In Accountable Teams, Part 1, we shared a quick summary of a few points from Eric Coryell's Vistage presentation on creating true accountability in teams. Since then, we had him come speak with our entire team, and he was kind enough to give me an interview. Read on for the great stuff!
To summarize it, I would say the centerpiece is about accountability. Traditionally we define accountability as, you're going to do what you say you're going to do in the timeframe you said you'd do it . . . which sounds great on paper, but things happen and very rarely does anyone ever, always do what they say they're going to do.
So the question becomes, what happens then? And if a person is self-accountable, they take ownership, they do something different till they get it fixed. But that doesn't always happen either, in which case we have to create management.
Historically, we put managers in place to deal with when things don't go as planned, right? So their job is to come in and have the tough conversation, ask questions, coach, do whatever. And unfortunately, what that creates is what I call leader-led accountable organizations where ultimately we look to the leader to deal with the real issues.
If the leader does great, we become more dependent on the leader. If the leader doesn't, now we kind of turn on the leader. Bad leader. They're not dealing with the issues as they should.
We create very upward looking organizations. It moves decision making upwards as opposed to closer to the customer. And it really doesn't promote teamwork inside the organization.
I think in today's world, which moves so much faster and requires so much more complexity in our thoughts around problem solving and decision making, that in order to really be effective we have to move decision making closer to the customer. We can't spend all this time moving accountability up and down the org chart. And it really requires true teamwork inside organizations.
And the problem is, the way we manage accountability is what gets in the way.
What I learned through a lot of trial and error is that if you can get people to become accountable to each other, in other words, create an accountable team, that begins to change. Now we as a team are accountable to meet the customer demand. We deal with our issues instead of always looking up the org chart.
So the whole presentation really centers around that: how do you create an accountable team? Most people have been on a great team, so what I love to have people do is think about their best team and what was true about that team.
Invariably as people do that, what I hear are structural things and behavioral things. And the structural things: Some of them are obvious, but they're usually missing in business.
You need all five of those structural things in place for highly functional teams. If you have those, a team can actually function like a team.
The problem I then ran into though is, you can have a functional team, but the leader can still have all the accountability. If you want the team to start managing the accountability, then the team has got to start dealing with their real issues together. And that's the behavioral switch that very few teams do.
In my experience on most teams, when issues arise, they get in the way of our being successful. In other words, a real issue. As those issues arise, we tend to ignore it, we tend to talk behind each other’s backs, we look to the leader to solve it.
Very rarely do we as a team take it on. But if a team gets good at dealing with their relationships together, then the team starts to become accountable. And that's the behavioral change that's so key, right?
But what I've come to realize is in order for that to happen, there's got to not only be a shared fate, but there also has to be trust. And the problem is the way we tend to deal with the real issues really destroys trust.
So if you think about how teams deal with real issues, I think it's that sequence I mentioned. We tend to avoid it, and then we talk behind a person's back, and then we look to the leader, and all three of those behaviors are done to minimize anxiety short-term gain. But the long-term pain is that fear of separation goes up and, and now trust gets destroyed.
Because if you're going to continue to ignore issues, I won't trust you. If you talk behind my back, I won't trust you. And certainly if you go to my boss with an issue with me, I'm not going to trust you. Right? So the behaviors that are normal inside most organizations destroy trust.
Ironically, in order to build trust, we've got to learn to talk to each other about our issues, either one on one as a group. So it's kind of a chicken and an egg. I'm not going to trust you until we start dealing with our issues in a healthy way. But we're not going to deal with issues in a healthy way until we trust each other, right?
So really what I teach then is empowering people with, I'll call the basic skill sets so that once we do have a shared fate and we can create a process around how to deal this in a healthy way, we can have healthy conversations with each other.
But the question first becomes why is it so rarely done? And, and what I've come to believe, this is kind of the world according to Eric, is that on most teams there's what I call a psychological contract. And it's this contract that keeps us from dealing with our real issues together. The contract that keeps it from happening goes as follows: I will not talk about your performance. You don't talk about mine. How do I know that's a contract that exists on most teams? I always say, pretend I'm on your team. Pretend the whole team is together in the room right now and let's further pretend that I started talking about your non-performance in front of everybody. How are you going to feel? And almost to a person, everybody says, well, I'm going to feel betrayed, attacked, I'm going to get defensive and I'm going to declare thermonuclear war.
Right? That couldn't happen unless there was an unwritten, unspoken contract that said we don't do that. And it's that contract that keeps us from dealing with our real issues together. That's why I say most teams collude to not deal with their relationship together.
