Embracing Accountability and Changing Your Accountability Dialog

Accountability is a virtue that comes up repeatedly in both professional and personal settings. It’s a concept that inspires several related concepts. Dependability. Trustworthiness. Leadership. Success. Usually, people who embody these concepts are, in many ways, accountable at the core.

The topic of accountability and leadership was the subject of two recent conversations we had with Sandor Kovacs, President and CEO of RunRhino. As a vastly experienced professional and leadership coach, Sandor has a lot to say when it comes to accountability. One story, in particular, has piqued my interest as I’ve gone through both recordings to prepare them for the podcast.

When I say Sandor’s story piqued my interest, I’m not speaking metaphorically. Something about the story actually kept making me go back to it. I don’t want to say it bothered me, but I was struggling to come to terms with the lesson he was trying to teach.

Let me summarize.

It Was the Traffic

Sandor tells the story better in the podcast, so I’ll keep this short and include just the basics. Sandor shared a story from earlier in his career working with a company as a leader of a large team. The executive he reported to had everyone make a commitment to be on time whenever they scheduled a meeting.

In this one instance, Sandor was delayed by weather and traffic in his commute to work. Because of the rain, buses were full, and he ended up passing on several buses before finally getting onto one that got him to the office, and a scheduled meeting, well past its start time.

After hearing this story and how the weather and traffic affected his arrival, the executive questioned Sandor and how he broke his commitment. By blaming the extenuating circumstances, he wasn’t being accountable, holding up the meeting and wasting everyone’s valuable time.

Listen to the podcast https://growthloop.buzzsprout.com to catch the whole story and all of its details. It’s worth it!

Don’t Blame the Traffic

The executive’s response to Sandor’s situation perturbed me. Personally, I’ve always been very forgiving when people are affected by circumstances outside of their control. When Sandor told the story, and then again when I relistened to it, I found myself getting annoyed on his behalf.

Why wouldn’t the guy understand and move on? He ended up wasting valuable time during the meeting, a meeting that had already begun late, by calling out Sandor in front of the rest of the leadership team. That seemed to be a counterproductive waste of time!

It wasn’t until I was listening to our follow-up episode with Sandor, where he went into some additional details we didn’t touch on in the original conversation, that the light went on over my head. Not that I didn’t understand what Sandor was trying to say; the lesson coalesced for me in a way that finally made complete and, more importantly, actionable sense.

The executive didn’t care at all about the rain or the traffic. That’s not to say he wasn’t empathetic about the circumstances; it’s that they didn’t matter. What mattered was what I’ve come to call (to myself, and now to you reading this), Sandor’s “Accountability Dialog.” Let’s use the basic details here as an example of unaccountable and accountable dialog:

Unaccountable: “I was late because it was raining and traffic was bad.”

Accountable: “I was late because I wasn’t prepared for the weather and the traffic, so I didn’t plan properly to arrive on time.”

Notice the difference there? The rain and traffic are still acknowledged, but the shift to accountable dialog places the onus on you, not the circumstances. 

Changing your dialog to become more accountable has the effect of creating agency for yourself. Yes, there are some things that are out of your control. But it shifts the focus to what you are doing to account for those, to adjust your thinking and others’ perception of you.