We’ve taken the skills demonstrated by positive deviants and fashioned them into a Crucial Accountability skill set that provides direction for the rest of this book. The skill set provides a pathway for navigating accountability discussions before, during, and after the interaction takes place. It also helps match action to circumstance, leading to a thoughtful, response-driven conversation rather than the rote repeating of actions that come to mind after a lifetime of observing bad examples.
Have we piqued your interest?
It’s time to learn and embrace the skills of those talented positive deviants out there and infuse our families, work groups, companies, and communities with the comforting predictability and relationship-affirming trust that come with accountability.
Part One
Work on Me First
What to Do Before an Accountability Crucial Conversation
When we approach an accountability discussion, it’s important to know that we must work on ourselves first. We can’t go in determined to “fix everyone else” and expect to get the results we’re really after. We can only actually ever change ourselves.
That being said, remember that asking others to account for their actions lives and dies on the words people choose and the way people deliver them. Those words, and particularly the way they are delivered, live and die on what people think before they open their mouths. No amount of preparation can save a conversation if the person who brings up the failed promise isn’t in the right frame of mind. Here’s how those who master accountability discussions make sure their thoughts are in order before they put their mouths in gear:
• They make sure they are conversing about the right problems (Chapter 1, “Choose What and If”).
• They make sure that the thoughts rushing around in their heads — their facts, stories, and emotions — help them see the other person as a person rather than a villain. They learn to control their strong emotions by revisiting the stories that caused them (Chapter 2, “Master My Stories”).
1
Choose What and If
How to Know What Conversation to Hold and If You Should Hold It
I made a Freudian slip last night. I called my husband by the name of my first boyfriend. It was embarrassing.
I did the same sort of thing. I meant to say to my husband, “Please pass the potatoes,” but I said, “Die, loser; you’ve ruined my life!”
Problems rarely come in tiny boxes — certainly not the issues we care about. Those come in giant bundles. For instance, your boss promises you a raise and then recants. This is the second time he’s promised you something only to go back on the promise, except this time he dropped the bomb in a meeting, and so you couldn’t complain on the spot. When you stopped him in the hallway to bring up the issue, he told you that he was in a hurry and said you should “stop being insensitive to my time demands.” You asked if you could talk later, and he said, “Hey, I didn’t get the money I deserved either.”
Let’s try a home example. Your in-laws just walked in unannounced while you were eating dinner. You’ve talked to them about giving you a heads-up, particularly if they plan on dropping in at dinnertime, and they still prance in on a whim. What problem do you address?
You don’t have enough food to go around. That could be easy to discuss. They’ve repeatedly promised they would notify you but are constantly breaking that agreement and losing your trust. That is likely to be hard to bring up. Finally, after turning down your invitation to join you at the table, they pout and whimper in the corner. That could be really difficult to confront.
In each of these cases, you’re left with two questions that you have to answer before you open your mouth: What? and If? First, what violation or violations should you actually address? How do you dismantle a bundle of accountability problems into its component parts and choose the one you want to discuss? You have a lot to choose from, and you can’t talk about them all, at least not in one sitting. Second, you have to decide if you’re going to say anything. Do you speak up and run the risk of causing a whole new set of problems, or do you remain silent and run the risk of never solving the problem?
Let’s take these two questions one at a time. We’ll deal with the if question once we’ve resolved the what question.
The question of what you should discuss may be the most important concept we cover in this book. When problems come in complicated bundles, and they often do, it’s not always easy to know which problem or problems to address.
For example, a teenage daughter swears to her father she’ll be home from her first big date by midnight but doesn’t come home until 1 a.m. Here’s the pressing question: What problem should he discuss? “That’s easy,” you say. “She was late.” True, that’s one way to describe the problem.
Here are several other ways: She broke a promise. She violated her father’s trust. She drove her father insane with fear that she had been killed in a car wreck. She purposely and willfully disobeyed a family rule. She openly defied her father in an effort to break free of parental control. She was getting even with her father for grounding her the weekend before. She knew it would drive her father bonkers if she stayed out late with a guy who sports a dozen face perforations, and so she did that.
Although it’s true that the daughter walked in the door 60 minutes after curfew, this may not be the exact and only problem her father wants to discuss. Here’s the added danger: if he selects the wrong problem from this lengthy list of possible problems and handles it well, he may be left with the impression that he’s done the right thing. However, if you want to follow the footsteps of our positive deviants, you have to identify and deal with the right problem, or it will never go away. This still leaves us with this question: What is the right problem?
Signs That You’re Dealing with the Wrong Problem
Your Solution Doesn’t Get You What You Really Want
To get a feel for how to choose the right problem, let’s look at an actual case we recently uncovered during a training session for school principals. It’s from a grade school principal’s experience. During recess a teacher notices the following interaction. Two second-grade girls are playing on the monkey bars. As Maria pushes Sarah to hurry her along, Sarah shouts, “Don’t you ever touch me again, you dirty little Mexican!” Maria counters with, “At least I’m not a big fatty!” This is the precipitating event.
The principal calls the children’s parents, describes what took place, and explains that the school will be disciplining them. Maria’s parents are fine with the idea and thank the principal, and that’s the end of the discussion. Sarah’s mother takes a different approach. She asks, “Exactly what form of discipline will each child receive?” The principal explains that the discipline will suit the nature of the offense.
The next day Sarah’s mother shows up unannounced, catches the principal in the hallway, and proclaims in loud and harsh tones that she doesn’t want the school to discipline her daughter. She’ll take care of the discipline on her own. The principal explains that the school is bound by policy to take action. In fact, tomorrow Sarah will be separated from her friends during lunch and required to take her meal in the media room under the supervision of a teacher’s aide. That’s the prescribed discipline. Sarah’s mother then announces that tomorrow she’ll be picking up her daughter for a private mommy-daughter lunch at a nearby restaurant.