Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior, Second Edition

When we approach an accountability discussion, it’s important to know that we must work on ourselves first. We can’t go in determined to “fix everyone else” and expect to get the results we’re really after. We can only actually ever change ourselves.

That being said, remember that asking others to account for their actions lives and dies on the words people choose and the way people deliver them. Those words, and particularly the way they are delivered, live and die on what people think before they open their mouths. No amount of preparation can save a conversation if the person who brings up the failed promise isn’t in the right frame of mind. Here’s how those who master accountability discussions make sure their thoughts are in order before they put their mouths in gear:

• They make sure they are conversing about the right problems (Chapter 1, “Choose What and If”).

• They make sure that the thoughts rushing around in their heads — their facts, stories, and emotions — help them see the other person as a person rather than a villain. They learn to control their strong emotions by revisiting the stories that caused them (Chapter 2, “Master My Stories”).

1 Choose What and If How to Know What Conversation to Hold and If You Should Hold It

I made a Freudian slip last night. I called my husband by the name of my first boyfriend. It was embarrassing.

I did the same sort of thing. I meant to say to my husband, “Please pass the potatoes,” but I said, “Die, loser; you’ve ruined my life!”

Problems rarely come in tiny boxes — certainly not the issues we care about. Those come in giant bundles. For instance, your boss promises you a raise and then recants. This is the second time he’s promised you something only to go back on the promise, except this time he dropped the bomb in a meeting, and so you couldn’t complain on the spot. When you stopped him in the hallway to bring up the issue, he told you that he was in a hurry and said you should “stop being insensitive to my time demands.” You asked if you could talk later, and he said, “Hey, I didn’t get the money I deserved either.”

Let’s try a home example. Your in-laws just walked in unannounced while you were eating dinner. You’ve talked to them about giving you a heads-up, particularly if they plan on dropping in at dinnertime, and they still prance in on a whim. What problem do you address?

You don’t have enough food to go around. That could be easy to discuss. They’ve repeatedly promised they would notify you but are constantly breaking that agreement and losing your trust. That is likely to be hard to bring up. Finally, after turning down your invitation to join you at the table, they pout and whimper in the corner. That could be really difficult to confront.

In each of these cases, you’re left with two questions that you have to answer before you open your mouth: What? and If? First, what violation or violations should you actually address? How do you dismantle a bundle of accountability problems into its component parts and choose the one you want to discuss? You have a lot to choose from, and you can’t talk about them all, at least not in one sitting. Second, you have to decide if you’re going to say anything. Do you speak up and run the risk of causing a whole new set of problems, or do you remain silent and run the risk of never solving the problem?

Let’s take these two questions one at a time. We’ll deal with the if question once we’ve resolved the what question.

The question of what you should discuss may be the most important concept we cover in this book. When problems come in complicated bundles, and they often do, it’s not always easy to know which problem or problems to address.

For example, a teenage daughter swears to her father she’ll be home from her first big date by midnight but doesn’t come home until 1 a.m. Here’s the pressing question: What problem should he discuss? “That’s easy,” you say. “She was late.” True, that’s one way to describe the problem.

Here are several other ways: She broke a promise. She violated her father’s trust. She drove her father insane with fear that she had been killed in a car wreck. She purposely and willfully disobeyed a family rule. She openly defied her father in an effort to break free of parental control. She was getting even with her father for grounding her the weekend before. She knew it would drive her father bonkers if she stayed out late with a guy who sports a dozen face perforations, and so she did that.

Although it’s true that the daughter walked in the door 60 minutes after curfew, this may not be the exact and only problem her father wants to discuss. Here’s the added danger: if he selects the wrong problem from this lengthy list of possible problems and handles it well, he may be left with the impression that he’s done the right thing. However, if you want to follow the footsteps of our positive deviants, you have to identify and deal with the right problem, or it will never go away. This still leaves us with this question: What is the right problem?

Signs That You’re Dealing with the Wrong Problem

Your Solution Doesn’t Get You What You Really Want

To get a feel for how to choose the right problem, let’s look at an actual case we recently uncovered during a training session for school principals. It’s from a grade school principal’s experience. During recess a teacher notices the following interaction. Two second-grade girls are playing on the monkey bars. As Maria pushes Sarah to hurry her along, Sarah shouts, “Don’t you ever touch me again, you dirty little Mexican!” Maria counters with, “At least I’m not a big fatty!” This is the precipitating event.

The principal calls the children’s parents, describes what took place, and explains that the school will be disciplining them. Maria’s parents are fine with the idea and thank the principal, and that’s the end of the discussion. Sarah’s mother takes a different approach. She asks, “Exactly what form of discipline will each child receive?” The principal explains that the discipline will suit the nature of the offense.

The next day Sarah’s mother shows up unannounced, catches the principal in the hallway, and proclaims in loud and harsh tones that she doesn’t want the school to discipline her daughter. She’ll take care of the discipline on her own. The principal explains that the school is bound by policy to take action. In fact, tomorrow Sarah will be separated from her friends during lunch and required to take her meal in the media room under the supervision of a teacher’s aide. That’s the prescribed discipline. Sarah’s mother then announces that tomorrow she’ll be picking up her daughter for a private mommy-daughter lunch at a nearby restaurant.

There are several problems in this scenario. When the principals in the training session hear about the incident, many become emotional. “That’s an easy one to figure out,” some suggest. “You turn it over to the district discipline committee. Besides, since there are racial issues involved here, you could get the mother in trouble for interfering.” Of course, the goal here isn’t to cause the mother grief, so what should the principal do?

As the principals settle down to discuss the problem in earnest, they bring to the surface an assortment of issues: “First, there’s the problem of meddling. She has no right to ask about the other child’s discipline. It’s a private matter.” “No, the bigger issue is that she is demanding to take away the school’s right to discipline. That’s simply unacceptable.” “Plus the kid’s going to be rewarded with a special lunch instead of being punished. Who wants that?” “How about the fact that the mother is rude and manipulative? That can’t be good.”

Finally, one of the assistant principals brings up an issue that everyone seems to think is important: “I’m worried that the parent and the school won’t be partnering in solving the problem. I’d want to work with the mother to come up with a plan jointly. Otherwise, she might begin to characterize the school officials as the enemy, and the child will soon agree.”

Once this important issue is highlighted as the main problem, a discussion can be held to resolve it, and the principal can get what it is he or she really wants: a working partnership with the parent that will help benefit the child. Solutions to any of the other problems would not have accomplished this, and people would have remained frustrated.

So take note: if the solution you’re applying doesn’t get you the results you really want, it’s likely you’re dealing with the wrong problem entirely.

You’re Constantly Discussing the Same Issue

Before we deal with the aggressive mother, let’s look at another problem. This time you’re working with the owner of a real estate firm in a rural community.

“The woman who works the front desk is constantly coming to work late,” the owner explains.

“Have you talked to her?” you ask.

“Repeatedly” is the response.

“And then what happens?” you continue.

“She’s on time for a few days, maybe even a week, and then she starts coming in late again.”

“Then what do you say to her?”

“I tell her that she’s late and that I don’t like it.”

This situation presents a terrific example of what separates accountability experts from everyone else. The owner has the courage to converse with the desk clerk. That separates him from the worst. However, the fact that he returns to the same problem each time puts him far below top performers. This is an indication that there is some other infraction that needs to be discussed: the front desk clerk isn’t living up to her commitments, she’s disrespecting company policy, etc.

Groundhog Day

When people repeatedly violate an expectation, those who are the best at identifying and then confronting the deviation redefine each instance with each new infraction. They don’t live the wretched life of Phil Connors, the weatherman in the movie Groundhog Day. Those who observe repeated infractions and discuss each new instance as if it were the first one live the same problem (the same day) over and over, and nothing ever changes. Accountability experts never live Groundhog Day. The first time a person is late, she’s late; the second time, she’s failed to live up to her promise; the third time she’s starting down the road to discipline, etc.

In summary, if you find yourself having the same accountability discussion over and over again, it’s likely there’s another, more important violation you need to address.

You’re Getting Increasingly Upset

As you continue your conversation with the realtor, you say, “Obviously, the fact that your clerk comes in late is the behavior that catches your attention, and that’s what you talk to her about. But what is the real issue here?”

“I’m not exactly sure. I do know that it’s starting to bug me a lot — more than it probably should.”

“Are you becoming more upset because the problem’s escalating?”

“Not really,” the broker responds hesitantly.

Finally, you ask, “When you’re angry enough to complain to your wife, coworkers, or best friend about this repeated infraction, how do you describe it?”

A light goes on in the broker’s eyes as he excitedly states, “It’s killing me that she’s taking advantage of our relationship. She’s my neighbor, she’s helped me out a lot, and now she doesn’t do what I ask because she knows that I won’t discipline her since we’re good friends. At least that’s how it feels to me.”

That’s the violated expectation the broker needs to confront. He’s becoming increasingly upset with each instance because he’s never dealt with the issue that is bothering him. Being late is the frozen tip floating above the chilly waters. Taking advantage of a friendship is the iceberg itself.

