EntreLeadership - How to Master the Most Overlooked Leadership Skill with Brendan Wovchko

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Brendan Wovchko—the chief technology officer here at Ramsey Solutions. He highlights the least understood and least modeled leadership skill out there: accountability. He also shares how to create accountability that lasts and set expectations that stick with your team. Later, Brendan walks through what a conversation should sound like with a team member you need to repair accountability with. This is an episode you’ll want to take notes on, so grab a pen and some paper and get ready to learn how to master accountability.   You’ll learn: •      The one skill most leaders are never taught •      Why you’re a lazy leader if you avoid this •      How to create clear expectations with your team •      How to set your team up for success with one conversation   Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to each episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways   Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre   Links mentioned in the episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Download the Mastering Accountability worksheet: https://bit.ly/3d4nUtr   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, we're talking about how to master the least understood and least modeled leadership skill out there, accountability. And if you think you're really good at this, your team might say otherwise. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast from Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to talk about how to grow yourself, your team, and your profits. And I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today, chief technology officer here at Ramsey Solutions, Brendan Wojko. He gave a fantastic talk on accountability to business leaders like you at our recent Entry Leadership Summit event in Orlando.

Now, here at Entree Leadership, we believe that having clear and open communication leads to trust with your team. And teams that trust each other win. That's why we're having Brendan Wojko on today's episode to share how to communicate expectations that stick and accountability that lasts. So let's get to it. Here's our conversation. Brendan, good to see you. Good to be here. So you've become a crowd favorite at Entree Leadership events.

And a few months back, you did a great talk at Entree Leadership Summit all about accountability, how to repair it, how to become a credible leader. Right. And a lot of leaders go, yeah, that sounds like a talk for someone else. I don't think I need that. Yeah, I think a lot of people react that way. And it's a big part of the reason I actually talk about it. Like accountability is a far harder skill than I think most people give it credit for. Like people have a lot of false confidence around accountability. And, you know, I've been talking about it a lot in the last couple years, and I probably won't stop talking about it. But the reality is that the hardest part about being a leader is to give to other people what you were never given, right?

It's really hard as a leader to model behaviors for other people that actually haven't been really modeled for you, right? And, you know, accountability is a skill like any other skill, right? And most of us as leaders learn those skills either through making mistakes or failing, right? And so I guess my goal when I talk about the topic of accountability is I just want to raise the overall awareness that this isn't as easy as you think. We're probably all a little bit worse at this than we think we are, right? Well, that's a good place to start. And you have a good way to kind of self- assess where you are. There's a scale, there's a spectrum, there's quadrants. I mean, there's a lot going on here. There's a whole geron. So how do I figure out where I'm at? Right. Yeah, well,

so before we get to to like the actual quadrants, you know, talking through all that stuff, you know, one of the things that people have a hard time figuring out is, you know, do they actually struggle with this? Is this a problem? Right. And my kind of blanket answer is, if you're successful, you struggle at it. And the reason I say that is because, you know, successful people don't stand in place. Like, we're always in motion. We're always moving. We're trying to grow our businesses. We're trying to lead our team really well. And if you're moving a lot, the likelihood that you are, you know, distracted or overwhelmed or, you know, experiencing and, you know, any sort of emotions that are pretty normal to life as a business leader, the odds are pretty, pretty good that at some point in time, you have probably neglected one of your direct reporting relationships, right? For those of us that are moving fast, we're busy, we're distracted,

we're overwhelmed at times, the odds that you unintentionally neglect a relationship is pretty high. Very high. Yeah, very, very high. And one of the real core problems is that we're, as leaders, we're actually pretty bad at spotting it. Because for us, in the moment, we're just moving fast, but for the folks that we're kind of unintentionally neglecting, they're just kind of sitting there and waiting for our attention, right? And so it's difficult for us to spot the neglect when we're in the middle of it. So this is about engaging with the team, creating some trust, creating credibility so that we can all win. Right. So to kind of come back to what you were mentioning before about, you know, the quadrants and all that stuff I talked through. A love a good

