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

Appendix A. Where Do You Stand?

To measure your skill level and see how this book can best serve your needs, candidly review the following statements. Check “yes” if they apply to you. Check “no” if they do not.

A self-scoring version of the following assessment is available at http://www.vitalsmarts.com/bookresources. There you’ll also find tools to assess how well your family, team, and organization handle accountability discussions.

Add up the number of boxes you checked “yes.” Each represents an area where you could use some assistance. Here’s what your total score means:

26–35: Don’t put this book down!

16–25: You could use some help, but at least you’re honest.

6–15: You’re capable and likely are succeeding.

1–5: You could teach us all a thing or two.

This survey is divided into the seven chapters that cover crucial accountability skills (five questions each). Look at your results chapter by chapter. You may want to focus your attention on the chapters where you checked the most “yes” boxes. These chapters offer the solutions to your most common challenges.

Appendix B. Six-Source Diagnostic Questions

The six-source model helps us expand our view of why people do what they do. By looking at all six sources, we can expand our traditional thoughts about why people do the things they do (“They enjoy causing problems!”) to include each person’s ability along with the social and environmental factors behind all behavior.

To help dive deeper into each of the six sources, we are providing the following list of exploratory questions. These diagnostic questions in turn help each of us answer the questions “Why the gap?” “Why did the other person let me down?”

Others take pleasure from the current behavior or find the desired behavior to be painful.

• Do they enjoy doing what has been asked? Does performing the task in and of itself bring them satisfaction?

• Do they take pride in their work and their work habits?

• Is the required task boring, noxious, repetitive, physically or mentally exhausting, or painful?

• Are they doing the wrong thing because they enjoy it more?

They don’t have the knowledge or ability to perform the required task. They feel more capable performing a different task.

• Do they have accurate and complete information?

• Are they able to perform the mental tasks?

• Are they able to perform the physical tasks?

• Are they doing the wrong thing because they don’t feel more capable in this than in doing the right thing?

Other people (friends, family, coworkers, and bosses) punish the right behavior while praising the wrong behavior.

• Does doing the right thing draw no attention or even disdain from the people they care about?

• Are their coworkers pressuring, embarrassing, or provoking them into the wrong behavior?

• Is their boss giving other tasks a higher priority or not supporting the right behavior?

• Does completing the job put them at odds with their family and friends?

• Am I doing something that discourages them?

• Am I failing to do something that would encourage them?

Other people make it hard or impossible to do the right behavior while making it easy to do the wrong behavior.

• Are others withholding information?

• Do others provide them with the resources they need?

• Are others providing help when needed?

• Have others provided adequate permission or authority?

• Am I doing something that inhibits them from succeeding?

• What help or resources should I be giving that would make it easier for them?

The formal reward structure encourages the wrong behavior while discouraging the right behavior.

• Will doing the right thing cost them money?

• Does doing the right thing put their career or job at risk?

• Does doing the right thing put better jobs, assignments, or working conditions at risk?

• Does doing the wrong thing bring them more money, enhance their career, or give them better assignments or working conditions?

The environment, structure, policies, procedures, rules, and all other “things” make it hard or impossible to do the right behavior while making it easy to do the wrong behavior.

• Is the required task part of their current job description or role?

• Are there policies, rules, or procedures that make the desired behavior difficult or impossible?

• Are their bureaucratic steps or barriers that hinder them?

• Do they have the equipment or tools they need?

• Is the physical environment a help or a hindrance?

• Do they have access to the information they need — are they getting adequate performance feedback?

• Are their goals and priorities clear?

Appendix C. When Things Go Right

Crucial Accountability was written to address the question of how we confront and address a gap in our expectations. Let’s take a look at the other potential outcome we haven’t explored yet: The other person has performed up to expectations or even better. This is your chance to express sincere praise.

Praise plays an important role in problem solving. Those who are best at holding accountability discussions make good use of praise between conversations. When people see them coming, they already feel respected and valued. They assume that the problem solver has their best interests in mind because he or she consistently recognizes when things are going well and talks about those accomplishments openly and frequently. When given sincerely and often, praise provides a reserve of respect one can draw from when it’s time to talk about a failed promise.

Praise is also a subject that receives attention about twice a year when human resources folks conduct satisfaction surveys. According to the authors’ research, the number one employee complaint year in and year out always comes down to the same issue: not being recognized for a job well done. It seems that most of us are missing opportunities to create a climate of mutual respect. To help reverse this trend, let’s look at some thoughts about praise that are a bit counterintuitive.

When it comes to giving out praise, we’re all suspicious. When someone suggests that perhaps we should be more generous in giving praise to others — say, employees, loved ones, and children — we worry about going overboard. We don’t want to cheapen our praise by doling it out so liberally that it no longer means anything. So we hold our praise for special occasions such as Olympic medal ceremonies, retirement parties, and funerals. After all, there can be too much of a good thing.