You walk out of most meetings saying, what a waste of time. Almost always it’s because we never talked about what was real, right? So the question becomes, how can we deal with our real issues in a healthy way?
Believe it or not, the two most powerful things I've learned that can make that a reality and do it in a healthy way are these two things.
First, everyone has to learn to speak for themselves. So what that means in a meeting: You can't use group pronouns. We, they, our, everybody, because that's how we avoid our real issues, right? “You know what our problem is? We're not following a process.” Well, who's we? Who is not following a process?
Because the problem is, when people don't speak for themselves, that's when we get judgmental. It's a very different conversation. If I were to say, gee, Tracy, you seem very distracted, versus, we think you're very distracted. You go, who's the we? Right? And now I feel judged and I realize you've been talking behind my back and everything falls apart. So that's rule number one.
The second rule is you can't ask a question without making a statement first. Because it's when someone leads with a question, that's where miscommunications take place. Trust starts to fall apart because when I start with a question, you have to make assumptions on the question.
Why is he asking this question? What do you want to hear? And that's when things fall apart. So what I've learned is, it's okay to ask a question, you just have to make a statement first as to the thought process that's leading you to the question. You can't make a statement like, well I have a question, and then ask a question. The statement has to be what led to the question that you're about to ask. And the crazy thing is, because I chart this, 9 times out of 10, when someone does that, after they share their thought, they don't even have a question.
It leads to much less communication breakdowns, shorter meetings, and the building of trust. Rule number two means learning to take an issue and break into its components. Cause I'm pretty convinced every real issue is always an issue that centers around either different expectations, different pictures of reality, or we agree there's a gap, we just disagree on the impact, right? So part of this is just kind of teaching people what I'll call the fundamentals in terms of how we behave, but at the same time you have to put the structure in place.
Unless there's a shared fate, we're not having the conversations anyway. I do a lot of “how do you have difficult conversations?” training. Well, I can have skills all day long, but I'm not going to tell you what I think you really need to hear until there's that experience of what happens to one happens to all. So that's kind of the core.
And then everything after that is just tools, like the decision matrix and everything else. But from a conceptual perspective, it's getting people to really understand what is required to get a group to function like a team.
And then ultimately how do you then become accountable, and accountable teams, quite honestly just deal with their real issues together. Whether it's one or one or group doesn't matter. But we don't ignore, we don't talk behind each other's back. And we certainly don't expect the boss to take care of everything.
Wonderful question. I would love to tell you the success rate in doing this is very high. It's actually not. I've watched a lot of people get excited about this, but then it fizzles out, right? And there's a variety of different reasons.
If I were to tell you the two biggest pitfalls or challenges, first is the leader's inability or unwillingness to let go of control. When leaders hear this, they may think, oh my gosh, it'd be so nice if my team was accountable. I wouldn't have to make every decision. I wouldn't have to be in the weeds. I don't have to micromanage. I love that idea, let’s do this.
But then if you think about it, if a team becomes accountable, that means they're making more decisions, they're solving more problems. And leaders go through one of two things. Either they don't feel needed anymore, they’re not getting the high that they always used to get making decisions, solving problems; or they start to lose control. Because what if the team doesn't make the decision I would make, right? And if the team fails, that's going to reflect on me. I get nervous. So the tendency is to want to slow this down or, or pull back because of that fear of losing control.
Probably the single biggest challenge in getting this to work is from a leader's perspective, getting them comfortable. I always describe it as becoming increasingly comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's what every coach goes through. As a coach, you can't play the game. Well, in business that sounds great, but it's also my job. So a lot more is at stake.
The second biggest pitfall or challenge is that it does require a higher level of adulthood. Quite honestly, in most organizations, we're conditioned to believe that hey, it's the boss's job to deal with tough issues, right? If I have a problem with my teammate Johnny, at the end of the day my expectation is the boss takes care of it.
And if the boss does, great, “good boss”, but the second the boss doesn't, now it's “bad boss”. Well, if you create an accountable team, now what has to happen is I’ve got to go talk to Johnny myself. And a lot of people are just living in fear of that, because my ultimate fear is, well, you can now talk about me about my non-performance.
I think we're all scared children inside adult bodies, right? And the last thing I want is to be called out for not meeting expectations. So it's a risk. It takes a lot of courage to just say what I really feel knowing that now I'm opening myself up, and can I trust that people will treat me well in return?
