we probably won’t do it very well, or we’ll avoid

Shayne Daughenbaugh  06:06

it. I I love what I love about what you said, Jesse. Is the what really stuck out to me was the accountability as a skill. Like we we talk about accountability, and everyone just assumes we know what it is and we know how to do it. It just means that I say if if you tell me you’re going to do something, I just make sure that you did. Like that’s accountability. You also talked about the the unhealthy responses or unhealthy accountability behaviors. Can you kind of talk about those? I think there’s three of those. What those are, what they look like in the workplace, and how leaders can even recognize them.

Jesse DePriest  06:40

Yeah, thank you, Shane. And I think this is really important to think about. Accountability is a skill, and just very fast the nuance between accountability and responsibility because they’re kind of connected, right? We have people on our teams that are very responsible. They seek responsibility, they take responsibility, and they they do it. Accountability is a tricky word sometimes because we hear this sometimes. I’m going to hold myself accountable. I believe we cannot. That accountability requires an external force and consequence, good or bad, that we can’t hold ourselves accountable. But I can’t. I can be responsible, and I can account for something. But that thing that holds me accountable has to be outside of myself, right? We’re watching our football team, and the guy, you know, the quarterback hands the ball off to the running back, and running back hits a thing, and he fumbles it. Right? In that moment, who’s responsible for recovering the football? Anybody that is able to respond is responsible. Yes. Yes.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  07:40

Okay. Yeah. But

Jesse DePriest  07:41

after the play is over, who is accountable? Who is to account for the fumble? There’s only one guy. Right. The person who fumbled it. They got to look in the mirror and get coached and say, “Well, what’s happening? How did I protect the ball?” And that’s different, right? So it’s just there’s a little bit of a nuance, and maybe there’s a point where they overlap a little bit, where one kind of turns responsibility into accountability. But just as context, and so leaders have these applying what we know to drive accountability for force of threat and manipulation. And if we don’t, we kind of abdicate our leadership responsibility by being nice. And being nice means I don’t want to get mad or do that, so I avoid it altogether. And avoidance is just as bad. Putting ourselves in the position of the person that is doing the work and maybe is involved in some sort of project or process failure or something. Something went wrong, and I’m kind of owning it. And if we have this environment where this fear-based environment for accountability exists, I might respond in one of three different ways, and I need to give quick shout out to an organization called the Leader Factor, and they have a really cool podcast that I’ve learned some of this stuff from, and so I’m using some of their vocabulary. And the first is victim storytelling, and victim storytelling is we’ve done it. We’ve all experienced this. Something happened, and I immediately go into my brain and I start crafting a story, primarily out of self-preservation. I’m going to protect myself from this failure and this fear-based accountability that I probably feel is coming. And what am I going to do? And I start telling stories as a victim that well you don’t understand the supplier was late Joey didn’t do his thing the machine broke no one listened to my idea last week on all these things I start telling stories to protect myself and I kind of present myself as a victim as not me it was all this stuff around me that caused that so that’s the one failure response the second failure response is kind of the opposite of that. Maybe we’ve seen that this with some people on our team. It’s called responsibility hoarding, where people something bad happens, and they say, “Oh crap! I’ll take that, and I’ll take this, and I’ll take these other things, and I take on more and more responsibility to kind of own the thing.”. To protect myself and make myself look like a hero to some degree, and that isn’t healthy either because at some point it might mean that someone is taking on things that they shouldn’t own, and they become overwhelmed and overburdened. So it creates bottlenecks in life. It’s really just not. It’s not a super healthy response, and it’s a little bit tricky because it looks like a strong leader, a strong person jumping in to save the day. And guess what? Both the leader and the team member can behave this way. But I’ll take it. I’ll take it. No, I’ll I’ll fix that. I’ll fix that. I’m sorry. I’ll fix that over and over again. And they just take it on themselves versus us blaming the process and working with the team, and then the third, just kind of bad response in all this is is shame enforcement. Shame enforcement, and this is where we start talking to people. It’s like, well, you always do this. This always happens, right? I heard it this morning in a little team huddle, and it just drives me crazy when leaders talk about someone who left the team, or a couple people left the team, and after the fact, are saying, “Well, it’s probably best that they left anyway because they weren’t very good anyway.” It’s like you failed as a leader; you have completely failed. The reason they left is probably something that was going on in a leadership environment, and now you’re just putting blame and shame on them as the reason that like they were the bad person, and that’s why they left. So, so this is kind of the problem: the environment we’re in, right?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:28

If if that’s if those are the responses, one of the reasons why though I see those as negative is it takes away the learning opportunity. Yeah, because we might if if I’m hoarding all all the blame, I’m I I will cover up the historic or the heroic deeds that you did to try to make this happen. Like we need to know those things. Like hey, you know, yeah, it’s it’s it’s not all my fault because in doing so, there’s also some things that I need to learn from Jesse and maybe from some other people on the team, or you know, if if all I’m doing is just enforcing the shame, we we take apart or we take away the opportunity to learn from this because it’s just blame or hoarding or victimization.