quadrant. Yeah, there's nothing works better on a podcast than verbally talking through a of quadrants, right? So, you know, one of the things I walk through at Summit was just talking about, like, kind of the stereotypes that I see leaders fall into when it comes to accountability, right? And so maybe we just spend a second talking through those, because I think it'd be valuable for everybody to kind of self-assess as I'm walking through it and try to identify, like, which quadrant or, you know, which descriptor kind of best matches them, right? The first one that I like to talk about is the blindsider. So the blindsider is the leader. And, and the who doesn't do a great job at setting expectations,

but is very, very quick to attempt to hold people accountable, right? And so the thing that you'll oftentimes hear a blindsider say is, you know, well, you should have known better than to do that. It's common sense, right? That's something that you would typically hear a blindsider say, right? The next one I want to talk about is called the scattered leader. And the scattered leader is really good at, setting expectations. In fact, they're setting expectations all the time, but they're actually

really poor at the follow-through around actually creating accountability for all those expectations that got set, right? So the thing that you would probably hear a scattered leader say a lot of times is like, remind me what we talked about last time? Oh, yeah. They kind of have a problem tracking between conversations. So big on expectations, kind of poor at accountability. The third type that I encounter a lot is what I call the absentee leader. This is the one that you really don't want to be, but if you're really honest as a leader, probably all of us have had like those absent team moments with members of our team, which is we're not setting expectations and we're not creating accountability, right?

So the thing that you would probably hear. Which means the team has no clue what winning looks like and if they're even heading in that direction. Yeah. You know, a lot of people kind of use the excuse. Well, you know, I hired you for a job, you know, you should just kind of know what to do, right? And, you know, that's definitely not a good setup as a leader, you know, in terms of leading people. You got to— One of the poorest forms of leadership because there's not even an attempt being made on either side.

Right. Yeah, it's just kind of lazy, right? So the thing that you'll hear absentee leaders say a lot of times is like, well, something feels off. A lot of times they'll kind of speak in platitudes, right? Like, well, something's not right. I really need you to lean into it and figure it out, but I can't really give you any advice or any insight or any coaching or anything like that. That's the absentee leader. Yeah, right. The leader that we all want to be is the credible leader. And the credible leader is a leader that's really great at setting clear

expectations and really, really great at follow-through in terms of, you know, creating accountability for those expectations that have been set. So, you know, the classic thing that you might hear a credible leader say is, you know, hey, what's the latest and what can I do to help you? They're, you know, checking back on a really regular basis. Yeah. And when you have rhythms of that, that creates that credibility with the team where I know exactly where Brendan's head is at. I know his expectations. I know what he's going to ask me when we meet, and I'm prepared. Right. Yeah. Consistency is really, really important. Now, getting there is a different story. Right. And that's what we're all here to do today. Right. So let's dive into this. Let's start with a quick definition of accountability,

because that means a lot of things to a lot of people. What's your definition? No, you're right. Yeah. When I jumped in all this, it was pretty clear that like a lot of people, are just operating off a different definition, a different sheet of paper. And so here's my definition for accountability. Accountability is a repeated pattern of verifying that expectations are turning into results. Oh, say that again. Okay. Yeah. Accountability is the repeated pattern of verifying that expectations are turning into results. So like when you think about that and kind of break it down, accountability can't be a one-time thing or really it can't be an infrequent thing. It's got to be a frequent thing. It's not something that you do spontaneously, right? You got to have a plan like

you were mentioned in a little bit a couple minutes ago. It's got to be in a pattern and in a routine. And, you know, great accountability can't actually happen if you haven't also mastered setting expectations really well. So why do people avoid accountability? Is this something that leaders do intentionally, or is it usually just they get busy? You know, it's a chicken and egg thing a little bit. I think, you know, for a lot of us, you know, like I mentioned earlier, you know, it's hard to model behavior that's never been modeled for you. So I think a lot of times in real life, if the behavior of accountability hasn't been modeled for you, it's really easy to get, you know, a little fearful of it or