Perhaps the biggest reason we don’t mete out praise very often is that we miss the chances to do so. We don’t see the positive. For example, when your kids aren’t fighting, you don’t notice it. When your direct reports are plugging along day in and day out and aren’t causing problems, who could notice that? In fact, Sherlock Holmes once solved a crime because he alone observed that a dog wasn’t barking. You have to be a fictional genius to notice the absence of noise. The same thing is true with problems. And if you don’t notice the lack of problems (“things gone right”), you certainly won’t praise people.

The fact that the praise statistics never get better no matter how much we study them, talk about them, and lament their embarrassing consistency is a function of the fact that our society suffers from obscured vision — we can only see the bad. In the leadership literature this is called management by exception: pay attention to and work on things gone wrong. Within a family it’s called survival: put out the fire before it consumes the house. Every year people complain that they aren’t recognized for their good performance because every year their bosses are so blinded by problems that they don’t notice things that have gone right.

Of course, we do notice record-breaking accomplishments. Hit new numbers or finish a huge task, and the world takes notice. But honoring the humongous or the exceptional is expected. It doesn’t feel like genuine praise; it feels like getting your due. Celebrating mammoth accomplishments will never satisfy an individual’s desire for more praise.

To put this problem in perspective, Mark Twain once suggested that he could live for two months on a good compliment, and he was an American hero during his lifetime. How much more do everyday heroes such as file clerks, code writers, and prison guards long for a simple word of thanks? And what will it take to be able to first see and then celebrate achievements other than record-breaking performances?

The psychological explanation for our inability to see things gone right is incorporated in figure-ground theory. The human perceptual system simplifies any visual array into a figure that we look at and a ground that is everything else that makes up the background. In corporate and family life, problems are the figure and everything else is the ground.

M. C. Escher made a better living than most of his contemporaries by painting works that confused figure and ground. First you see the black birds, and then you squint your eyes just so and see the white birds. We would all make life better if we ensured that certain aspects of human behavior were more noticeable and thus noticed, turning routine success into something that first catches our eye and then gets attention.

As in squinting at an Escher painting, we must find ways to reverse what has historically been background and turn it into the foreground, the focus of our attention and the object of our good words. What would it be like if our employees, loved ones, and children felt that we always noticed their hard efforts and good works? What would it be like if our own companies and families were known as places where good deeds were rewarded instead of punished?

To achieve this monumental feat, to turn around more than a half century of low praise scores, requires but three things: commitment, a change in standards, and simple cues.

An illustration might help. Let’s take our lead from Donald Petersen, former chairman of Ford Motor Company. Every day he sat down at a massive desk — in an office large enough to shoot hoops in — and handwrote short, sincere, positive messages to people he worked with. He argued, “The most important ten minutes of your day are those you spend doing something to boost the people you work with.”

Here was the chairman of one of the largest companies in the world, a man who easily could have spent all his time doing long-term planning and high-level thinking, and he believed that his most important job was to offer sincere appreciation to those around him. That’s the change in belief we’re suggesting. Until we buy into the notion that expressing honest appreciation as a leader, friend, and parent is one of our most important jobs, we’re not likely to do much to overcome the mental mechanisms and years of habit that keep us focused on problems.

The second feature of what Mr. Petersen did is also worth noting. He sent simple handwritten notes. If you talk to anyone who received one, you’re likely to learn that the notes often commented on modest accomplishments. He didn’t thank people only for home runs; he thanked them for cheering from the bench or quietly offering support. Our current standards for recognition contain two enormous barriers. First, the feat must be monumental. Second, the reward must match; it should be expensive and time-consuming. Break the habit. Look for and then praise small things. Most of us are already celebrating the big things.

Husbands often have a hard time getting this point. When all a wife really wants is a kind word, a gentle touch, or a sincere smile, the husband misses these opportunities for months on end and then one day ponies up with a new car. Or worse, he gives her something he thinks is terrific but she doesn’t. The prize for this version of insensitivity goes to a fellow who gave his wife a manhole cover for Valentine’s Day because it had her initials pressed into it (CON for “City of Newark”). “Wow, my very own manhole cover/jewelry! Does it come with a chain?”

The third element is a bit harder to notice. The chairman of Ford sat down every day and wrote notes. By doing it every day, he didn’t have to be reminded. Even if we sincerely want to reward accomplishments and are willing to look for the little things, we often forget. Problems are the field, and solutions are the ground. To reverse this habit, schedule time to do nothing but focus on things gone right. Set aside a time every day to walk around and look for elements that you can praise. Then do it. Sit down at your computer, bring up the e-mail address of a friend or colleague, and write a thoughtful note. Keep it short and sincere. With time and practice, you’ll start noticing things gone right more naturally.

