How to hold someone accountable

- No matter how carefully you perform the conversation where you made a request, and how much you checked with a second yes that the person is really promising to do something, odds are, sooner or later, someone will not deliver to you. Someone will break their commitment. And they will do it in an unconscious way. What I mean by that is, whenever a commitment is not delivered, there are two breakdowns. There are two dimensions of the breakdown and we need to understand both. The first one is the effectiveness. Obviously I was expecting you to come to my office from three to six, we agreed we would do some work together, we need to do this work to deliver a report that other people are waiting for, and then you don't show up. We can't do that report, we can't work together, so that's an obvious coordination breakdown where we are going to fail to achieve the result. But there's a second dimension of breakdown that I personally find much more detrimental because it's the breakdown in the relationship. It has to do with trust. Now, I don't know if I can't trust you. It's not just that this time you didn't deliver your commitment, can I trust your word? When you say you are going to do something, will you actually do it? That creates such instability in the relationship that will be very difficult to do other things together. So I prefer to start with a fundamental dimension, which is the trust in the relationship. Holding people accountable for not delivering is important. But more important, is to hold them accountable for their integrity, for their word. Because they said they are going to do something and then they didn't do it, and they didn't let me know they were not going to do it and then the deadline came and passed, and they never showed up. Now that, for me, is terrible. I will use a strong word, but it's like fraud. If I sign a contract with you saying I will deliver this car that you paid for tomorrow and the car doesn't exist, there is no car, that's a crime, I just defrauded you. I took your money and I promised to give you something that is impossible for me to give you because it's not there. I'm selling a used car that doesn't exist. When someone says I'm going to show up, I'm going to go to you office at 3 p.m. tomorrow, and then they don't show up and they haven't called, not only haven't called before, they don't call at three and I call them at four, I'm angry. I am angry, I feel deceived. I feel lied to. And I'm not angry just because the person didn't show up at three. Clearly, I'm disappointed and I'm worried about how are we going to get this done, but I have a deeper concern which is, what do I get when I get a promise from you? If I call you to hold you accountable, I will follow a very disciplined procedure so my anger doesn't get the best of me. I don't want to call you to yell at you. That feels good, but what tastes is not always good. And what is good, not always taste good. The same way with the feelings. What feels good, it's not always good. So yelling at you will feel good but that's not going to do anything for our relationship or for our effectiveness together. So I'm going to curb my impulse to just be angry and yell at you, and I'll tie myself to the mast like Odysseus. The Siren song is like, yell at him, he let you down, he's evil and bad, wrong. And I say, no, no, I need to check. So the first step, if I'm going to hold you accountable, is to say, my understanding was we agreed that you would come to my office at three. Did I get that right? That's why it's so important to have a firm commitment. If I don't have a firm commitment, I can't hold you accountable. "Well, no, not really, I didn't understand that. "I thought that we were going to try to meet "but something came up." And that's a problem because I don't have a clear contract. To prevent that, I don't do this always, but if I have repeated misunderstandings with a person, at the end of the meeting, I will send them an email with their second yes. I will just write it down and say, hey, as a minute of the meeting, or as keeping a record of the meeting, we discussed this, and we agreed to this, and you promised that you would come to my office tomorrow at three. So if the person then says, "No, I never said that," well, I sent you the email yesterday, you didn't correct it, and so on. It's escalating levels of formality in the agreement so that, if I call you and I say my memory is we agreed to this, is that so? You would have to say yes, I said I would be there at three. That's point number one. Point number two is, well, you're not here. In this case it's obvious, but sometimes the check is in the mail, so if you said I'm going to send you a check, and I said well, the check is not here, it could be that the check is in the mail. "I put it in the mail two days ago, I'm sorry, "I don't know what happened, we need to talk about that." Before I launch into my self-righteous tirade, I want to make sure that you actually did break your commitment because the check may be in my inbox, so to speak. So I need to be careful and I'll check with you. In the case that you're not in my office, obviously you're not in my office, say it's 4 p.m. and you're not here, what happened? Just like that, not angry, what happened? 100% of the time, your counterpart, when you ask the question what happened, will explain to you what happened that they couldn't deliver on the promise. So they'll say, "Sorry, a customer called, I had to return the call." or, "We were in a team meeting and the meeting went over," or "I realized that I had to finish some things before going," and so on. Sometimes, it could be a lame excuse, but most of the time, people give you a reasonable explanation for something that came up, unless they are completely unconscious. They'll say something that, on the face, sounds reasonable. I don't engage with that, and I suggest you don't either. The temptation is to say, "That's not a good reason," or, "You should have come." That's at the level of effectiveness, and as I said before, I suggest you start with the foundation of trust. I'll switch the question, and say no, I'm not asking you what happened that you didn't do what you promised to do, I'm asking what happened that you didn't call me to let me know. Always, when I do that pivot and I shift the conversation from why didn't you do it to why didn't you call me to tell me you were not going to do it, I can see the look of terror in people's eyes because they know they're trapped. There's no explanation you can give for the five seconds that it takes to send a message or to call or to send an email and say, "Sorry, I can't make it." Unless you're unconscious. But now, with cell phones, even if you're in the car, no matter where you are, you can just send a text and say sorry, something happened, I'll get back to you, give me an hour, something came up. The only excuse or explanation is, "I screwed up. "I should have done it." I can't recall a person that said to me, "I don't need to call you. "If I make a promise to you and I don't deliver, why would I call you, why should I let you know?" That's the exact opposite of a promise. If someone says that, they are declaring they have no integrity. And if they say that, I say well, so when you give me a promise, I don't have the right to expect even a phone call when you don't deliver? What do it get if I get your promise? "Well, I tried." There's a difference between trying and promising. You didn't agree to try, you agreed to do it. And I understand that things happen and maybe you couldn't do it, but do I have the right to expect a phone call or a message saying you had a problem and you need to renegotiate the commitment? That sounds reasonable to me. I don't know, nobody can answer that, except to say, "I have no integrity "and you shouldn't trust me." Sometimes I will tell people, if they push, are you telling me you have no integrity and I shouldn't trust you? And they'll say something like, "Don't insult me." I'm not insulting you, you're insulting yourself. I'm holding up a mirror and telling you that you're telling me that I shouldn't trust you because you're not trustworthy. When you promise something, if you can't do it, you're not going to take care of me. You won't honor your promise, even at the level of trust in the relationship, let alone at the level of effectiveness and delivery. At that point, most people drop it and say, "You're right, I'm sorry, that was a bad thing to do. "It will not happen again." The first time, I'm very gracious. I suggest that you accept that and say we all need to learn that, I thought we had agreed to have the conversation if something happened but now you understand what it meant. Remember, after you said yes, I will do it, I told you if you can't do it, please call me. This is exactly what I meant. I will allow this, the first breakdown, as well, we're establishing the norms for a future relationship. It's an investment in the relationship, I can accept that, so I'm not going to be very hard the first time. If this repeats, there's no excuse for the second time. Fool me once, shame on me, sorry, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Break the commitment the first time, I let it pass. Break it the second time, now we need to have a very serious conversation about how are we going to work together because I am not willing to work like this, and I push it all the way to the end. Unless I can rely on someone to deliver on their promises or at least take care of me if they can't, I don't know what I'm getting. So I suggest you don't accept any counterpart breaking contracts without even letting you know and taking care of you.