intimidated. And it's a chicken and egg situation. Like, I don't know what comes first. I don't know whether the busyness comes first, and then you feel like things are off track, and so then you get a little fearful about it, or I don't know if it's, hey, I'm fearful about it, so I'm going to get myself real busy, so I don't have to deal with it. You know, I don't know. It's probably different a little bit for everybody. But, you know, at the end of the day, not creating accountability is really lazy leadership. If we don't frame it in really black and white terms, it gets too easy to get away with. Like not holding people accountable as really lazy leadership. And most people avoid it because a real simple reason, we're bad at setting expectations. If you're not willing to

emotionally take the risk of sitting down with somebody and setting expectations, you're certainly never going to get to the pattern of, you know, holding people accountable well. And a lot of people nowadays, a lot of leaders that I see rely way too much on the common sense factor. You know, You should have known. Yeah, they should have known. You hear that all the time. And, you know, maybe, you know, you always hear, like, the prior generation say, like, oh, common sense existed.

Did it really ever? I'm not sure. I mean, you know. Well, at some point it was taught. You taught your kids. Yeah, that's true. So I don't know really when the breakdown happened, but, you know, at least for the, you know, 15 or so years I've been in leadership.

I've never really been able to rely on common sense. Like, I've got to be really explicit with people and walk people through things. So let's talk about expectations while we're on the Merriam-Webster train. Right. What is your definition, the Brennan-Wochco edition of expectations? Right. So I think an expectation is really simple. It's just a two-way commitment.

And that is not typically how leaders think about expectations. Most of the time when expectations happen in real life, if we're just being real practical, expectations happen when a leader gets frustrated and just starts deciding to bark their emotions at people. That's what a lot of leaders consider expectation setting. And that's not true at all. Like expectation has to be like well, expectation setting has to be well thought. It's got to be organized. It's got to be, you know, clear. And you've got to be collected, you know, emotionally collected when you do it. And they have to be realistic, I imagine. Right. Yeah. Well, they have to be realistic. You know, the other thing, you know, Dave has said this a lot over the years, which is, you know, you can't have an unspoken expectation. Like you actually have to, speak them out in real life in order for people to get them. And probably way more times than you would like to.

Yeah, man. A lot of repetition. That has probably been one of the biggest leadership learning things for me. I don't like to repeat myself, you know. And, you know, we say a lot around here at Ramsey, you know, leaders are repeaters, which has really been something that I've had adjust to over the years. I would like to think, like, oh, if I say it once. The team got it.

The team, they're just going to do it. And, you know, there are situations where people will rebel a little bit, and that's why they're not doing it. But for the most part, it's not rebellion. It's just, yeah, you've got to repeat yourself in order to be heard, you know. And the onus is really on us as leaders. The responsibility is on us as leaders to get buy-in on expectations when we set them to. Yeah. And part of that is knowing, hey, once the team is, they're groaning and their eyes are rolling, that's when you know it's stuck.

Because they're like, oh, Brendan's going on this train again. Here we go again. Exactly what he's going to say. Yeah. And then you know. Right. they're finally getting it. If they can finish your sentences, you're probably doing it right.

Which Dave is really good at that as a, you know, just master orator from the stage. Right. He says, we are blessed to be a blessing, right? And you know exactly what's coming next. Yeah, it almost has to border on sounding like your team has been brainwashed, you know, in order to really know that they've gotten a message. Yes, it's important. Yeah.

So let's talk about how we create these expectations because this is a hard thing for a lot of leaders to do. Some of them don't do it well. Right. And some of them view it as a punishment. So we want to do this the right way where the team feels seen and heard. Right. Yeah. Well, a lot of times people feel like expectations really aren't expectations.

Like if you're walking into a conversation to set expectations with people, a lot of times it feels like correction. Right. And I think that's one of the reasons why people avoid it. I expected you to do this and you didn't. You failed. Right. And now I feel like I'm being punished. See, what you described right there is not an expectations conversation.