Jesse DePriest  12:13

Yeah, if we’re responsibility hoarding, it’s the same thing. Well, I’m not sharing that responsibility with anybody else, and we’re not talking about it as a team. I’m just taking it all on as myself to be the hero or whatever. And of course, shame enforcement is all that kind of stuff. Was like, well, they weren’t very good anyway, you know. And it just doesn’t motivate. It doesn’t inspire. And and the key thing about shame enforcement is that we’re using accountability as a weapon. And leaders know and understand that there’s this this social implied social threat that sometimes is unspoken, and if we don’t if we don’t do it right, you’re gonna. It’s not just that you failed; it’s that you’re a bad person.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  12:59

Right.

Jesse DePriest  13:00

We’re blaming the character, not right, not not the behavior, and that’s just we should just say that’s not allowed here, right? We need to fix

Shayne Daughenbaugh  13:09

it. I I so another thing that that I’m just picking up. So we had accountability is hanging on this side. Accountability is a skill, and now I’m putting on this side not using accountability as a weapon, like come on, he stop it. Like, how many people out there raise your hand, podcast listeners, if you’ve used accountability as a weapon or have it used against you? It’s supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to be part of a tool set to help solve a problem, help bring accountability, help understand bring understanding rather than the weapon. So okay, so those two are just hanging there because I just I love those two things. So what’s a practical thing that leaders can do to build a culture where accountability drives this learning that we’re talking about, drives this problem solving rather than problem hiding, and ultimately leads to what I would assume could be better execution. Like that’s the goal, right? We want to get better at things. We want to improve things as a team.

Jesse DePriest  14:10

Step one: leaders and team members need to reframe the word accountability as an act of love, as an act of care, and that we care so much about our people and our process and our products and what we’re doing for our clients that I’m that that I am more willing now through as an act of care to correct the performance and behaviors so that we can all be successful together, right? And I’ll jump into this maybe well to say it now that when we’re having a coaching conversation around this, where I might need to correct the behavior or performance, I might say something like, Shane, I care more about you and our success here and your success. Than the short-term discomfort of the conversation we’re going to have right now, right? Because I want you to be successful. I want to call people up, not call them out.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  15:09

Ah, yes. You’re better

Jesse DePriest  15:10

than this, man. You’re better than this.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  15:12

Yes. Here’s

Jesse DePriest  15:13

our standard. We need you to meet our standard. Come on, get up here with us, and let’s figure this out together. You’re a good person, but this performance or behavior is not to our standard. We need to fix that, right? And that kind of separates conversation. But that is a is an act of love and an act of care to have that conversation in that sort of way. The second thing that leaders and teams need to do better is get really clear on your expectations, setting standards for performance and behaviors, right? And we think I like using like a two by two around this. One column is for performance; the other column is for behaviors. Horizontally are the things that have been explicitly defined as our expectations, and the other horizontal column is what is still implied. And it’s a good exercise for teams and leaders to write down what is very explicitly defined for our standards of performance and behaviors, and what things may still be hidden. and And leaders are need to do the work here too because they might think it’s been clear, but it’s not. Right? You got more work to do, leader, to get it out of the shadows and make your expectations and standards more clear. So before I can hold anybody accountable to something, we got to be really clear what the standards are. Right? Accountability isn’t an event; it’s something we practice all the time, every day, and it’s inherent in the work. And we do that really well, Shane. It then becomes a team standard that we’re holding each other accountable to, and it does not require only the leader walking around trying to keep things in control. It becomes inherent in our work. We all respect the standard. We’re coaching people to it, even in behaviors. And we have a failure. We have a method through which we can see that, understand it, get to the root cause and get the learning going right, and we just cast all this fear stuff out the window. So, just as a recap here, a couple things we’re going to reframe our understanding of accountability. It’s a leadership skill and it’s an act of care and love.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  17:15

