Leadership Library: Crucial Accountability

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For this month’s Leadership Library read, I’m summarizing Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Mayfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. This book is a classic on the topic of holding others responsible for their actions and an important read for managers who want to empower their employees to step up to the plate. I’m summarizing some key concepts below.

Why accountability is important

• The authors performed an experiment in which they had a research assistant cut in a long line. Not a single person spoke up. They later had another research assistant aggressively chastise the cutter, in an attempt to model confrontation. When a third research assistant cut the line again 5 minutes later, still no one spoke up. It wasn’t until the third condition—a planted research assistant politely confronted the original cutter by saying, “I’m sorry; perhaps you’re unaware. We’ve been standing in line for over 30 minutes”—did the line members say something when, 5 minutes later, someone tried to cut again. In this condition, over 80% of the people in line confronted the new cutter, using the exact language modeled to them.

  • What does this mean? Most people don’t confront bad behavior, choosing to be silent. However, when they are given the right tools (script), people will speak up.

When starting an accountability conversation, choose What and If

• First, what is the violation(s) that you want to address? Say, for example, that your spouse continually leaves a mess in the kitchen. Do you address the mess itself or do you address the fact that you feel disrespected by these actions? These are fundamentally separate (though related) issues, so make sure you’re confronting the right one.

  • If you can’t summarize the violation in a clear sentence before you begin the conversation, it almost certainly won’t become clearer in the course of the conversation.

  • If you aren’t getting the solution you want, you’re constantly discussing the same issues, or you find yourself getting increasingly upset—you’re probably addressing the wrong issue.

  • When describing the problem think CPR - content, pattern, relationship. Start with the content of the infraction, describe the pattern or frequency of the behavior, and then explain the impact the violation is having on the relationship.

  • If there are multiple violations you want to address, prioritize. The other person can only handle so much at once.