That is an uncomfortable conversation. And as leaders, a lot of times we get those two wires crossed in our minds. And so what we are confusing, expectation for conflict. And, you know, you don't want to do that. Because if you get those two wires crossed in your head, you're not actually going to be in the practice of setting expectations. So, you know, like when you set an expectation, when you set a healthy expectation, you know, it really should feel empowering to the. other person. Like setting an expectation with someone is communicating to them that they're capable, that we see their skills, that they've got great judgment when it comes to the particular, you know, expectation that we're setting. It should feel like an empowering conversation with people. It should be a vote of confidence, right? And if it doesn't feel empowering, you're probably not in the middle of setting expectations. If you're feeling like you're having to be corrective, the reality is that you're probably actually having an uncomfortable conversation.

So you got to pull those two things apart in your brain, or else you're never really going to get comfortable setting expectations with people. So guide us through a way to create the right kinds of expectations that will actually stick. Right. Yeah. So like I said before, it's not about like just sitting down with somebody and barking at them. You've got to be collected. You have to, you know, have thought things out before you set an expectation. So there's really four things that I try to do. I try to, you know, I, I, say frame and power, measure, and commit. Right?

So let's do like a sentence on each one of those, right? If you're setting an expectation, you got to really frame up what it actually is. Make it really, really clear for the person to understand, right? You want to do it on like an eighth grade reading level, right? The next thing you really got to do is you got to make sure that you empower the person. They need to understand how they're empowered to go carry out the expectation. And you also need to kind of increase the radius of that a little bit. Not only do you want to empower it.

the person that has the expectation, you want to communicate with, like, the broader team that that person has been empowered to do the expectation or else they might not get the cooperation and the collaboration that they want from the rest of their team, right? Third thing you got to do is you got to make it really clear how you measure the expectation. Like what does winning?

Yeah, what's the scoreboard? What does winning actually look like? And then the last one is commitment. And, man, if I see just one thing get skipped more often by leaders than any one thing. It's, you know, again, an expectation, you know, is a two-way commitment, which means that in order for it to be a two-way commitment, it's more than you just saying it. The other person needs to commit to it.

So you need, after you talk about it, you discuss it, you give it all the context, you have to have that paused moment where you say to the person, does this make sense, can you repeat it back to me? Can you teach it back to me? And are you willing to commit to actually make this happen? Unless you go through all four of those things, maybe even if you're not barking at the person, you're just sort of talking at them, right? And expectation setting can't be talking at people. It's got to be actually a two-way commitment. Yeah, just the other day, our personalities team met with

Teresa, who leads a lot of our desired future, strat-op kind of meetings. Right. And so she was talking about alignment versus buy-in. Yeah. So she's like, first we're going to get aligned, but then I need buy-in. I need you all to commit that we are all aligned and we're going to be doing this. And it felt like I was in the exit row of a flight. And it was the stewardess coming by and saying, are you saying you were ready in case of emergency? And you have to have a verbal yes. And it reminded me of that level of commitment. Yeah. And this actually came up here just the other day with a team.

Yeah. Alignment and commitment are not the same thing. You can be directionally aligned. But all that really means is you're just having similar feelings that were head. it in the right direction. We want to move beyond feelings and we want to get to a high integrity commitment. So you got to treat those as two separate things. Yeah. So we've got frame, empower, measure, commit. By the end of that, we're very clear. The team member knows what's going on. Right. The entire team knows what's going on. Right. And we're all heading in the same direction.

Right. Yeah. So we have an expectation, right? But like, you have to move beyond the expectation. You've got to move to accountability. So let's say you have a set of expectations that you've curated with a team member over a period of time. when it actually comes to accountability, creating accountability that lasts, there are four things you've got to do on that front. And I'll warn everybody, this is pretty unusual. This is something that I've adapted with time in my leadership style. And I've never really seen anybody else do it until the point in which I started introducing it with my team here. And it's really been a huge help. The first thing that you've got to do when you want to hold people accountable is you've got to visualize their list of expectations. literally on a whiteboard, stand up with them and say, I need you to get all of the expectations out of your brain and we're going to visualize them in a single list. And this is something that we're going to use to come back to on a regular basis. If you just rely on your memory and their memory, the likelihood that things like slide off the table and things are forgotten is really, really low. And when that happens, it kind of devalues the accountability culture that you're

