Surround employees with accountability
Once you shake hands on an agreed goal, you’ve also sealed the accountability partnership. Surround employees with checkpoints and motivation to keep them tracking forward.
Cox’s board experience paints a picture of what accountability looks like in the strictest form, serving as an extreme example for his employees. Each quarter, they see his public accountability in action through the reports he must file and the analysts he must answer to.
“It’s too bad we don’t all live our lives like that, where every quarter the whole world has its spotlight on you,” he says. “It says, ‘You said you would do this. You didn’t. Why didn’t you do that? What are you going to do about it?’”
Even though Cox Financial is a private company, Cox doesn’t let his employees off the hook so easily. Besides encouraging them to enlist co-workers and family members as their personal accountability partners, he holds them publicly accountable — at least in the office. He posts everyone’s results for comparison, which often triggers self-correction.
“People are motivated by discomfort,” he says. “They have to be uncomfortable enough about where they are to want to make a change.”
Cox feels that same pressure on his boards as he constantly measures himself against other leaders who are going after similar goals for their companies.
“You watch how other very talented, smart people — often with greater resources — fumble and fail. That buoys me to say, ‘Jeez, we are doing some things right,’” he says. “You also watch them succeed and you learn from what they do.”
He wants to create a similar environment where his employees can be motivated by and learn from each other. To build that, you have to do more than simply promote accountability. You must also empower employees to take their progress into their own hands.
All you have to do is remind employees that they set the goal in the first place because they wanted it.
“People have to motivate themselves,” Cox says. “I can only be the reminder of that motivation and the reminder of the accountability for them living up to what they said they were going to do. That’s where the motivation takes place: ‘Are you really committed to what you said you’re going to do? Are you a man or woman of your word?’”
