“In life we can have results or reasons. If you are not getting the results you want, your reasons are the lies that you keep telling yourself.” – Harald Anderson
The most powerful stance we can take both in business and in life is one of 100% accountability. I say 100% because it offers no wiggle room for blaming others or circumstances. It puts us firmly in the driver’s seat of our lives with nowhere to turn except directly back to the person in charge …us.
The idea of 100% accountability makes many people very uncomfortable, with no one to blame for less-than-stellar outcomes. Many of us feel we are operating in the world with significant accountability (more than the other guy), but often, at the first signs of trouble, we shift the responsibility to others, pointing out their shortcomings and miss-steps.
This pass-the-buck mentality is contagious as no one wants the negative focus put on themself. By passing the hot potato of responsibility up and down the chain we can avoid it landing on us to own, fix, or change. Round and round it goes looking like a dog chasing its tail with no one fully owning their results.
Sound familiar?
“Accountability breeds response-ability” – Stephen R. Covey
For most of my life, I have considered myself to be a VERY accountable person, especially in my business life. Looking back I can see that it was more of a default position, something I took pride in, but at the same time (if I am being honest) gave very little time, attention, and conscious thought. When I ask myself “Am I being accountable?” it feels much the same as if I was asking, “Am I an honest person?” The answer here is almost always a resounding YES!
So if I see being accountable and being honest are one and the same, we can start to see the challenge that living with 100% accountability would present. As an honest person, not taking responsibility and blaming others would make me think bad thoughts about myself. These thoughts create feelings that I personally would crawl over broken glass to avoid.
If avoiding pain is the goal of every human’s ego, our default position would be to live life with a very high degree of accountability, maybe even in the high 90’s, but never get to 100%! This allows us to feel good about ourselves and at the same time allows some finger-pointing and blaming others for results in our lives that fall short.
The old saying “give an inch, they will take a mile” holds true for our EGO and accountability but that inch we give can amount to lost hopes and dreams. When we step outside of 100% accountability we also step outside of growing and learning, and we absolutely give our power to others. Once we start finger-pointing, judging, gossiping and blaming, even for 1% of the time we hand our destiny over to others to fulfill for us.
I know what you are thinking. How can I be 100% accountable in a world of what seems like unaccountable humans? The answer is simple, what other people are doing is none of your business, and everything you want… success, freedom, happiness, joy, dreams, and fulfilling connection are on the other side of accepting 100% accountability for your behaviors. Only you are responsible….full stop. The sooner you embrace this fact the better off you will be.
“Take accountability…Blame is the water in which many dreams and relationships drown.” – Steve Maraboli
This idea of 100% accountability started to come into sharper focus for me back in 2010. I had quit my role as a company director and struck out on my own, starting a marketing and sales agency. I wanted to make my mark and fulfill my dream of owning my own business in this lifetime. As a business owner, what I quickly found out was when things do not go as planned in business, and they rarely do, the hit to my self-esteem feels 10 times more personal than when I worked for someone else. I thought a life as a b2b salesperson had prepared me for the challenge of being an entrepreneur, but it appeared I was sadly mistaken.
With my identity as a successful business person at risk, I found my ability towards self accountability extremely difficult. I often found myself blaming others for my perceived lack of success. I would obsess that I did not have the right people, products, territories, prices, marketing, or timely information. Blinded by blame, it started to feel like the world was conspiring against me, causing me to feel drained, sapping my motivation, and spiraling me into despair. My dream of owning my own successful business seemed to be fading quickly.
It was around this time I started investing time and energy into personal development and began by attending a Tony Robbins seminar called Date with Destiny. This was an incredibly moving event, in more ways than one. Tony is the world’s best at what he does (in my opinion). I left his seminar believing that I could achieve anything I set my mind to .. Tony’s work is well known by many so I will not go into the details of my many takeaways, except for insight I experienced on the topic of accountability.
I knew I needed a big shift to get my business and to some degree my life, back on track. By starting my own business my goal was to take the best parts of all that I had learned over the years and leave out the crappy stuff. I wanted to be the master of my own destiny and show myself and the world what I was capable of. After six long days with Tony, I came to the following statement and standard.
"My company will be the world’s best at what it does."
This core belief shift changed everything and put me back in the driver’s seat. From this ground, I became 100% accountable for my results. I stopped wasting time, energy and effort trying to control others and was now focused only on what I can do. Yes, I still rely on others and require cooperation, but I release control and by doing so I separate my efforts from theirs. Instead of always reacting to others and marching to the beat of their drums, I see my part in the bigger picture so I can be more strategic in where to put my time and energy.
Something amazing and dare I say magical happens when you keep your focus firmly on you. Blame, judgment and criticism all take tremendous amounts of our personal energy and often cause us to take our eyes off our goals and dreams. When all of our energy and attention is focused inward on the things we say are important, we are in a position to own 100% of our behaviors and the results they produce.
The moment I really bought into 100% accountability, everything changed. The quality of my communication, my evaluation of opportunities, where I put my focus, how I ask for support, and the efficiency of my efforts all radically improved. What used to take weeks now takes days, what took days now takes hours… you get the picture. When we are running on clean energy, not distracted by blame and his little brother's judgment, we can get tons done and even have some fun in the process!
I know saying my company will be the world’s best is a bold statement, but so is living life with 100% accountability. This statement worked for me at the time and continues to this day to be a guiding principle. These bold words provide a gravitational pull for my energy and I can always measure efforts and decisions against them. The alternative is to go back to focusing on the negative outside of myself, but we already know where that gets us.
As a by-product of living with 100% accountability, others will react in ways that will align with your goals and dreams. When your energy is clean and you take ownership of your parts, the relationships move to a place of cooperation instead of adversarial. You will see people you once perceived as difficult or even impossible to work with suddenly going out of their way to help you with your success because now, success is seen as mutual. We are in this together. My win is not your loss and vice versa. When we own our parts, other people naturally want to own theirs.
“With a company full of accountable people, extraordinary things, even the entirely unexpected, tend to happen.” – Roger Conners
So let me save you some time and give you a gift. Starting today, take on the belief you are striving to be the best at what you do. Be the best in your company. Be the best in your industry. Strive to be the best in the world (there is room for two of us). Choose words that move you to become 100% accountable for your behaviors and ultimately the results they produce. From this powerful ground, your success can absolutely skyrocket!
Dave Fyfe
Business Success Coach and Strategist
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