Feed People Power: Keep Them Accountable

Jul 3 / Scott Herbst

One of my clients recently said something I found pretty brilliant.  “ I take people’s power away when I don’t hold them accountable.”  


I say it’s brilliant because I think it's true.  


When I was in grad school I had a big paper due.  This was at a time when everything wasn’t yet online.  If you wanted a journal article, that often meant filling out a form, taking it to the circulation desk, and then waiting for an email saying it had been copied and mailed from a library that carried that journal.  


With a few weeks to go in the semester, I had a 5” stack of papers that I was carrying around in a rubber-banded manila folder.  About a quarter of them had come from my home library.  I brought them with me on a weekend trip, and that was the last I saw of them.  There was no way I was going to get them before the end of the semester.  


I asked for an incomplete.  The instructor did me one better.  He said, “I’ll give you the grade you earned to this point and if you don’t get it done, I’ll change it.”  


I agreed.  Neither of us spoke about it for two years.  


What a crappy two years.  I would pass him in the hall and could barely look at him as I muttered hello.   At program parties, it was like I was magnetically repelled from whatever space he was taking up.  I didn’t take any electives with him.  


Of course, I didn’t see any of this as related with my broken agreement.  I found other reasons to justify my avoidance.  “It wasn’t a great class… he wasn’t much of an instructor… I’m not interested…”  


Meanwhile, I was studying and learning about accountability and, after way-too-long a lightbulb came on.  My own humanity had gotten the best of me.  I was warping my own vision trying to feel better about myself in the face of a broken agreement.  As it tends to happen, it wasn’t working.  No amount of justification could obscure the fact that, when I honestly looked, all that avoidance felt bad.  


I’ll spare you all the details and simply say I finally talked to him about it.  He didn’t change my grade.   What did change was that it opened space for him to become a mentor and a friend.  When I graduated and he couldn’t be at the party, he gave me one of the most meaningful phone calls I have ever gotten.  



AND… you can’t count on that the people in your life are going to study and learn about accountability!! You can more likely count on that, when called to account for things they haven’t completed, they will treat it like an attack.  So here are some steps and/or pointers to gently and compassionately hold people to account.  


  1. START FROM COMPASSION!!!  If you’re holding onto any upset, irritation, annoyance, anger - anything you would call resentment - let that go.  It won’t empower you.  It won’t empower them.  And if you catch yourself starting with any resentment, give yourself some space for your humanity.  Then, remind yourself - whether they see it that way or not - they’re suffering.  It might look like they are avoiding, blaming, justifying, excusing or even lying.  If they are - it’s all masking suffering.  Then… 

  2. Create an intention that is for them.  “Can we have a conversation that I hope will make your life easier?”

  3. Matter of factly raise the issue.  “I want to talk to you about [insert thing they haven’t done]...”

  4. Expect excuses, justifications, reasons, blaming, avoiding, etc.  If you get any of that, come back to compassion.  Again, they’re suffering.  Whatever they say… 

  5. Acknowledge that you can see they’ve been thinking about it.  Appreciate them for thinking about it!  It shows caring.  Yes, it is a little (or a lot) misplaced, but it shows they care.  And then… 

  6. Do the part that really makes a difference.  “Let’s talk about making it right…”  And then have a conversation about what they’ll do (or not) and how you and they will support themselves in getting it done.  


And listen; you’ll get resistance at times - maybe most of the time.  Most of us dwell in the world of good/bad, right and wrong when it comes to accountability and, in that world, being held to account is a threat.  If you can stay grounded in providing accountability as a contribution, while it may start with resistance, contribution is exactly where it will end.