Accountability
Accountability is a buzz word a lot of people talk about. Lack of accountability is often a complaint I hear from coaches about their teams. Their athletes don’t do the small things and resist accountability. Further, coaches often complain athletes don’t hold one another accountable.
While all these things are often true, it also reflects poorly on the coach and system that has been created. Accountability is hard to do for coaches so to expect student-athletes to it well without a system for teaching it is likely unrealistic. I have been searching for resources on systems to do this well and have found a few. Bruce Brown and Rob Miller at Proactive Coaching to a great job. (We had some great podcast conversations with Bruce and Rob you should check out) I also found some stuff from Jeff Janssen that I want to share in this post.
I don’t know Jeff, but he has a lot of resources. The one that caught my eye was his book called “How to Hold People Accountable: The Complete Guide to Establishing, Endorsing, and Enforcing Your Team Standards”. In this short book (a little over 100 pages), he explains a seven-step system to lay the framework for accountability for coaches but also for teammates to hold one another accountable. Many coaches are doing a lot of these steps already, so I think it is something that could be implemented and taught fairly easily with some focus.
Here they are:
Envision the Desired Result: Be specific and name the desired outcome or goal the group wants to achieve and why
Establish the Standard: Set and communicate standards and ways of acting that it’ll take to get to the result
Exemplify the Standard: Leaders need to demonstrate the standards every day
Embrace the Standard: Encourage everyone to fully buy in and live to the standard
Evaluate the Standard: Regularly revisit and monitor your progress
Enforce the Standard: Appreciate and reward those that meet/exceed the standard
Enforce the Standard: Correct and confront those that miss the standard
There is a lot that goes into this, and I encourage you to check out the book. I may write more about it later. However, there are two other things I want to highlight that I think are important from this.
1. Peer leadership and accountability is hard and often scary. Janssen notes that his group has worked with thousands of college athletics and in their surveys holding others accountable is one of the skills they struggle with most. Most people are fearful of not being liked, not measuring up to the standard themselves, and/or simply don’t know how to hold others accountable in a helpful way.
2. Coaches and leaders can’t expect people to do this on their own. They need to be taught. Accountability, especially peer accountability, is difficult and stressful and is a skill that must be taught.
Check out our book!
Things That Are Making Us Think
Here is a link to Janssen’s Website
Over the next year, I think we’ll write a few posts that include the work of Jim Collins. He is the author of Good to Great and many other books that have impacted my work significantly. It’s a few years old, but just found a podcast interview he did with Tim Ferris that was incredible. Check it out here.