trying to create. So it's really important to actually visualize all this stuff. Once you visualize, it. You got to talk about everything on that list, make sure that everybody understands. They understand. You understand. Exactly what each one of those expectations are. You got to do a great job as a leader at like pruning that list. Oftentimes, this leader is the only thing that we ever do is just add things to the list. If you want to be a responsible leader, you've got to take things away too. You got to look at the tradeoffs of what's most valuable and make sure that you're taking stuff away that needs to be taken away. And then the last thing is you need to prioritize. And prioritization is, I think one of the things that busy leaders have the hardest time with, because one of the things that I'll hear busy leaders say is, well, it's all important. It just all needs to get done. That's kind of crap, if I'm being really honest. That kind of behavior makes me really, really mad because how can you expect one of your team members to be able to appropriately prioritize what it is they're supposed to do? If you as their leader don't have an idea, right? And it's a really unfair setup to do with your team members, right? So you've got to help them look at. You've got to help them look at. You're at that list and actually prioritize it. Yeah, so a lot of this is not on the team member. It's the leader looking in the mirror saying, I have not done a great job of setting expectations and holding my team accountable. Right. And so this is a great exercise to do that. On the accountability side, we've got visualized, understand, prune, and prioritize. Right. Now, understand, this is a pet peeve of mine, and you can tell me how you feel about it, but usually leaders will say something like,

does that make sense? Right. And it makes you, it feels condescending. I know the spirit of it is not. Is there a better sentence leaders can use that can clarify if the team member is actually picking up where you're putting down? Yeah. Well, I think probably what makes that a little offensive is if they've not gone into any level of detail and they ask you, does that make sense? You know, the person sitting on the other side is, well, of course it doesn't make any stinking sense. He didn't explain yourself, right? Yeah, usually it's a poor explanation. It's not the team member's fault.

It's the leader didn't do a great job. And so they're kind of almost in a defense mechanism going, does that make sense? I'm not sure everything I just said. I had a leader I worked for years ago at a software company. And his idea of casting vision, he just kept on saying all the time, we're going to the moon because he thought that that would be really inspiring. And that's what came to mind when you were at. Was your leader Elon Musk by chance?

No, he was not. He definitely was not Elon Musk. We'll just leave it at that. But, you know, like you got to give your team some detail, you know, because if you don't, you know, asking him if they understand, obviously isn't going to work. I think it is important to ask someone how well they're connecting with what you've just said. And asking somebody, does that make sense? It can sound a little condescending.

I think probably the better thing to do would be to say, you know, I want to make sure that you're clear on this so you can be successful. Is there anything I've left out? Oh, that's good. You know, so I think a better version of that is, what have I left out? What clarity can I create to help you be successful? You're not questioning my competency at that point. Yeah. So let's walk through a real-life example of what this would sound like if you're trying to create this expectation to stick. I'm the team member, you're the leader. What is this conversation? Right. Okay. So let's come up with something fun. Like what would be an expectation that we might be set in somebody? Am I a developer in this setting?

You can, I mean, since you're in the tech side? I am the tech guy. Well, tell you what, let's say that we'll make it a little bit more accessible for everybody. Let's say that I was talking to somebody that was responsible for quality, product quality, whether that's manufacturing. I'm a quality assurance guy. Right. Quality assurance person, right? So, you know, I might say, okay, George, it's really, really important that when we release products out to the marketplace, that they're of a really, really high quality. So let me, let me frame that up.