If we’re paying attention to small accomplishments and then offering up thanks or perhaps a note or maybe a tiny memento, aren’t we being too low-key and cheap? Consider the following story: Every year one of the authors receives a birthday card with a handwritten message from an old friend. He hasn’t seen this friend in over a decade, and yet every year a card shows up in his mailbox. It’s nice. It’s the only card other than ones from family members he ever receives, and it always contains a thoughtful personalized note. Sometimes the author picks up the phone and calls his old friend. Sometimes he fires off a thank-you e-mail. But mostly he just reads the card, thinks of the pleasant friendship, and smiles the smile of a person being appreciated. Small, heartfelt moments of appreciation never wear thin.

Surely the person who sends the card has a reminder on his calendar. That’s the cue. Surely he cares about being pleasant and thoughtful. That’s the commitment. And surely he realizes that just having a birthday is cause enough for a thoughtful word. That’s the change in standards.

This notion also runs counter to what typically happens in organizations. The whole idea behind every award ceremony ever devised is to allow people to bask in the admiration of their friends and peers. That is a good thing. Research reveals, however, that when this is handled poorly, many people feel resentment toward the people who are being honored. “Why wasn’t I picked?” is a common question. When you can, celebrate team successes as a team and private successes in private.

This runs counter to what typically happens. Teams and individuals alike are often rewarded for breaking records. The danger is that in doing this people also break all kinds of rules, regulations, and policies just to hit the higher numbers. Sometimes they merely cook the books. This is not to suggest that numbers don’t matter but to highlight the importance of rewarding individuals who stick to effective processes.

For example, a group of waitresses at a Matsushita plant in Tokyo received the Presidential Gold Medal for saving money on the tea they served in the company cafeteria[12]. The waitresses noted who typically sat where and how much tea they consumed and then poured the appropriate amount at each table. They didn’t save the most money — not by a long shot — but earned the award because they followed the process better than others did.

We’ve nibbled at this issue; now let’s take a big bite out of it. Most of the recognition handed out in companies is structured. We hold monthly awards ceremonies; we have annual banquets. When these events become the only venue for honoring our friends and colleagues, people become cynical. Recognition feels obligatory and insincere. Praise feels mechanical and cold. Simple, sincere, and individualized handwritten notes are replaced by fancy etched plaques that are written once, carved by machines, and applied equally to everyone.

Supplement your formal celebrations with 10 times as many informal ones. Write personal notes, stop people in the hall, drop off a cookie or flower, and make “thank you” your mantra. Watch for things gone right and then spontaneously and sincerely offer up your thanks and praise. Tell people what they did and why it’s worth noting and then end with a simple “Thank you.”

Make recognition such an informal, spontaneous, important, and common part of your corporate and family culture that formal celebrations will feel heartfelt rather than mechanical and obligatory. Make praise such a common part of your personal style that when you do enter into an accountability conversation, you’ll have built a safe, trusting, and respectful relationship.

Appendix D. Discussion Questions for Reading Groups

Move from “thinking about it” to “got it” with a regular discussion of Crucial Accountability. Organize a small group of family members, friends, coworkers, or colleagues and hold a weekly discussion. Here’s a short list of questions sure to kick-start any group discussion.

For a downloadable version of the discussion questions found in this book, visit http://www.vitalsmarts.com/bookresources.

1. Behind the serious and long-lasting problems that families, teams, or organizations typically face are accountability discussions that people either aren’t holding or aren’t holding well. Explain.

2. What are the accountability discussions you typically avoid? What performance gaps have you had the courage to step up to but have handled poorly?

3. When deciding if they should hold an accountability discussion, what tricks do people typically employ in order to talk themselves out of speaking up? What tricks do you use most often? What will it take for you to break the silence-to-violence habit?

4. When deciding what to confront, what mistakes do people typically make? How does the term “Groundhog Day” apply to accountability discussions?

5. Someone has let you down. You figure he or she did it on purpose, and so you’re about to give the person a piece of your mind. Why is it that you are now you at risk of making the situation worse?

6. Why are the first few seconds of an accountability discussion so important? What mistakes do people typically make when first describing a performance gap?

7. What motivates people and why? When it comes to motivating others, what mistakes are people in positions of power likely to make?

8. When people aren’t able to deliver on a promise, what mistakes might a new leader or parent make? When others are blocked from performing, why ask them for their ideas on how to solve the problem? Why should you “make it easy” for others?

9. You’re talking about a problem, and a new one comes up — what should you do? If you decide to deal with the new problem, when are you merely being distracted? When are you being sensible and flexible?

10. What principle from this book did you find most important? Which one was the most surprising?

11. What skill did you find to be the most difficult to put into practice? Why was that? What will it take to get better at that skill?

12. How can your discussion group help each member become better at holding accountability discussions?

13. How can you help one another prepare or practice for a particularly difficult conversation?

14. What methods can you use to remind yourselves to be on your best behavior — particularly when you’re becoming upset and are about to move into “lecture mode”?