Confronting the Right Issue

As you can see from these examples, learning how to get at the gist of an infraction requires time and practice. Feeling pressured by time constraints and hyped up by emotions, most people miss the real deal. It takes grade school assistant principals 20 minutes or more to discuss the assortment of challenges presented in the case of the aggressive mother. In fact, most never come to the realization that it’s the lack of cooperation that they probably ought to discuss. Many can’t get past their emotional reaction. They want to stick it to the feisty mother, and, frankly, that’s exactly what many would do.

Along a similar vein, most parents who pace the floor nervously as a teenage daughter breaks curfew can’t see beyond the hands of the clock, when in truth what really has them concerned is the fact that the girl didn’t have the courtesy to call them, let them know she’d be late, and bring a merciful end to their tortured worrying. Many don’t even realize that this is what is troubling them.

The ability to reduce an infraction to its bare essence takes patience, a sense of proportion, and precision. First, you have to take the time to unbundle the problem. People are often in too much of a hurry to do this. Their emotions propel them to move quickly, and speed rarely leads to careful thought. Second, while sorting through the issues, you have to decide what is bothering you the most. If you don’t, you’ll end up going after either the wrong target or too many targets. Third, you have to be concise. You have to distill the issue to a single sentence. Lengthy descriptions of violated expectations only obscure the real issue. If you can’t reduce a violation to a clear sentence before you talk, the issue almost never becomes more understandable and focused as a conversation unfolds.

Helpful Tools to Get to the Right Conversation

Let’s say that despite your best efforts, you keep returning to the same infraction. Your emotions are getting worse, not better, and in retrospect you believe that you’re choosing to talk about what’s easy, convenient, or obvious but not what’s important. In short, you have every reason to believe that you’re repeatedly dealing with the wrong issue. How do you turn this bad habit around? To hit the right target, use the following tools.

Think CPR

This acronym can help give direction to an accountability discussion as well as eliminate Groundhog Day. The first time an infraction occurs, talk about the content, what just happened: “You drank too much at the luncheon, became inebriated, started talking too loud, made fun of our clients, and embarrassed the company.” The content of a violated expectation typically deals with a single event — the here and now.

The next time the infraction occurs, talk pattern, what has been happening over time: “This is the second time this has occurred. You agreed it wouldn’t happen again, and I’m concerned that I can’t count on you to keep a promise.” Pattern issues acknowledge that problems have histories and that histories make a difference. Frequent and continued violations affect the other person’s predictability and eventually harm respect and trust.

Warning: It’s easy to miss the pattern and get sucked into debating content. For instance, your boss repeatedly leaves your agenda items to the end of the meeting — meaning that they typically get abbreviated or dropped altogether. You’ve spoken with her about it before. This time when you bring it up, she explains how full the agenda was and how you need to be more flexible about urgent issues. If you give in to that explanation, you’ve missed the point. Your concern is not today’s meeting (the content issue); it’s the long-standing pattern. Sometimes the pattern sneaks up on you, and a new issue arises. You point out the problem, and the other person begins to either rant or pout, something that’s starting to happen a lot in your conversations with him or her. It’s becoming a pattern. Accountability savants notice this pattern of behavior and find ways to address it before moving back to the original topic.

As the problem continues, talk about relationship, what’s happening to us. Relationship concerns are far bigger than either the content or the pattern. The issue is not that other people have repeatedly broken promises; it’s that the string of disappointments has caused you to lose trust in them: you’re beginning to doubt their competency and doubt their promises, and this is affecting the way you treat one another: “This is starting to put a strain on how we work together. I feel as if I have to nag you to keep you in line, and I don’t like doing that. I guess my fear is that I can’t trust you to keep the agreements you make.”

If your real concern is around the relationship and you discuss only the pattern of behavior, you’re likely to find yourself feeling dissatisfied with the outcome. Even worse, you’re likely to experience Groundhog Day: you’ll have the same conversation again later. To understand the various kinds of content, pattern, and relationship issues that routinely pop up during accountability discussions, consider the following two factors: consequences and intentions. Each provides a distinct method for first unbundling and then placing a priority on violated expectations.

Unbundling Consequences

Accountability issues are almost never contained in the behavior of the offender. They’re much more likely to be a function of what happens afterward. The problem lies in the consequences. For example, a staff specialist who works for you has promised to complete a financial analysis by noon. She miscalculates how long it will take and delivers the job to you three hours late.

The errant behavior, being late, is not the problem. What follows is. The fact that you might lose a client is what really bothers you. Or maybe it’s the fact that this is the third time this person has let you down and you’re beginning to wonder if you can count on her. Or perhaps it’s the fact that you now may have to watch this person more closely, costing you precious time and making her feel micromanaged. Each of these responses is a consequence of the original act and helps unbundle the problem.

When you want to clarify the focus of your accountability discussion, stop and ask yourself, “What are the consequences to me? To our relationship? To the task? To other stakeholders?” Analyzing the consequences helps you determine what is most important to discuss.

Intentions

Let’s move the analysis in another direction. A fellow you work with is causing you a problem. He cheerfully promised to format a report you created, and then, instead of giving it to you, he handed it directly to your boss. What was he thinking? Actually, you have a theory. You believe that his intentions were selfish (he was trying to take credit); at least, this is the conclusion you’ve drawn.

Let’s be clear about this. You’ve drawn this conclusion not as a thoughtless knee-jerk reaction, as is often the case, but as the result of mounting evidence. You’ve examined the action, you’ve weighed the particulars, and you are starting to believe the person’s intentions are indeed bad. When this happens, the behavior isn’t the problem, at least not the big one. What came before the person acted is the challenge here, at least in your mind. It’s the issue you ought to discuss. You have to talk about intentions.

The good news is that we address intentions all the time. Consider the father who was upset with his daughter for coming in late because she was punishing him for having grounded her. It wasn’t the fact that she had been late that made him upset — at least not totally — it was her perceived intention that was giving him fits: “She’s doing it on purpose just to cause me grief.” The realtor believed that the front desk clerk was intentionally playing on their friendship to get away with coming in late. Once again, it was her perceived intent that bothered him.

Whether the father and the realtor are correct in their assessments will remain unknown until they hold an accountability discussion and share their suspicions. Of course, deciding how they’ll confront such a delicate issue isn’t easy. These are invisible motives we’re talking about. We’re drawing conclusions about another person’s unseen intent. (We’ll discuss the common stories we tell ourselves in later chapters.) Nevertheless, the conclusions the two have drawn about others’ underlying intent has them bothered, and these are the issues they’ll need to talk about eventually.

Prioritizing

Ask What You Do and Don’t Want

As you begin to unbundle the component parts of a violated expectation — examining the precipitating intentions and the consequences — the list of component parts can grow so large that you may not know where to begin. What’s the “real” issue, or at least the most important one?

The best tool for choosing from the host of possible infractions is to ask what you really want and don’t want. And since you’re talking to another person, you ought to ask what you want for yourself, for the other person, and for the relationship. If you don’t think about all three of these essential aspects, one may take a backseat, and you won’t solve your most important issue.

Consider the case of the two second-grade girls. Most people struggle with what to say to Sarah’s mother until someone asks: “What do you want to have happen with Sarah? What don’t you want to have happen?” You do want Sarah to be disciplined. You don’t want to start a battle with her mother and make choices that limit Sarah’s educational options. You don’t want to send her to a new school just to show her mother who’s in charge.

As far as you yourself are concerned, you want to be able to hold Sarah accountable. Policy demands that you take action, and even if you could look the other way, you’d be giving tacit approval to a nasty behavior. You don’t want that. When it comes to the relationship, you want to be able to collaborate with Sarah’s mother to come up with the proper type of discipline. You don’t want the daughter to receive mixed messages. So what do you say? What is the problem you want to discuss? “I’m afraid we’re sending Sarah the wrong message when we argue over the form the discipline should take.”

To decide what to confront:

• Think CPR — content, pattern, and relationship.

• Expand the list of possible issues by considering consequences and intent.

• Choose from the list by asking what you do and don’t want: for yourself, others, and the relationship.

An Application

Let’s apply these concepts to a real case. Your two preteen kids were invited to go to a drive-in movie with their friends who live down the street. You gave them permission to stay up late and you popped popcorn for them, and your children are now so excited that they can hardly see straight. Then the parents who will be taking the kids to the movie drive up to your house in their pickup truck. Their two children are seated in the truck bed, and your kids quickly join them. You have a strict family rule about not riding in the back of a pickup, particularly one that will be driving at freeway speed to get to the movie. Your spouse feels as strongly about the safety issue as you do.

You start to raise your safety concerns, and your neighbor calls you a “fussbudget” and a “worrywart.” Before you can respond, your spouse cuts you off and tries to smooth over the issue by saying to the father who is driving, “You’re going to be extra careful, right? Those kids in the back are pretty precious cargo!” The driver says not to worry and pulls off as your kids squeal in delight.