Those are the two biggest challenges in making this work. There are other pitfalls, but they tend to be much more minor.
A lot of times I watch organizations go really slow. If you're going to do this, let's do it. Jump in. If you roll it out slowly, it kind of gets eroded, people don't follow the rules because the whole speaking for yourself piece just sounds so contrarian. For most people it's like, okay, we're going to do this, but we're not going to follow that rule.
Then all of a sudden, you're having a destructive conversation because someone will use the word “we”. And now I just got destroyed in front of the whole team, this thing doesn't work, let's throw it out. So the rule is there for a reason. It's extremely powerful, but it's just contrary to what most people were taught. Those are the things that get teams in trouble
It is a much scarier place to be. As I always tell people, if your intent is right, people know it. If my genuine intent is to help someone, most people know it. For some people it's very scary. You don't know what experiences they had in their early life that create this anxiety.
So for some, no matter how well you lay it out there, they're still going to have a difficult reaction. And some people find they really don't want to be in this type of environment. But I will tell you, most people, once it gets up and running, feel like, “oh my gosh, I could never go back, I feel like people have my back, I'm no longer scared, I can be free with what I say, and I don't have all this built up stress”.
Once you get there, if you like it and you're there, it's heaven. And if you don't, people tend to leave and go somewhere else, right? If I just want to be in my box, which is fine, I'm going to go play in my box, I don't feel comfortable or want to do those things. Which is totally understandable, it's a choice, right?
Oh yes. Most organizations. There's always jobs like that, especially in larger organizations.
That's an interesting question. Ironically, the bigger the turnaround that needs to happen, the easier it is to do. I've worked with several companies that were near the edge, and when survival's at stake, you're much more open to changing and doing something different, right?
I literally had this company that was a design firm, they did product development and design, and they were literally at cliff's edge. It had gotten so bad, the three partners brought me in and we did a weekend session.
It was surreal. I mean, not only did I go through the education Saturday morning, but by Saturday night we were dealing with real issues. And it all came out. Your wife said to my wife three years ago at the holiday party, and you know, it was just stuff that had gotten in the way that they had never dealt with, right?
And lo and behold, by Sunday night, they had worked through all their stuff in a healthy way and they're like, okay, let's go. Let's work together. And the people in the office will tell you, coming back Monday just was totally different. Because “mom and dad” were now functioning in ways they had never experienced before. And they saved the day, right?
So it was a dramatic turnaround, but they had no choice. If they didn't work through this stuff, they were closing the doors. I've had a few of those. Believe it or not, companies that are doing really well have a hard time shifting because, well, things are going great, why should we change? Right? So ironically a lot of the success stories are the big, dramatic journeys.
Ultimately, you know, it's the leader's responsibility to make sure that this moves forward. They've got to keep the foot on the pedal. People say they like it, but by and large it's scary. So if the leader lets the foot off the gas, then you know, I'll find cracks in the wall, so ultimately it's that piece.
But the biggest thing is to get some success. I think the hardest part, ironically, is coming up with a team purpose, putting the measurements in place, and getting the team really practiced in working those measurements together as a team. Because that changes the mindset, right?
So remember the tennis ball exercise. [Eric had 6 volunteers stand up and do an exercise where they tossed tennis balls from one person to another until each person in the group had touched each ball once, in the same order. The second time they repeated the sequence, he introduced a timer, and they kept repeating and improving their time. Then he told them the record time, which was significantly shorter than they were getting by throwing the balls to each other, so they started innovating and shaved the time down by about 90%.]
In the beginning everyone was focusing on doing the job themselves. Once we stated a target, they were thinking about, okay, how is the team doing? Everything changes, right?
Well, it's no different at work. Most people know exactly what their accountability is. My job is to do this, okay? So I'm lead generation and you're production. And now I'm on a team where, well, I may be lead generation, but I also am accountable to make sure all those other things are happening. And once I'm in these problem-solving sessions, figuring out how to make that happen, I start to take ownership. When a team starts to do that and they realize, wow, we're in this together, that's when things take off.
So you’ve got to get to that. Once you get to that, it's a pivot point in terms of success. And you'd be amazed at how few teams get to that point.
I didn't get there right away either. But once you've done it so much, it's like, this is so easy, just do it! You know? And I get, it's not as easy as it may be to me. I've done it so much, so it's kind of old news. The tough part to me is later on we're having really difficult conversations with each other, right? But I can't even get people to first base. Once they get past that, running the bases becomes much easier.