for you, right? What I mean is it's not your job to think of every edge case under the sun of how something could go wrong. What I want you to be really focused on is I really want you to be the expert on how our customers use our product. I want you to kind of use the 80-20 rule. I want you to look at how do 80% of our customers use this product? And I want you to focus in on those behaviors and making sure that the product really, really works well, you know, for that 80%. The 20%, man, it is super easy for us to have all of our time and energy consumed by all of those edge cases. That's not what I'm asking you to do. I want you to focus in on the 80% of how our customers use the product. And so just to be clear, I know as a quality assurance person, you're not

the person building the product. You're the person that's testing it and making sure that it's working well for the customer. I need you to hear that you have the authority to stop the line, right? If there is something that we want to put out there that is going to not serve the customer well in that 80 percent, and it's going to cause them to lose trust with us or to not accomplish the goal that we're after, you have the right. You are empowered with the rest of your team to stop the line. You can stop this from going out the door. And so let me be clear. clear about how we're going to measure this, right? Here's what I don't want to do in this situation. I don't want to tell you that you can have zero problems. If I tell you as a quality assurance

person that there can be no flaws, what you're going to do is you're going to design a way of doing your job that's going to jam everybody else up, right? So what I'm comfortable with is I'm comfortable with five percent of the things that go over the finish line having a problem, right? Because we're all human. We're all going to make mistakes. Right. And then at this point in the conversation, I'm going to say like, okay, well, you know, what blanks have I left? You know, what additional details do you need? And we'll have a little bit of a conversation. And once we kind of land at the plane that we're on the same page, I'm going to ask, like, are you ready to commit? Is this something that you feel like you can do? You have enough information.

You've got the resources that you need. Are you ready to commit? So that was a great example of what one expectation, one conversation would sound like. Let's now skip over to the accountability side. You know, I've got a full load of expectations. Right. We're now meeting maybe in our monthly one-on-one meeting. Yeah. What does the conversation sound like?

Right. So in that scenario, you're going to have a, you know, as a quality assurance person, in our example, you're going to have more than one expectation on your plate, right? So what we're going to do is, you know, we're going to sit down and I'm going to ask like, all right, let's get all these expectations off your chest. Right. And some of those expectations, you know, aren't going to match what my expectations are. Because here's the funny thing about expectations. There are the expectations that I explicitly communicate to you, but there's a whole bunch of other things that happen, right? You have all these

implicit expectations, like things that you feel like you should be responsible for, but I have never asked you to do. Or things that you feel like I'm thinking that I've never actually said out loud. or situations where somebody else, somewhere in some other corner of the organization has set an expectation on you that I don't know anything about. And frankly, I might not want you to be investing your time there, right? So, you know, when I'm walking through one of these accountability conversations or one of these accountability one-on-ones that I do, when I talk about visualizing all the expectations, what I'm trying to mine for there, if you're the quality assurance person is, hey, tell me the, tell me all the expectations that you feel. And I,

I want to understand, like, which expectations do you think I have of you that you think I haven't spoken? You know, what expectations from some other person in the organization have put something on your plate? Part of that visualization of all those expectations is going to reveal to me as the leader just how much you've got going on in your brain. Right. So if I'm, if I'm, you know, talking to you as a quality assurance person and you say, well, remember that explicit expectation that you set about product quality. Yes. Okay, well, that one's going on the list. And you might start rattling off a bunch of others. Like, hey, there's also an expectation that I go to a daily training session on how to get better at quality assurance. I might say, oh, that's interesting. I didn't know anything about that. And you might also say, as a quality assurance person, hey, all the quality assurance people in the company get together. And we, you know, we share learnings with each other. And I've been asked to actually facilitate that meeting and organize it for everybody. And that, you know, that's taken up like three, three, four. hours a week in preparation time. And I might not know anything about that either as your leader. All of those sort of hidden expectations, you know, are actually a real big problem. And so by

visualizing all of the expectations, now we can create some real accountability. So we visualize all those things. Now I've gotten to a point where I understand like, oh, interesting. I didn't know about that team meeting that you have that you're invested in so much time into organizing. So I might say to you, you know, George, that's not actually how I want you spending your time. We need to reset some expectations. I didn't put that expectation on your plate. Somebody else did. So we're going to prune that one.