You’re furious. What do you say to your spouse? Your first inclination is to talk about the danger. But that ship has sailed, well, sort of rumbled, off into the sunset. Although you’ll return to the issue later, when your kids are around (they’re aware of the dangers of getting into the truck), you think that maybe you should talk about the fact that this is the second time your spouse has backed off on a family value under pressure. That’s a new challenge — backing off a value (not just safety) — and it’s a pattern. Then again, what really has you miffed is the fact that your spouse cut you off as you were raising the safety issue with your neighbor. You think that your spouse’s intention was cockeyed. It was more important to look “cool” than to ensure the safety of your children.

As you think about it, you ask yourself what you want and don’t want. You want the kids to be safe — that’s a given — but once again, you’ll talk about that issue as a group. You want to be able to express concerns without being cut off or dismissed. You want your spouse to be able to talk about the issue without making you feel attacked. You don’t want the discussion to turn into a fight. As far as your relationship is concerned, you want to stand as a unified front when it comes to safety. And then you put your finger on the real kicker. The pattern you are concerned about is your spouse unintentionally taking away your vote in these key decisions. Yes, that’s it! It’s when your spouse announces a decision publicly without ensuring that you’re in agreement.

You decide to talk about making commitments (especially those that deviate from values such as safety) without each other’s buy-in. You want to find a way to always stand together when faced with outside pressures, and safety is certainly not an exception. That’s the big issue.

Let’s move on to the if question. You’ve unbundled the violation, picked the issue you care about the most, and reduced it to a clear sentence, and now you’re ready. You’re going to hold an accountability discussion with the other person. Or are you? The mere fact that you’ve identified the problem you’d like to discuss doesn’t mean you should discuss it. Sometimes it’s better to consider the consequences before deciding whether to bring up the issue.

For instance, your teenage son walks in the door with his hair cut in a Mohawk. He loves it. You hate it. He thinks it’s all the rage. You think it’s a sign of rebellion. Do you lay down the law or back off? Maybe you’re out of touch with what is normal and what isn’t. Haranguing your son until he opts for a new style might do little more than widen the rift that seems to be growing between the two of you. Maybe you shouldn’t say anything. Maybe you should expand your zone of acceptance.

Let’s consider an example from work. Your boss is combative in meetings. She verbally attacks arguments by raising her voice and labeling ideas “stupid” or “naive” and often looks disgusted. She also disagrees with almost everything and cuts people off midsentence. At first her tactics bothered you, but you came to appreciate the fact that at least it was clear where she stood on issues. Therefore, you said nothing. Today she questioned your loyalty and insulted you in front of your peers. That was going too far. Maybe you should say something. Maybe you should shrink your zone of acceptance.

As these examples demonstrate, there are no simple rules that dictate which violated expectations are trivial, which are consequential, and which you should deal with. Usually when someone breaks a promise, you talk about it — circumstances demand that you talk, and you do — but not always. So what are the rules?

When It’s Clearly a Broken Promise

In organizations there are reports, goals, performance indicators, quality scorecards, budget variances, and a boatload of other metrics that clearly show a difference between what was expected and what was delivered. These failed promises represent clear opportunities to hold an accounting. And since they’re routine, they’re probably fairly easy to discuss.

At home there are also clear indicators: “You promised me we’d go out to dinner.” “You told me you would be home for my birthday.” These too are routine issues that are easily discussed.

When It’s Unclear and Iffy

But what if the infractions are ambiguous or if discussing them could get you in trouble? You’re not sure if the infraction is a problem and if bringing up the issue might lead to a raging battle, a harmed relationship, a lost job, or something equally frightening.

How do you know if you should address broken promises that are not so clear and not so promising?

To answer this all-important if question, let’s divide the challenge into two camps: First, how do you know if you’re not speaking up when you should? Second, how do you know if you are speaking up when you shouldn’t?

Not Speaking When You Should

Let’s start with a simple premise. As was evidenced in our line-cutting research and the numerous studies that followed, more often than not, we don’t speak up when we should. Sure, sometimes we bring up an issue at the wrong time or in the wrong way, but that’s not the predominant mistake made in most families and companies. Going to silence is the prominent issue in these situations.

To help diagnose whether you’re clamming up when you should be speaking up, ask the following four questions:

• Am I acting out my concerns?

• Is my conscience nagging me?

• Am I choosing the certainty of silence over the risk of speaking up?

• Am I telling myself that I’m helpless?

Am I Acting Out My Concerns?

Let’s say you’ve observed a broken commitment at work. Several members of the technical support team aren’t keeping an eight-to-five work schedule. Instead, they’re working flex-time. They often arrive late and then work past closing. This bugs you because they agreed to stick to the posted schedule. After thinking about it, you decide that maybe being a stickler isn’t such a good idea. They’re putting in the hours, and there’s no need to rock the boat. You’re still bugged because they broke their word and it feels like they’re acting like prima donnas, but you’re not going to say a word.

Holding your tongue probably isn’t going to work in this case. If the broken commitment is really bothering you, you’re unlikely to be a good enough actor to hide your feelings. You may try to choke your feelings down, but eventually they’ll bubble up to the surface in unhealthy ways. If you don’t talk it out, you’ll act it out.

An actor named John LaMotta taught us this concept. We had hired him to play the role of a manager in a training video we were producing. During rehearsals he kept turning the rather harmless opening line into an attack. Later we learned that he had assumed that the person he was working with was a “dipstick” because he hadn’t done his job. Consequently, no matter how we directed John (telling him to soften his delivery, drop the anger, etc.), he treated the fellow with disdain. John didn’t stray from the written script, but his negative assumptions found their way into his nonverbal behavior: first his tone, then a smirk, then a raised fist, and so forth. When the director finally told John that the fellow was a hard worker whom everyone liked, John delivered his lines spot-on. He couldn’t change his actions until he changed his mind.

Paul Ekman,[7] a scholar who has studied facial expressions and emotions for 30 years, came to the same conclusion. When people try to hide their feelings or “put on” an emotion, Ekman found they use different groups of muscles than they use to express authentic feelings. For example, authentic smiles of joy involve the muscles surrounding the eyes; false or social smiles bypass the eyes completely. And other people can tell. You can’t hide your real emotions.

There’s more. When you observe a broken commitment, feel bad about it, and then decide to say nothing, your feelings don’t manifest themselves only in your facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviors; they also escape in the form of biting sarcasm, cutting humor, or surprising non sequiturs. For instance, while seated across from his mother at the dinner table, a 29-year-old chronically unemployed son politely tells her that she has “a hunk of lasagna” on her chin. Mom responds with, “Oh, yeah? When I was your age, I had two jobs.” Guess what has been annoying her?

When you’ve gone silent, but your body language keeps sending out hostile signals or you’re dropping hints or relying on sarcasm, you probably ought to speak up.

What Are We Thinking?

Why do we ever set aside pressing problems — hoping they’ll somehow get better? It’s like finding a tub of rancid cottage cheese in the fridge, setting it on the kitchen counter for a couple of days, and then thinking, “Gee, I wonder if it’ll taste any better now.”

Is My Conscience Nagging Me?

Sometimes you don’t hold others accountable because you feel isolated. You see a problem but fear that you’re the only one who cares. No one else shows signs of anxiety. “Now what am I supposed to do?” you wonder. “Why aren’t my healthcare colleagues concerned that we’re not washing our hands long enough?” “How come my fellow accountants are looking the other way when our biggest client violates standard practices?” “How come my neighbors, spouse, and kids don’t think riding in the bed of a pickup is dangerous?” Even though you’re worried — your conscience is nagging you a little — you say nothing.

As we suggested in the Introduction, the fact that people often remain silent despite their best judgment has been studied extensively. In addition to the studies we cited, Solomon Asch[8] created conditions in which people wouldn’t just remain silent when they believed they were at odds with their peers; they actually lied rather than disagree with them. Stanley Milgram[9] replaced peers with authority figures and was able to manipulate the subjects to do more than lie. He got people to shock others to the point where they worried that they might have killed the other persons rather than disagree with the individual in the white lab jacket.

Peer pressure coupled with formal authority can compel people to act against their best judgment. Here’s how it affects accountability discussions: if social pressure can cause people to lie, it can certainly drive people to silence. Pay attention to a nagging conscience — it may be indicating a conversation that you need to step up to.

When you’ve gone to silence and your conscience is nagging you, you probably ought to speak up.

Am I Choosing the Certainty of Silence over the Risk of Speaking Up?

When it comes to deciding whether we’re going to speak up, we kid ourselves into making the same mental math errors. We choose the certainty of what is currently happening to us (no matter how awful it may be) over the uncertainty of what might happen if we said something. This of course drives us to silence, quietly embracing the devil we know, when there’s a good chance that we really should have spoken up. Here’s how this insidious dynamic works.

When we’re trying to figure out if we should speak up, we often envision a horrific failure and immediately decide to go to silence. Then we look for reasons to justify the choice to say nothing. Our reasoning takes place in the following way. We first ask ourselves, “Can I succeed in this conversation?” We don’t ask, “Should I try?” Instead, we ask, “Can I succeed?” When the answer to the internal query is a resounding no, we decide that we shouldn’t try.

