Re-establishing trust to repair the future

- So the foundation of accountability is repairing the relationship, creating trust. When you hold someone accountable, the first thing you want to do is to reestablish the trust that has been broken by the failure to deliver on the commitment. That doesn't take care of effectiveness. It builds the foundation, but you still have the problem what are you going to do now? And the ultimate goal then, of holding someone accountable is to repair what has been broken to prepare the future. What are we going to do now in order to satisfy the promise that we have made together to other people? The reason why you're having the conversation is that you either have an objective yourself, or you've made a promise to other people to deliver on something. And the fact that there has been a breakdown puts in jeopardy the delivery. Now you need to negotiate what are we going to do now? How do we clean up the mess so to speak? And it's very important as I said before, that you don't fall prey to the instinct to blame the other person, to yell at the other person, because that is very satisfying but it doesn't solve the problem. As opposed to just tell them, well, you should have done it. Should have, okay, maybe that feels good because the self-righteousness feels empowering, but saying that doesn't solve the problem. Instead of staying with this truth, I would move forward to the future, say, so what do we do now? Here are the consequences of this breakdown for me. You didn't come to my office, now, we have to deliver this in two days, how are we going to do it? What do you suggest we do? What do you propose to solve this problem? And I would engage you in a conversation about what do we do now? The problem of that conversation is similar to a problem of the original conversation, it cannot stay simply in discussing what we're going to do now. Now you know, you have to finish that conversation with a commitment. So the purpose of holding people accountable is to get a recommitment to repair the commitment to have a new promise, to do something that will solve the problem that was created by the failure to deliver on the first commitment. That's the ultimate objective and most of the time, when there's an accountability conversation, people are either too angry to get there or once they've solved the problem of their relationship and trust, okay, now we're friends. Oo, you know I don't want to be hard to with the other person, so I'll just keep the conversation loose and relaxed. I say okay, so now look, let's try to meet tonight. And that's the same mistake. Not let's try to meet tonight. We will meet tonight from 6:00 to 9:00. Do I have your promise? So you need to finish the accountability conversation with a new commitment that reestablishes not only trust, but also the effectiveness that was broken.