We're going to take that one off. And there might be some other things I want to add to the list, right? And then one of the things that I'm going to do, too, in terms of prioritization is that once we get all of these expectations that are explicit or implicit, you know, visualized, we're going to go through and we're actually going to stack rank them. You know, in a given week, you might not be able to get to all of the expectations on your plate. So which ones are really the most important one? So I might say, you know what? Absolutely priority number one is I want to make sure that you apply that 80-20 rule to testing the product that we're making really, really well, right?

That's always your A1. Organizing that monthly meeting, I'd rather, if you have a choice between doing that or creating great product quality, I'd rather you just cancel the meeting. Help people prioritize. See, that's what the importance of one-on-ones and, you know, looking at all this again and saying, let's look at the list. Where is it at now? Right. Are we doing a good job, prioritizing and pruning?

And it makes the team member go, wow, this leader really cares about me not being overwhelmed and me doing my job well. Right. The person will actually feel like, oh, wow, this person's locked into what I'm actually doing, and they're participating in the critical thinking that's necessary in order for me to be successful at my job. And nothing you just said made me feel attacked. Right. Because you never got defensive and went, why aren't you doing this? Yeah. You know, you just started asking questions, understanding.

It's just very pragmatic. Yeah. I love it. So let's talk about repairing accountability. Right. It's great when everything's going well, but there are times when there are failures, you know, as a leader and you've got to repair accountability with a team member. Right. What does that process look like?

Yeah. So it's interesting. All of us, like, you know, like we opened with, we all fall into these patterns getting busy and we accidentally neglect somebody. So if you have neglected a relationship for a short period of time or a long period of time, the relationship doesn't need to be over, right? You can still get it back on track. You can get it going in the direction that you needed to go in. But the truth is, is that you're going to be really vulnerable and honest with the person. Like, if you ignore the fact that neglect happened, the relationship's going to be a wreck. Like, you cannot get the relationship back on track

unless you address the neglect, right? And so I'm going to give you an example, actually a real life example. This is actually a handful of bullet points. that I put together for a conversation that I really had with a real person that I had unintentionally neglected because I got too busy, right? So let's say this is between you and me. And we were in a scenario where, you know, let's say I was preparing for a summit talk, real life example this, you know, happened. And, you know, down to the wire, getting all my stuff ready, you know, I'm not a professional speaker. And so I'm stressed and I'm worried. And there's somebody on my team that I have not been paying close enough attention to their day-to-day work, and I haven't been supporting them well. So, you know,

I might sit down with them and say, you know, hey, listen, I want to have a quick conversation. I got to admit, this conversation is going to be a little uncomfortable, not because you did something wrong, but because I've done something wrong. And I need to be really honest, I've discovered a weakness and how I've been leading you. And honestly, we need to have a moment where I apologize. Like, I'm sorry, right? And the thing that I've been doing, and wrong is I've really neglected my obligation as a leader to be setting really clear expectations and holding you accountable. That's something that I haven't really been doing well. And honestly, since I've come to some awareness around this, I'm embarrassed and I want to fix it. Right.

And just having that 30 second conversation with somebody, you might hear that and say, oh, man, Brendan, you just fell on the sword really hard. Welcome to the leadership game. Sometimes you have to fall on the sword heart. It's just part of it. You know, if you've made a mistake, own it all the way, right? And so, if I say something like that to somebody, I'm going to stop real quick and say, you know, how does that make you feel when I say this? Like, how does it make you feel when I bring this up? And every team member is going to respond positively. Like, well, hey, I really appreciate you being honest. Yeah, I have felt a little neglected. And then, you know, at that point, you kind of move to the next part, which is talking about like, okay, well, how do we move forward together, right? And so, you know, in this particular example,

for those of us that are listening to us right now, one of the things that you can say is, well, hey, there's actually an assessment you can take. And this assessment is assessing me as your leader, not you, right? And it's around expectations and accountability. This is something that you're going to take, and we're going to look at and we're going to discuss the results in terms of, like, how I need to improve as a leader. Is that something you'd be willing to do? Right? Pretty simple. And let me just tell you, no team member in the world is ever going to turn down the opportunity to evaluate their leader, especially if you do it in such a way where it's like opening. There's trust and it's opening and welcoming and things like that.