Accountability experts take the opposite approach. Only after they’ve decided that the conversation should be held do they ask the question, “How can I do this? Better still, how can I do this well?” If we reverse the order, starting with can and not should, we almost always sell out. We decide to clam up and then justify our inaction.

Our two favorite silence-driving math tricks are (1) downplaying the cost of not speaking and (2) exaggerating the cost of expressing our views.

Downplaying the Cost of Not Speaking

Here’s how we minimize in our own minds the cost of continuing to tolerate the status quo. First, we look exclusively at what’s happening to us in the moment rather than at the total effect. A professor is boring, unfair, and outdated, but why rock the boat? We’ll survive, right? Never mind the fact that thousands of students will be affected over the next two decades of that professor’s career.

Second, we underestimate the severity of the existing circumstances because we become inured to the consequences we’re suffering. With time and constant exposure we come to believe that our wretched conditions are common and therefore acceptable. We continue to work for authoritarian bosses, stay married to people who physically and mentally abuse us, and work alongside people who ignore and insult us because we tell ourselves that it’s not really that bad. It’s just how things are.

Third, as was suggested earlier, we can’t see our own bad behavior when we fail to maintain silence. For example, we think we’re silently suffering under the thumb of a micromanager. In actuality, we act offended when the boss asks for details. We say we know how to do the job, cutting her off when she tries to offer a suggestion. We defiantly choose to do something our way. We miss the fact that our own behavior has degraded. In this case we don’t merely downplay the cost of silence — we miss it entirely.

Exaggerating the Cost of Expressing Our Views

Let’s look at how we routinely overestimate the costs we might experience if we did talk about a broken promise. Human beings are downright gifted when it comes to conjuring up bad things that just might happen to them. In fact, when contemplating what we may be setting into action by opening our mouths, we often imagine (and then get obsessed about) appalling outcomes no matter how unlikely they may be. When we trump up a horrible chain of events, we use lots of “and” thinking, only the wrong kind of “and” thinking. Here’s how it works:

The boss has asked us all to chip in 20 bucks to buy a present for a vice president we don’t even know. That’s a certainty, and it’s bad. None of us want to do it. But if I speak up, I won’t win the argument, and I’ll still have to come up with the money, and my boss will despise me, and I’ll lose my job, and my wife will leave me.

We lose all sense of reality when we fixate on the horrific possibilities that might befall us. The severity of the possible outcomes distorts our view of the probabilities. If an unlikely outcome is bad enough, we often describe it as a certainty rather than a possibility.

Perhaps the largest error we make in exaggerating the cost of confronting an issue stems from the erroneous belief that the existing world always punishes people who are naive enough to speak their minds. We’ve watched people speak up and get punished for their honesty and find it hard to imagine any other possibility. In fact, when the authors suggest in public forums that this book teaches people how to talk to almost anyone no matter how touchy and powerful that person may be — and with good results — people think we’re fooling ourselves: “Maybe the pumpkin wagon you just fell off allows you to speak honestly and boldly to the driver, but our driver carries a whip and loves to use it.”

At first we wondered if the skills we had seen demonstrated so often wouldn’t work in certain instances, and so we started asking, “Are you saying that there is nobody in your company who could talk about this particular issue or person and get away with it?” After an awkward pause, someone would name an individual who didn’t have the position power that granted him or her the right to speak but somehow found ways to talk quite frankly and not get into trouble.

When you’ve gone to silence and are trying way too hard to convince yourself that you’ve done the right thing, you might want to examine whether you are intentionally minimizing the cost of not speaking up and exaggerating the risks of doing so. Did you start with a desire not to speak up and back into a justification, or did you arrive there after careful consideration? Learn to notice the difference, and you’ll do a much better job of deciding if you should talk to someone about an issue.

Am I Telling Myself That I’m Helpless?

At the heart of most decisions to stay quiet, even though we’re currently suffering, lies the fear that we won’t be able to make a difference. We believe that either other people or the circumstances themselves make the problem insoluble. That puts the issue out of our control. It’s not us; it’s them: “Have you ever tried to talk to that guy? He’s a maniac!” “Have you ever attempted to tell a senior executive that she doesn’t really know how to do her job? Like that’s going to work.”

The truth is that many accountability discussions fail not because others are bad and wrong but because we handle them poorly. It’s our fault. We decide to step up to a failed promise and subtly attack the other person. He or she then gets hooked, and we’re now in a heated battle. Naturally, we see the other person getting hooked but miss the part we played in escalating the problem by doing such a shoddy job of bringing it up in the first place.

We’re like the young boy who refused to see his role in an argument by explaining to his mother, “It all started when he hit me back!”

Even when we do see the role we’re playing in a problem by owning up to the fact that our accountability skills aren’t that great, we often act as if we were as talented as we’re ever going to be. We’ve peaked; we’ll never get better. We make this assumption because most of us aren’t exactly students of social influence. We’ve spent more time memorizing the capitals of Europe than we have examining the intricacies of human interaction. We rarely think of accountability skills as something that a person should and can learn through actual study. But as this book asserts, these skills can be learned and improved.

When you’ve gone to silence because you’re afraid you’re not skilled enough to have an accountability discussion, your assessment may be correct. If this is the case, enhance your skills. There’s no use suffering forever. Be careful not to let fear taint your judgment. You may have the skills to deal with a particular issue but are letting your fear keep you from speaking up. When you’re thinking about going to silence, ask yourself if you’re copping out rather than making a reasoned choice.

Responding to the Signs

Let’s summarize the clues that you’re hastily going to silence and explore what to do with them. Telltale signs that you should be speaking and not clamming up include the following four:

• Sign 1. You’re acting out your feelings. You think you’re suffering silently, but you’re not. To spot this mistake, ask yourself the following: “Am I really expanding my zone of acceptance, or am I actually upset and sending out a barrage of unhealthy signals? Are others getting hooked?” If this is the case, you’re probably not suffering silently but are acting out your concerns and making matters worse. Your nonverbal behavior is already speaking for you. Consider taking charge of the conversation instead.

• Sign 2. Your conscience is nagging you. You keep telling yourself that it’s okay to say nothing — besides, other people aren’t saying a word — but you know in your gut that you need to say something. Listen to that voice. It’s telling you to step up to the plate. Take the internal prodding as a sign that your silence isn’t warranted.

• Sign 3. You’re downplaying the cost of not taking action (embracing the devil you know) while exaggerating the dangers of speaking up. You’re trying way too hard to persuade yourself to stay away from an accountability discussion because you fear it will be painful. Don’t confuse the question of whether the conversation will be difficult with the question of whether you should deal with it.

• Sign 4. You figure that nothing you do will help. Either others are impossible to talk to, or you’ve already achieved the height of your accountability prowess. In truth, the problem is less often that others are impossible to approach than that we aren’t sure how to approach them. The authors have watched people deal with some of the most difficult problems and succeed because they knew what to say and how to say it. If you improve your skills — even just a little — you’ll choose silence far less often and succeed far more routinely.

Speaking Up When You Shouldn’t

Let’s turn our attention to the other side of the if coin. You confront a problem that in retrospect you probably shouldn’t have dealt with in the first place. This seems to contradict what we just discussed, but it’s true. There are times when it’s better not to bring up a problem or at least not to do so until you’ve done some preparatory work.

Often, when you’ve weighed the consequences of speaking up, it is a better option to remain silent. For example, you’ve had difficulty working with a certain vendor and the process could have been much cleaner, but you were working on a one-time-only project and probably won’t ever see the vendor again. In this case, it may be better to avoid rehashing an issue that will never come up again.

Here’s the biggest stumbling block: problem solving is never done in a vacuum. Every company and family has an unwritten history that indicates which infractions are appropriate to deal with and which ones a person should let slide. All expectations, contracts, protocols, policies, and promises aren’t equally binding. Worse, in some organizations people aren’t held accountable for delivering on any promises, or at least accountability is unpredictable.

Differentiate Yourself

Sometimes erratic approaches to accountability stem from the fact that leaders take the path of least resistance. It isn’t fun to hold people accountable; besides, nobody’s taught them much about it. Sometimes people hold back their concerns out of sympathy for the fact that everyone is assigned far more than he or she can ever do, and so it feels almost cruel to hold people accountable.

Whatever the underlying cause, if you’re going to break from tradition and elevate a standard that had been nothing more than a rough guideline to a hard-and-fast law, people should know. You have to issue a fair warning. You have to reset others’ expectations, and you have to do it in a way that doesn’t look smug.

For example, one day Kerry, one of the authors of this book, put on his new Coast Guard dress uniform in preparation for standing watch. He was going to take his turn as the officer of the day (OD) at a training center in California where he had been newly assigned. He would be in charge of the watch.

The watch consisted of a couple of dozen “coasties” who had to remain on the base all night and “stand a post.” They would sit in the barracks, motor pool, or boathouse and watch for any problems that might come up, including fires. Leaving one’s post, Kerry had learned weeks earlier in officer training, could get a person brought up on charges.

