Latest / Daily Influence / 743. Accountability Without Resentment: How Great Leaders Hold Standards Without Breaking Trust

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743. Accountability Without Resentment: How Great Leaders Hold Standards Without Breaking Trust · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Kleeneau, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And make us part of your daily routine, whether it's during your commute on a walk or an quiet moment just for you, because you're influenced matters.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to talk about accountability and yes, I have talked about accountability a lot over the last few years with daily influence and we write about it a lot in our work at IA and the I and team series, but today, it's probably not in the way that we usually hear it discussed or how we discuss it here, it's going to be the 10 different because accountability is one of those works that every business leader says they want more of the want accountability owners wanted
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Managers want it, teens say they want accountability from leadership, clients want accountability from vendors, partners want accountability from each other.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone agrees accountability matters.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet accountability is also one of the fastest ways relationships breakdown inside organizations because what begins as accountability often feels like criticism.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what begins as feedback feels personal.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We deal with this a lot.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, when I say, we, I mean, I deal with this a lot.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very hard sometimes to hold people accountable and have it not feel like criticism or personal and what begins this clarification becomes conflict and before long accountability, which should create progress creates resentment or takes us backwards.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I say this constantly inside a small and medium size business.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It's something that we're dealing with continuously.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And when a leader says, why didn't this get done?
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  [SPEAKER_01]: The employees here you've failed.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And a team member will say, I didn't know that's what was expected.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The manager responds often to him just what it was obvious.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it was obvious to them.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the issue stops being about the task itself.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now it's about emotion, tone, assumption, frustration, memory, interpretation.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where accountability always gets messy.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also why accountability without resentment requires discipline, leadership discipline, or what we like here smart discipline.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And accountability done well feels like support.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability and blame are not the same thing.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: unintentionally get it wrong, blame looks backwards.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability looks forwards, blame asks, who caused this and accountability asks, what happened, what did we learn and what happens next?
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blame attaches a motion to the person while accountability addresses the behavior process, expectation, or outcome.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a very clear distinction in that matters,
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was defense begins while learning usually to stops.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strong leadership creates ownership without humiliation.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can hold a high standard in still maintaining dignity.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can still address performance and still preserve relationship.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the chair accountability.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most accountability failures begin with unclear expectations.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Smart is about setting clear, smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely expectations.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Leaders often believe they work clear.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Team members often believe they never received clarity.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes, both people genuinely believe they are right why.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because expectation and communication are rarely as clear as we assume they are.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is why smart management matters so much.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I specificity measurement, attainability, relevance, and time limits is so important.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability becomes much easier when expectations are visible, documented, measurable, and tied to some time.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Resentment grows in ambiguity.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Clarity reduces emotion.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: When expectations are unclear, people fill the gaps with assumptions.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: that assumptions are expensive, financially expensive, emotionally expensive, and relationally expensive.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That accountability should feel like support, not punish.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is really an important leadership shift, especially in small and medium-sized businesses, because a lot of people associated accountability with discipline, which is something negative, something you receive after something goes wrong, but the healthiest organizations build accountability,
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: into the system before something fails.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: What that means is regular communication, clear priorities, defined ownership, measurable milestones, consistent follow-up, and feed backwards.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability isn't a surprise meeting after failure.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an ongoing process of staying connected to commitments.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: When accountability becomes normal rhythm, instead of emotional confrontation,
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: it simply becomes part of how work gets done.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It becomes support, not punishment.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Looking strong, leaders apply accountability consistently.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talk about consistency all the time here.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing creates resentment faster than selective accountability.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: When one person gets challenged in another gets ignored, when one team is measured closely
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: or even ignores it for themselves.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: People notice immediately.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Culture notices, teams always watch what leadership tolerates and what leadership addresses.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability loses credibility when it is selective.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It builds trust when it is consistent.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Consistency doesn't mean harshness.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It means fairness.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It means clarity.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It means everyone understands the baseline
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  [SPEAKER_01]: especially leadership.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability starts with self accountability.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: This may be the most important part.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before leaders ask for accountability from others, they have to model it themselves, owning mistakes, correcting quickly, apologizing when needed, clarifying when communication was poor, adjusting when expectations were unrealistic.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: If leadership refuses accountability, but demands it from everyone else, resentment becomes inevitable.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But when leadership models accountability, personally, accountability becomes cultural.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And culture follows behavior far faster than words.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look in the I&T series, we talk often about influence beginning with the individual, that I matters first.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Leadership Accountability begins there too.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before we ask who owns this, we should ask what is mine to own first.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: That question changes everything.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: Accountability should not damage relationships.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It should strengthen them.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It should create clarity, momentum, trust, growth, and stronger performance.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: But that only happens when accountability is rooted in respect, not blame.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: in support, not punishment, and in consistency, not emotion.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strong businesses are not built because people avoid hard conversation.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: They are built because people learn how to have hard conversations well.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: That's leadership.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: That's positive influence.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And in many ways, that's what accountability really is.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: A commitment to helping people and organizations
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining me today in daily influence.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I look forward to talking to you again soon and remember all people have influence and all of us have a great day.