And so here's the good news. I actually already gave you the evaluation earlier on when we talked about the blindsider, the scattered leader, the absentee, and the credible leader. And go back, listen to this podcast a couple times. you know, in fact, I think we're going to have a download of this actual sheet of paper that you can use with your team member right in front of you that will help facilitate this process. So go download that PDF. It'll help you out a great deal. And what I want you to do is I want you sit down with the team member and I want you to ask them to plot you in one of those four quadrants. Now, 70% of the time, here's what's going to happen. They're going to plot you as credible. And when someone does that, I want you to say to them, let's assume, that credible is not an option. Where would you put me? And so if I showed you in real life my version of this, the first time I ran this with my team a while back, like 70% of my team put me incredible, I had like one person in absentee and like three people in scattered. And when I came back to the team and said, let's assume credible is not an option. Put me in one of the other

quadrants, like 90% of everyone put me in scattered. That's what the real truth was. And so believe or not, despite this system being really, really simple, it will create a level of transparency and honesty with your team. It'll help you guys get to the last 10% of truth, is basically what we're trying to get to. And okay, now that we know I'm a scattered leader, let's get a plan between you and me about what we're going to do about it. Like, you tell me what could I be doing to serve you better? And then I can help author the plan of how we're going to be intentional about repairing, you know, the accountability problem that we've done. I love that.

That makes accountability a two-way street. Right. And that makes the team member feel seen and heard. And I go, wow, Brennan really cares not only about me as a team member, but he wants to grow as a leader. Right. And I really respect that. Right.

And the way you had that whole conversation, not once did I feel attacked. And that is super important when you're having these conversations to not let emotions get the best of you. Right. Yeah, it's really easy to let happen. So as we wrap here, what is a rhythm of, setting expectations and holding your team accountable look like. I know this is different for every business, but if you said, hey, here's a baseline to start. Right. So it has a lot to do with how often

you do one-on-ones with your team members. For me, I do them every week. Everybody who directly reports to me, I meet with you for 30 minutes a week. And so what I do is once a month. And in fact, coincidentally, today is the day. Today is the day that I do what I call my accountability one-on-ones. So I'm going to have one-on-ones with each of my direct reports today, and we're actually going to run through this exercise of visualize, understand, prune, prioritize. That same thing that we just talked through. We're going to run that exercise out in a 30-minute meeting. Sometimes it might take a little longer than that. Where we're going to review that list of visualized expectations and make sure things are still up to date.

And we're both doing what needs to happen in order for the stuff on that list to get accomplished. So, yeah, I do it once a month with my team. Does that take the place of that week's one-on-one? Yeah. Okay. So in a given month, I do like three normal one-on-ones, you know, how things going, what can I help you with, you know, where are you encountering blockers, you know, like, you know, things that you would talk about in a normal one-on-one.

But once a month, it gets just a little bit extra formal, and we actually run an exercise together and have conversations about the things that we learn from it. Well, Brendan, I know this was about business, but I feel like this is really good marriage advice. across the board. I'm like, this is good. I did. This is fantastic. I will, I'll drop a copy of this to Whitney on my way back upstairs. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. Well, Brendan, you are well known around here as one of the team's favorite leaders because of how you lead so intentionally. Obviously, you've become our go-to guy for all this stuff when it comes to accountability, uncomfortable conversations, setting those expectations. Always love having you on. Appreciate it. Thanks for

having me. Thanks so much, Brendan. Always love having him on the podcast. If you guys want to get free download of the accountability stereotypes and the guide we just went through on how to repair accountability. Just use the link in the show notes. Well, that's going to do it for today's episode. If you enjoyed it, do us a quick favor and follow or subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. And if you're feeling extra generous, share this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media. All of that helps us impact more people and more leaders like you. Be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership wherever you hang out on social media. episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder.

I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.