Imagine Kerry’s surprise later that evening when he caught wind that several of the men on duty were actually at the club chatting with their buddies rather than standing their posts and watching for whatever. Fortunately, before Kerry could march down and catch those fellows red-handed, leading to a great deal of pain and sorrow, a senior enlisted man took him aside and pointed out a couple of facts. First, lots of people on watch hung out at the club; nobody really cared. Second, several of Kerry’s fellow officers were known to go down to the club and chat, throw darts, and otherwise turn a blind eye to the fact that some members of the duty crew weren’t at their posts. If Mr. Patterson wanted to make a stink, there would not be a horde of adoring fans hoisting him on their shoulders to honor his vigilance.

What should Kerry do? He didn’t like the idea of making rules and then not keeping them, and he certainly had the authority to write people up. However, if other officers had been turning a blind eye to regulations for a long time and now without notice Kerry, the new kid on the block, blindsided people with a charge of disobedience, it could seem unfair. The fact that you have legal standing doesn’t mean that you’ll gain the support of the larger community.

After seeking the counsel of his boss, Kerry decided to take the following tack. He wouldn’t run, and he wouldn’t blow the whistle (there was nobody to listen, and most people didn’t care), and so he decided to strike a compromise. He let it be known that he appreciated the fact that other people had different opinions on the matter, but he didn’t want people to leave their posts. When he was the OD, he would be checking the various posts to ensure that they were being watched. He then told a dozen or more opinion leaders about his stance and asked them to spread the word so that there wouldn’t be any surprises. That was the end of the problem. Nobody left his post on Kerry’s watch.

If you’re going to speak up when others remain silent, if you’re going to hold people to a standard that differs from that of the masses, get the word out. Send out a warning. Differentiate yourself from others. This is particularly wise advice for those moving into new positions of leadership, parents taking over blended families, etc.

No “Nanner-Nanner”

Over the years, as the authors have worked with thousands of leaders, they occasionally have run into people who are proud of the fact that they are the only ones who have the guts to hold people to quality guidelines, safety standards, cost-cutting goals, and the like. Others may remain quiet while quality crashes or costs spiral out of control, but not on their watch. Others may bolt at the first signs of resistance, but they hold the line.

With time we have come to understand that while being true to one’s values may be noble, if you do so in a way that dishonors your peers (making fun of the less vigilant, bragging about your own commitment, etc.), you’re upholding one value only to deny another: teamwork. Along a similar vein, parents who piously set a new standard, all the while making fun of a partner who isn’t as discriminating as they are, do so at the peril of their children’s mental health. Inconsistency breeds insecurity.

If you’re going to differentiate yourself from your spouse or coworkers by holding people to a more rigid standard, don’t be smug about it. Set expectations in a way that shows respect for people with different views. This may be a real test of your appreciation for diversity. You believe that people who hold individuals to a less rigid standard than you do are different — not spineless wimps who are slowly eating away at the very soul of civilization. There’s a huge difference between saying “I’m going to ask you to do something even if others don’t” and saying “I don’t care what the other lily-livered losers are doing.”

Choose What and If

We’ve started with the principle “work on me first.” We’ve learned that before we utter a word, we have to start by asking what accountability discussion to hold and if we should hold it.

What and If

• What. The first time someone violates an expectation, talk about the original action or the content. If the violation continues, talk about the pattern. As the impact spills over to how you relate to one another, talk about your relationship. To help pick the right level, explore what came after the behavior (the consequences) as well as what came before it (the intent). As the list of potential infractions expands, cut to the heart of the matter by asking what you really do want and don’t want—for yourself, the other person, and the relationship.

• If. To determine if you’re wrongly going to silence, ask four questions: “Am I acting it out?” “Is my conscience nagging me?” “Am I choosing the certainty of silence over the risk of speaking up?” “Am I telling myself that I’m helpless?” To determine if you’re wrongly speaking up, ask if the social system will support your effort. If you are committed to speak up while others continue to say nothing, differentiate yourself.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve decided to hold others accountable, you have to make sure that you yourself are in the right frame of mind. You have to work on yourself first. This isn’t always easy, especially when the other person has let you down. There’s a good chance that you’ll charge in with an accusation. This takes us to the next chapter. Before you ever open your mouth, how do you tell a more complete and full story of what’s going on — one that’s more conducive to a healthy discussion than the all-too-common question, “What’s wrong with those bozos?”

2 Master My Stories How to Get Your Head Right Before Opening Your Mouth

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.

— GEORGE CARLIN

Anyone who has ever held others accountable realizes that a person’s behavior during the first few seconds of the interaction sets the tone for everything that follows. You have no more than a sentence or two to establish the climate. If you set the wrong tone or mood, it’s hard to turn things around. In fact, a bad beginning might ensure a poor ending.

This can be troublesome, because when someone breaks a commitment or behaves badly, the last thing we’re thinking about is the climate we’re about to establish. More often than not, we’re completely immersed in the details of what just happened. And if that doesn’t consume all our time and attention, our emotions eat up anything that’s left. Consider the following example.

Imagine that you’re part of an overworked, stressed-out management team that’s sitting around a table large enough to double as an airport runway, discussing what it’ll take to finish a development project. The phone rings. The quality manager picks it up, carries on a heated discussion, and then slams the phone back onto its cradle.

“It’s final assembly. The software we just completed is giving them fits,” she says with a look typically associated with the act of biting the head off a chicken.

“Oh great! The software is glitchy!” shouts the vice president of development.

Within seconds the entire leadership team is complaining about the unorthodox, selfish, weird software testers. Then the team members arise as one and start marching toward the testing department. Since you’ve worked with this team for only a month, you aren’t sure what’s going on.

As the team members hustle down the hallway, the operations manager explains that the software is supposed to be tested and retested before it’s sent on to final assembly. Otherwise, it often causes problems, and expensive ones at that.

“The stupid gearheads only have to run a simple testing package. That way they can catch problems early on and we never send software on to final assembly, where it can cause costly delays.”

“Why didn’t they run the tests?” you ask.

“That’s what we’re about to find out,” answers the senior VP as the vein on his forehead swells to the size of a mop handle. He and the other leaders charge down the hall like a band of white-collar vigilantes, and you think to yourself, “This is about to turn ugly.”

Behold, a Train Wreck

Obviously, this group has a checkered history with the people it’s about to accost. The managers are feeling morally superior and are about to create a nasty scene. Of course, in many companies, interactions may not get that heated. The tone may be softer, the language less brutal, and the threats more veiled (less punitive folks rely more on cold stares, sarcasm, and pointed humor), but the results are probably the same. Employees fail to deliver on a promise, and the bosses jump to a conclusion and jump hard.

What makes these accountability discussions interesting is that the underlying cause doesn’t really matter. If leaders start out with strong emotions, believing that they are on the moral high road, the interaction is likely to turn out badly for everyone regardless of the underlying cause.

The scene continues as the managers rush in like so many deputies preparing for a lynching. They catch the programmers checking out a “cool new website with a free game download” and then do what one might expect: They snarl at the guilty testers, call them unflattering names, threaten them with discipline, curse them, and pretty much throw a group hissy fit.

This ugly battle rages until the information technology manager, who just walked into the building, hears about what’s happening to “his people” and rallies to the testers’ defense. A full-fledged shouting match ensues. It’s not long before the IT manager is accusing the rest of the management team of treating the programmers with disrespect, making false accusations, and using offensive language.

The managers are now so angry that they could spit. They’ve caught the weasels red-handed — they really had messed up — and their colleague, the IT manager, has the nerve to be pointing a finger at the management team. Has the world gone completely mad? It takes days for this incident to settle down, and everyone ends up with egg on his or her face. Everyone.

The Hazardous Half Minute

We used to call the first 30 seconds of an accountability discussion the hazardous half minute because the overall climate and eventual results are often set in place in seconds. We were wrong. The climate isn’t set in the first 30 seconds; it just becomes visible in that time frame. We establish the climate the moment we assume that the other person is guilty and begin feeling angry and morally superior. It takes only a moment to send an accountability discussion down the wrong track, and it all takes place inside our heads. Here’s what this looks like:

Another person violates a commitment, and, as a result, we’re propelled to action. Here’s the path we take: We see what that person did and then tell ourselves a story about why he or she did it, which leads to a feeling, which leads to our own actions. If the story is unflattering and the feeling is anger, adrenaline kicks in. Under the influence of adrenaline, blood leaves our brains to help support our genetically engineered response of “fight or flight,” and we end up thinking with the brain of a reptile. We say and do dim-witted things.

Under these circumstances we come to some of the most ignorant conclusions imaginable. For instance, a fellow comes home from a long road trip and is feeling amorous, but his wife isn’t. Soon he’s pacing around and muttering to himself. Finally, here’s the plan his blood-starved brain comes up with: “I’ve got it. I’ll try to woo her with a sarcastic comment or two.” Oddly enough, insensitive sarcasm doesn’t seem to do anything to soften his wife’s mood.

Consider the software development leaders. First came the observation: the software isn’t working. Next came the story: the testers didn’t run the final tests because they don’t like doing them; in fact, they live in their own little world and don’t care what happens to others. Then came the feeling of anger, followed by a fierce and futile attack. This entire path to action — the jump from observation, to story, to feeling, to action — takes but a moment and sets the tone for everything that follows.