Yes,

Jesse DePriest  17:16

set very clear expectations for performance and behaviors, and make the implied explicit third thing. Incorporate it into your system. It’s part of our daily huddle. It’s on our management board, so I can see and understand our process and performance and behaviors as a team. And then we’ve got accountability in the team. The fourth thing, then we’ll kind of wrap up with this chain is that accountability conversation. So let’s just say we do have a member on our team that is not meeting our standard of performance behavior in the training and things. So the one thing we could do around that is just think about where they are in the spectrum of their training and competence using a three by three model. So the horizontal axis is our work as a leader to transfer the critical thinking, and the vertical axis is our job as a leader to transfer the ownership of the work. In the bottom left, we’ll see on the vertical axis we go from task to process to outcome. So down in the bottom left, where they don’t know, I’m going to tell you what to do, because I you don’t know, right? So I got to train you. I got to tell you for a task. But then, as you have that experience and develop the competency, I’m going to move to tell and ask, and then I’m going to move to ask only, right? So as you become competent, I got to stop telling you what to do and ask the questions to transfer the critical thinking for that task to you now, you own it, and now as we add more tasks, we go to process. It’s the same thing, and we come to outcomes. And then ultimately, we want this place where people own both. I own the critical thinking about the work and how we’re doing the work and improving the work, and I also own the outcomes. So I’m thinking about what’s the desired outcome, what’s the best way to do it, and I’m doing that work, and that accountability right is shifted. So just think about that as a framework. And if you’re struggling with someone on your team, plot them on the on that map somewhere. Where do you think they are? And that informs you as the leader about the right and get right response on that. Last thing we’ll just finish with this is the conversation I need to have with somebody on my team who may not be meeting the expectations and standards for performance and behavior, and there’s some correction is required, right? So there’s a there’s a little model. Let’s call it the BIF pig. B I F P G.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  19:39

Okay,

Jesse DePriest  19:40

and we’re gonna have a conversation with somebody, and it goes like this: We’re gonna first be really clear about what is the behavior,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  19:52

okay?

Jesse DePriest  19:52

What is the impact that’s having? How is it making us feel? That’s the BIF,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  19:59

okay?

Jesse DePriest  19:59

And then the P is a pause. The leader needs to pause before I have the conversation and say, “How am I contributing to this problem?” And the number one thing that comes out of that conversation is the leader has not clearly articulated the standard, right? The behaviors is I and I have tolerated it for so long, and now we can’t tolerate it anymore, right? So it’s just like we got to own part of that, and then and then G is guidance, right? So now we’re gonna have so then we have the conversation. We say, “Hey, Joe, this is the behavior. This is the impact it’s having. This is how it makes us feel.” Pause, and maybe the pause could also be like, did you know that was happening?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  20:45

Do

Jesse DePriest  20:45

you see that?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  20:46

Yeah. And

Jesse DePriest  20:46

then the leader needs to also offer is like, and here’s what I will take responsibility for. And it could be simple as, in the past, I haven’t been clear about the standards or expectations, and I have tolerated this for five months or whatever. We just say, you know what? Let’s solve this today. I’m not happy about it. You’re probably not happy having this conversation. Let’s fix it today. We’re going to work on getting our standard. So then the guidance comes in as something like, “What can can I count on you to solve the problem?”

Shayne Daughenbaugh  21:18

One of the things, another thing that I picked up. I love all of this. Accountability is not an event, but it’s a practice. As you described it, it’s a practice. How you fold it into your daily standards, your work. This is a practice that everyone should just. It like you said, it should just be an expectation as a team. That’s what we do, and we do it in a way where we’re talking to people, not at them. I love that that Biff pig leadership conversation framework

Jesse DePriest  21:46

behavior impact feeling pause

Shayne Daughenbaugh  21:49

yes

Jesse DePriest  21:49

check your role

Shayne Daughenbaugh  21:50

guidance

Jesse DePriest  21:51

guidance right and here’s what’s cool about that Shane we can also do it for positive recognition

Shayne Daughenbaugh  21:56

oh yeah same model okay

Jesse DePriest  21:58

here’s the behavior the impact it has it made me feel really great. Did you know that that was so good? Like, did you see the impact you had? And then instead of guidance, it’s gratitude.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  22:10

Love it.

Jesse DePriest  22:10

Thank you for doing that on our team. We really having an impact on that. And leaders probably should be doing that a heck of a lot more than the correction conversation. Let’s loop it back to the very end. I said, “Oh yes, quick! Accountability is not a four-letter word. It’s actually 14 letters. Yeah, maybe it is, Shane. Maybe it is a four-letter word. Love.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  22:33

I’m gonna go. I was gonna say I knew it. I was gonna say love.

Jesse DePriest  22:37

Accountability is love. It’s an act of love, not control. And it says, “I believe in you enough to tell the truth. I I love you so much. I care about you and our success together.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  22:52

Yeah,

Jesse DePriest  22:52

that I’m willing to tell you the truth because we can’t get there in this environment where we’re not hitting our performance and behavior standards. Right?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  22:59

Love it. Okay, thank you so much, Jesse, for this kind of this brief, like just shotgun, like we were just going with this. I really appreciated. Have I have these things hanging, as you heard? Yes. If if people wanted to reach out to you, learn more about 5l Performance Group, learn more about you, or even follow up on this conversation, where where would be a good place to get a hold of you?

Jesse DePriest  23:24

You can find us at five lperformance group.com. This

Shayne Daughenbaugh  23:29

has been fantastic. I hope listening audience, those of you that are watching and listening, that you have also picked up at least one thing to be able to take with you. Thanks for joining us. If you have any comments or other ideas that you want to add to this, please create a conversation in in the in the chat below. We’d love to hear more about this and how this has impacted you. Until we meet again, have a great day, ladies and gentlemen.