Is it possible that everyday people with an IQ higher than that of a houseplant could be so hasty, judgmental, and unfair? Aren’t most of us more careful, scientific, and thoughtful? In a word, no. We may not be as blatantly abusive as the managers in the software case, but when we face high-stakes problems, we’re just as likely to come up with an unflattering story and act on it as if it were true.

Jumping to Conclusions and Making Assumptions

How can this be? During the 1950s and 1960s, scholars conducted a lengthy series of research projects known as attribution studies. Their goal was to learn how normal people determine the cause of a problem. To uncover the thought pattern, they provided subjects with descriptions of people engaging in socially unacceptable behavior (a woman steals cash from a coworker, a father yells at his children, a neighbor cuts in front of you in the checkout line) and then asked the subjects, “Why did that person do such a thing?”

It turns out that people aren’t all that good at attributing causality accurately. We quickly jump to unflattering conclusions. The chief error we make is a simple one: we assume that people do what they do because of personality factors (mostly motivational) alone. Why did that woman steal from a coworker? She’s dishonest. Why did that man yell at his children? He’s mean. Why did the programmers fail to conduct a test? They’re arrogant, lazy, and selfish.

How can we be so simplistic and inaccurate? Most of the time human beings employ what is known as a dispositional rather than a situational view of others. We argue that people act the way they do because of uncontrollable personality factors (their disposition) as opposed to doing what they do because of forces in their environment (the situation).

We make this attribution error because when we look at others, we see their actions far more readily than we see the forces behind them. In contrast, when considering our own actions, we’re acutely aware of the forces behind our choices. Consequently, we believe that others do bad things because of personality flaws whereas we do bad things because the devil made us do them.

In truth, people often enact behaviors they take no joy in because of social pressure, lack of other options, or any of a variety of forces that have nothing to do with personal pleasure. For example, the woman stole because she needed money to buy medicine for her children. Your neighbor cut in line at the market because he was tending to his two toddlers and didn’t notice that he wasn’t taking his turn. Your half cousin was hauled off to jail for holding up a convenience store partly because of greed; then again, maybe the slow and painful failure of his business contributed too.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Assuming that others do contrary things because it’s in their makeup or they actually enjoy doing them and then ignoring any other potential motivational forces is a mistake. Psychologists classify this mistake as an attribution error. And because it happens so consistently across people, times, and places, it gets a name all its own. It’s called the fundamental attribution error.

Naturally, when we spot an infraction, we don’t always conclude that the other person is bad and wrong and wants to make us suffer. For instance, a dear and trustworthy friend is supposed to pick you up at the dentist’s office and drive you home. She’s 30 minutes late. “What’s going on?” you wonder. Your first thoughts turn to a traffic jam or an accident. You’re worried.

However, if the person has caused you problems in the past, you may jump to a different conclusion. Say she’s often been unreliable. Maybe she constantly criticizes you. Worse still, you’re standing in the pouring rain while your head is pounding with a migraine.

Under adverse conditions people more readily make the fundamental attribution error. During accountability discussions, the fundamental attribution error is as predictable as gravity: “She’s late because she’s self-centered. She doesn’t care about me. Just wait until she gets here!” The more tainted the history is and the more severe the consequences are, the more likely we are to assume the worst, become angry, and shoot from the hip.

Choosing Silence or Violence

Silence

Not everyone who tells an ugly story angrily leaps into a conversation ready to exact a pound of flesh, at least not immediately. For many people it takes a while to become upset, smug, or self-righteous. In fact, when we began studying accountability 25 years ago, we learned that the vast majority of the subjects we observed were inclined to walk away from violated promises, broken commitments, or bad behavior.

When we asked the subjects why they backed off, they explained that it was usually better not to deal with issues the first time they occurred. After all, many of those problems were anomalies. They weren’t likely to be repeated, so why make a big deal and come off as a micromanager? There may be some truth to this, but as we suggested earlier, avoidance may be the real reason for the inaction; most of the research subjects in our study avoided taking action for fear of getting into a heated argument, which they assumed could lead to even more problems. Who could blame them for going to silence?

However, it’s not as if choosing silence were a product of scientific inquiry. We back away from people because we conclude that they’re selfish or rotten. Then we act on that conclusion as if it were the truth: “Who’s going to approach these folks? They’re selfish and rotten!” Therefore, we opt to stay silent.

No matter what the reason is, walking away from violated promises and broken commitments can be risky. When you see a violation but move to silence rather than deal with it, three bad things happen:

• First, you give tacit approval to the action. If you see an infraction and say nothing, the other person can easily conclude that you’ve given permission. You may feel that you’ve given permission, and then, realizing that you’ve given the action the green light, you find that it’s harder to say something later.

• Second, others may think that you’re playing favorites: “Hey, you never let me get away with that kind of stuff!”

• Third, each time the other person repeats the offense, in part because of your failure to deal with it, you see the new offense as evidence that your story about his or her motives was correct. You continue to tell yourself ugly stories, you fester and fuss, and it’s only a matter of time until you blow.

Violence

Eventually, as problems gnaw at you, there comes a time when you can stand it no longer. You leap from silence to violence. A person interrupts you in midsentence for the hundredth time, and you finally blow a gasket. Your assistant misses an important deadline for the hundredth time, and you come unglued. Of course, you may not become physically violent, but you do employ debating tactics, give people your famous stare, raise your voice, make threats, offer up ultimatums, insult the other person, use ugly labels, and otherwise rain violence on the conversation.

Surprised by your sudden and unexpected eruption, the other person thinks that you’ve lost all touch with reality. “Where did that come from?” he or she wonders. But alas, the other person knows the answer. You did it, he or she concludes, because you’re stupid and evil. You’ve now helped the other person commit the fundamental attribution error about you, which feeds that person’s silence or violence, and the cycle continues.

Rare is the sudden and unexpected emotional explosion that wasn’t preceded by a lengthy period of tortured silence.

Violence Is Costly

When you move from silence to violence, you no longer keep accountability discussions professional, under control, and on track to achieve a satisfactory ending. In fact, when you move to violence, the consequences can be nothing short of horrendous.

You Become Hypocritical, Abusive, and Clinically Stupid

Most of us have made a variety of vows through the years. Our parents punish us for something we believe is trivial, and we vow never to do the same thing to our children. We watch our boss lose her temper and swear that we’ll never act so ghastly. We see a friend walk away from a moral stance and promise we’ll never be that weak.

Unfortunately, those vows rarely keep us out of trouble. When we observe others, tell ourselves ugly stories, and then fall under the influence of adrenaline, we become the very people we swore we’d never be. Of course, nobody transmutes into a hypocritical cretin on purpose. Instead, stupidity creeps up on us. We tell ourselves an ugly story, become mentally incapacitated while under the effects of adrenaline, convince ourselves that we have the moral high ground, and move to either silence or violence while smugly proclaiming, “He deserved whatever I gave him.”

Sometimes when we’re really dumbed down by the effects of adrenaline, we make a truly absurd argument: “Sure I was tough on them, but you need to be tough with these people. They respond to abuse, not reason.”

Actually, we don’t have to be all that mentally incapacitated to make this argument. It’s foisted on us almost every day, and with a straight face, no less. The fact that others need to be treated poorly to get them off their lazy back parts is sacred writ.

For instance, we praise coaches for their incredible records, and if they happen to be abusive, we actually attribute their success to their authoritarian and punitive style. Consider the Hollywood version of the 1980 U.S. national ice hockey team’s miraculous gold medal victory. According to the movie, the coach abuses, insults, and manipulates the players because they need to be motivated and that is the way to do it. Apparently, the prospect of winning the Olympics isn’t all that inspiring. He gets the players to hate him so that he can become the common enemy. That way they’ll pull together as a team.

When the team wins the final match, audience members don’t merely cheer the victory; they voice their approval of the coach’s abusive methods. “What a guy!” people exclaim as they leave the theater. “What a leader!” Maybe we honor the abusive style of so many coaches and other public figures because their public actions lend credibility to our own private outbursts. Their tantrums, taunts, and tricks support our own claim that it was okay to emotionally attack our teenage son because “it was good for him.”

Let’s put this foolishness to bed. People don’t deserve to be abused, physically or emotionally. It’s not good for them. Yes, people should be held accountable. No one is questioning the need to act as responsible adults and expect others to do the same. But it is never good to abuse, insult, or threaten others. Friedrich Nietzsche once argued that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. This little homily is often quoted. It’s also often wrong. When it comes to emotions, abuse isn’t a blessing; it’s a curse.

When people gain success through abuse, they succeed in spite of their method, not because of it. For over five decades scholars have shown that abusive leadership styles don’t succeed over the long haul, and over the short haul they’re simply immoral. The greatest leaders, coaches, and parents we studied (and certainly all the positive deviants) never became abusive. And during those weak moments when they may have briefly stepped over the line, they never argued that others needed or deserved it.

Warning!

If you observe an infraction, tell yourself an ugly story, cut your brain power in half with a dose of adrenaline, and then do something abusive and stupid, don’t say others deserved it or it was good for them. These words may sound logical when you can’t see straight, or they may give you a warm glow when you’re starting to question your aggressive actions, but the simple truth is there is no place for abuse of any kind at home, at work, or even on the playing field.

You Turn the Spotlight on Yourself

Imagine that you’re on a flight across the Pacific. Seated nearby is a child who enjoys running up and down the aisle while screaming in a voice that could curdle milk. This continues for just long enough to turn the cabin passengers into a single seething entity with but one wish: to silence the child and return her to her seat. Suddenly, an older fellow next to you grabs the little girl by her frail arm and screams into her baby blues.

Guess what happens next. The passengers who once wanted to see the kid silenced now want to see the mean old man punished. In one swift motion the attention switches from the child to the abusive old guy. People are now sympathizing with the poor little girl. It takes only an instant to transfer goodwill.

The software development leaders learned this lesson the hard way. They might have approached the programmers with the angels on their side, but the instant they became abusive, they gave up the moral high ground. With each outburst, curse, and threat, they armed the original offenders with a good defense.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the original parties are off the hook, but it does mean that the leaders are now on the hook. Acting unprofessionally never earns you points. It takes the spotlight off the original offense and puts it on you at a time when you’re on your worst behavior.

The Stories We Tell Help Us Justify Our Worst Behavior

Stories cause us to see the other person not as a human being but as a thing, and if not a thing, at least a villain. Stories exaggerate other people’s legitimate weaknesses while turning a blind eye to our role. Stories help us see others as cretins and help justify our bad behaviors toward them, subtle or otherwise.

Here’s the deal: You can’t solve a problem with a villain. You can do that only with a human being. Before starting an accountability discussion, use everything in this chapter to help you come to see the other person as a person, perhaps a person doing really rotten things but a person nonetheless. This difference is everything. Accountability experts set a healthy climate by avoiding ugly stories.

How do you challenge your story, especially when it feels so right? What does it take to avoid making the fundamental attribution error, becoming angry, and then establishing a hostile climate?

Since the problem of coming up with ugly stories and suffering the consequences takes place within the confines of your own mind, that’s where the solution lies as well. The positive deviants we study observe an infraction and then tell themselves a more complete and accurate story. Instead of asking, “What’s the matter with that person?” they ask, “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do that?”

By asking this “humanizing question,” individuals who routinely master accountability discussions adopt a situational as well as a dispositional view of people. Instead of arguing that others are misbehaving only because of personal characteristics, influence masters look to the environment and ask, “What other sources of influence are acting on this person? What’s causing this person to do that? Since this person is rational but appears to be acting either irrationally or irresponsibly, what am I missing?”

You can answer these questions only by developing a more complete view of humans and the circumstances that surround them than the traditional “What’s wrong with them?” And if you do amplify your situational view, not only will you gain a deeper understanding of why people do what they do, but you’ll eventually develop a diverse set of tools for managing accountability.

Consider The Six Sources of Influence™

To help expand our view of human behavior, we’ve organized the potential root causes of all behavior (including broken promises) into a model that contains six sources of influence. At the top of our model are two components of behavior selection. In order to take the required action, the person must be willing and able. Each of these components is affected by three sources of influence: self, others, and things.

Personal

Source 1. Personal Motivation

We already know the first source. It’s the one that, considered alone, makes up the fundamental attribution error. People base their actions on their individual motivation or disposition. Does the action motivate? Does the person enjoy the action independent of how others think or feel? Does it bring pleasure or pain? That’s the model we already have in our heads, and it’s partially true. People do have personal motives. Human beings do take pleasure in certain activities, and it could even be true that they enjoy making us suffer. However, this model is also the source of influence that gets us in trouble when it’s the only factor we consider.

Source 2. Personal Ability

We can double this simple model by adding individual ability. We now have two diagnostic questions: “Are others motivated to do what they promised?” and “Are they able?” (Does he or she have the skills or knowledge to do what’s required?) By expanding the model from one to two sources, we acknowledge the fact that people not only must want to do what’s required; they also need the mental and physical capacity to do it. For instance, maybe your company’s customer-service agents aren’t returning calls to hostile clients because they don’t know how to defuse the hostility. Perhaps nurses aren’t using protective gloves consistently because they can’t put them on quickly enough.

With two options to choose from, we also have another story to tell ourselves. Rather than judging others who violate an expectation as unmotivated and therefore selfish and insensitive, we add the possibility that maybe they actually tried to live up to their promises but ran into a barrier.

Becoming Curious

Admitting that a problem might stem from several different sources will change our whole approach. We aren’t certain, we aren’t smug, we aren’t angry, and we slow down. We’re curious instead of boiling mad. We feel the need to gather more data rather than charge in “guns a-blazin’.” We move from judge, jury, and executioner to curious participant.

Social

None of us works or lives in a vacuum. We make a promise, and more often than not we sincerely want to deliver on it. We may even have the talent to do so. But what happens when others enter the scene? Will coworkers, friends, and family members motivate us? Will they enable us? Social forces play such an important role in every aspect of our lives that any reasonable model of human behavior must include them.

Source 3. Social Motivation

From the way adults talk, you’d think peer pressure disappears a few weeks after the senior prom. We constantly warn our children against the insidious forces wielded by their friends. Yet rarely do we consider the fact that those forces aren’t switched off in some secret ritual when we finish high school. Adult peer pressure may be less obvious than its teenage counterpart, but it’s no less forceful.

For instance, what do you think will happen if the supervisor of the software testers walks up to one of them and says, “Hey, Chris, we’re running behind schedule. Could you hurry things along?”

“What do you mean?” Chris asks.

“You know, maybe finesse, or even shorten, the final tests. The software seems to be running smoothly.”

And with that simple request, the tests are dropped.

Is the other person being influenced by peers, the boss, customers, or family, or for that matter, by any other human being? Remember the work of Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram? They created conditions in which social pressure drove people to change their opinions, lie, and even inflict pain on others. Should it surprise us that many of the ridiculous things both children and adults do are a result of simply wanting to be accepted by others? Healthcare professionals violate standards, scientists turn a blind eye to safety, accountants watch their peers break the law, and nobody says anything. Why? Because the presence of others who say nothing causes them to doubt their own beliefs, and their desire to be accepted taints their overall judgment. Social pressure is the mother of all stupidity.

Source 4. Social Ability

In addition to motivating you to do things, other people can enable or disable you. They’re either a help or a hindrance. For you to complete your job, your coworkers have to provide you with help, information, tools, materials, and sometimes even permission. Unless you’re working in a vacuum, if your coworkers don’t do their part, you’re dead in the water.

For example, what about the software engineers? What if their testing package failed? What if the person responsible for keeping the servers online went off to a technical seminar and didn’t keep them up and running as long as needed? Who knows? Maybe that’s why the software is giving final assembly fits. That is the whole point of this discussion. Who knows? We’re going to have to gather data.

You’re a Big Part of the Social Formula

Let’s add one more piece to the social formula: you. You’re a person too. You may be acting in ways that are contributing to the problem that is bothering you. You’ve got the eyeballs problem: you’re on the wrong side of them if you want to notice the role you’re playing. For example, a staff support person misses a deadline because she didn’t like the way you made your initial request. She thought that when you rushed up to her, project in hand, the way you pushed for a commitment was too forceful, demanding, and insensitive to her needs. She didn’t say anything, but she did find a way to put your request at the bottom of her priority list: “Sorry, I just never got around to it.”

We encounter the same problem at home. You’re at your wits’ end because your husband is punishing and cold to your children (his stepchildren). You wonder why. Is he just selfish and impatient? Could it also be that you rarely show sympathy for his frustrations with them? Perhaps you are making him feel isolated and resentful about the challenges he faces, and that helps him feel more justified in behaving rudely to “your” children.

But that’s not all. As a big part of others’ “social influence,” you can also affect their ability to meet your expectations. How about that time your son didn’t complete his science project on time? You forgot to buy the ingredients for the volcano he was building on the way home from work. When that happened, of course, you realized that you were part of the problem. When you don’t enable people, you’re likely to notice your role, and others are certainly likely to say something to you if you let them down.

When your style or demeanor or methods cause resistance, others may purposefully clam up and not deliver, and you won’t even know that you’re the cause of the problem. You’ll just hear a lot of excuses and get no honest feedback, particularly if you’re in a position of authority. In this case, you need to turn your eyeballs inward and look for the whole story by asking yourself, “What, if anything, am I pretending not to notice about my role in the problem?”

You know people out there who do things that cause others to push back, resent them, reject their input, or drag their feet. Here’s a news flash: sometimes you may be that person.

Structural

As you watch people going about their daily activities, you see that a great deal of what they do is affected by nonhuman factors. Much of what we do is a function of the structural world around us. This isn’t always obvious to the untrained eye. In fact, many of us are fairly insensitive to the effects of our own surroundings, let alone the surroundings of others.

For example, you’re trying to lose weight and don’t realize that the cash or credit cards you’re carrying enable you to set aside the lunch you packed and buy a high-calorie restaurant meal. You’re hungry (personal motive), your friends ask you to lunch (social motive), and the credit card you’re carrying (structural motive) puts you over the top. You also don’t see the distance to the fridge as a factor or the fact that you fill it with unhealthy foods as a force. Of course, all are having an impact.

Human beings don’t intuitively turn to the environment, organizational forces, institutional factors, and other things when they look at what’s causing behavior. We often miss the impact that equipment, materials, work layout, or temperature is having on behavior. We’ve also been known to miss the way goals, roles, rules, information, technology, and other things motivate and enable.

Source 5. Structural Motivation

How do things motivate us? That’s simple enough. Money (and what it can get us) motivates people; that we know. Guess what happens when money is aimed at the wrong targets? For instance, managers are rewarded for keeping costs down, and hourly employees are rewarded for working overtime. They’re constantly arguing with each other. Quality specialists earn bonuses for checking material, and production employees earn bonuses for shipping it. They too seem to have trouble getting along. Maybe a team-building exercise will reduce the tension. Perhaps conflict-resolution training will help. Yeah, right.

When they explore underlying causes, experienced leaders quickly turn to the formal reward system and look at the impact that money, promotions, job assignments, benefits, bonuses, and all the other organizational rewards are having on behavior. It is sheer folly to reward A while hoping for B. Savvy leaders and effective parents get this.

Here’s how this concept applies to a community example. One of the greatest challenges in influencing “at-risk” youth in inner-city areas is that the models of successful careers that they see often involve the sale of illegal drugs. It isn’t just the influence of others that lures them into illicit trade; it’s financial. Until they see clear alternative pathways to financial well-being, thousands of young men and women will be lost to this social cancer.

Frustrated couples are no less strongly affected by this powerful source of influence. The foundations of thousands of marriages continue to erode as one or both spouses give their hearts to careers that promise increased status or rich rewards to those who pay the price.

Source 6. Structural Ability

When it comes to ability, things can often provide either a bridge or a barrier. For example, imagine you’re trying to get the people in marketing to meet more regularly with the people in production. They currently avoid each other because they don’t get along. You’ve aligned their goals and rewards, but marketers still call production folks “thugs” and production specialists call marketers “slicks.” You believe that if you can get them in the same room once in a while, many of their problems will go away. But how? What will it take to get them to meet more often and eventually collaborate?

First you write an inspiring memo. Nothing happens. Then you add “interdepartmental collaboration” to the company’s performance-review form. Nada. Next comes a speech, then veiled threats, and finally you create an award program that honors the “Collaborator of the Month.” You tell the various division heads to nominate an employee for the award, and they argue endlessly about who should win.

Now you decide to do some out-of-the-box thinking, only this time it’s out-of-the-cashbox thinking. The heck with rewards; it’s time to turn to other things. Could you do something to the physical aspects of the organization that would allow people to interact more easily and more often?

Yes, you could. In fact, if you want to get the two groups to meet more often, think proximity. When it comes to the frequency of human interaction, proximity (the distance between people) is the single best predictor. Individuals who are located close to one another bump into each other and talk.

When it comes to work, people who share a break room or resource pool tend to bump into each other as well. Move the marketing offices closer to the work floor, throw in a common area, and the two groups may warm to each other. Proximity or the lack thereof has an invisible but powerful effect on behavior.

The following are a few other structural forces that can affect ability.

Gadgets

Gadgets can have a more profound impact on behavior than most people imagine. For example:

• Cooks and waitresses used to fight tooth and nail over what had been ordered and whose orders got filled first until a researcher invented the metal wheel that controls and organizes orders. With the advent of the wheel, waitresses stopped shouting commands at cooks, and cooks stopped getting angry and purposefully fouling up the orders.

• A mother was constantly punishing her young son for not coming home before dark. The boy didn’t know when the end of “before dark” was, would wait until it was actually dark, and got in trouble — until his neighbor gave him a watch and his mother gave him a specific time to be home.

• A father turned the hot water off at the source so that his wife and daughters wouldn’t take so long in the shower. They resented his actions. One day Mom put an egg timer in the shower, and the problem went away.

• One family determined that its microwave had put distance between the parents and their children. Was this a lame excuse? Not when one realizes that their first microwave eliminated the one time the whole family came together: the evening meal. With their fancy new zapper, the children were able to make what they wanted when they wanted. Without realizing it, the family members lost a key force and began to pull in separate directions. The point is not that gadgets are bad but that they can have a more significant impact on human behavior than people might imagine.

Data

A financial services company couldn’t get people to help cut costs until it published both cost data and financial records. With the same goal in mind, factories now prominently display the cost of each part. In a large intercity hospital, the healthcare professionals regularly chose to use rubber gloves ($30 a pair) instead of less comfortable latex gloves ($3 a pair), even for short procedures. After endless memos encouraging people to save money, administrators posted the cost of the gloves in prominent locations, and glove expenses dropped overnight.

One wise parent tired of the endless requests of his teenage daughter for everything from designer tennis shoes to a luxury sports car. One evening it struck him that an ounce of information might be worth a pound of accountability discussions. He openly shared everything about the family finances. Eventually his daughter — and we’re not making this up — asked if she should get a night job to help out.

Completing the Story

When you encounter people who aren’t living up to a commitment, it’s easy to wonder what were they thinking. Left to our natural proclivities, we tell a simple yet ugly story that casts others as selfish or thoughtless. We mature a little bit every time we expand the story to include a person’s ability. Maybe others don’t know how to do what they’ve promised to do. We also cut off our anger at its source. Not knowing for certain what’s happening, we have to replace anger with curiosity. This puts us in a far better position to discuss an infraction as a scientist, not a vigilante.

Throw in the influence of others, and the story starts to reflect the complexity of what’s really going on. The fact that social forces are likely to be a huge part of any infraction doesn’t escape a savvy problem solver. Only a fool purposely pits people against their desire to belong, feel respected, and be included with their friends and colleagues. Understanding the influence of others is a prerequisite to effective accountability.

Finally, if we really want to step into the ranks of those who master accountability, we need to consider the structural factors, or things, surrounding a violated promise. This isn’t intuitive. In fact, rare is the parent or leader who looks at either the reward structure or other environmental factors when trying to diagnose the root cause of a behavior. Learn how to do this, and you’ll be in a class of your own.

Use the Six Sources of Influence

Combined, these six distinct and powerful sources make up the Six-Source Model, a diagnostic and influence tool that was illustrated earlier in this chapter.

How About Our Software-Testing Friends?

What actually caused the software problem during final assembly? Several of the forces contained in our model played a role:

• A supervisor had been sent to the scene, where she learned that the programmers were unfamiliar with the latest version of the testing software (personal ability).

• The supervisor had offered to obtain a tutorial, but the material was located across town at headquarters (structural ability). The team leader said he’d get it, but didn’t (social ability).

• The team leader never received the material because he was stopped in the hallway, where he was told to prepare for a “walk-by” from a big boss from headquarters (social motive).

Did the code writers skip the testing because they didn’t like doing it? That could have been the case, but it wasn’t. Consequently, if the managers had punished the operators for not being motivated, it wouldn’t have remedied any of the underlying causes and most certainly would have caused resentment.

One Final Comment

The best leaders and parents aren’t lax with accountability, nor do they let themselves stew in a stupor of self-loathing. If the other person does turn out to be at fault, those who are masters of accountability step up to and handle the failed promise. In fact, we’ll explore how to do exactly that in later chapters.

For now we’re merely trying to work on our first thought, our first look into a possible infraction, and the tone that follows. We’re learning to fight our natural tendency to assume the worst of others and replace it with genuine curiosity to ensure that our first words and deeds create a healthy climate for ourselves and others. When we tell the rest of the story, we do exactly that.

Master My Stories

Now we’ve selected a violated expectation and thought about the surrounding circumstances in a way that puts us in the best state of mind. In short, we’ve learned how to master our stories by seeking out all the possible sources of influences that affect the problem.

• Master my stories. The second step in the model also takes place before you actually speak. As you approach an accountability discussion, take care you don’t establish a horrible climate by charging in half-informed and half-cocked. To avoid this costly mistake, work on your own thoughts, feelings, and stories before you utter a word.

• Tell the rest of the story. Ask why a reasonable, rational, and decent person would do what you’ve just seen as well as if you yourself are playing a role in the problem.

• Look at all six sources of influence. Examine personal, social, and structural sources — all either motivate or enable others to keep their commitment.

• Expand motive to include the influence of others. Do others praise and support the desired behavior, or do they provide pressure against it? Is the reward system aligned? If people do what’s required, will they receive a reward or punishment?

• Finally, add ability. Can others do what’s required? Does the requisite task play to their strength or weakness? Are people around them a help or a hindrance? Do the things around them provide a bridge or a barrier?

What’s Next?

Now that we’re fully prepared, it’s time to open our mouths and talk about the violated promise. How do we first talk about the infraction we’ve observed? What should be the first words out of our mouths? Let’s take a look.