Creating self-accountabilty through questions is the most effective solution to build a team of people who all embrace their personal accountability, while also building deeper trust when respecting their individuality, and ultimately, eliminate the manager’s fear of confrontation, providing too much autonomy and micromanagement!

I say this to acknowledge you’re not alone, as this is a challenge for every manager, since most managers tell people they need to be accountable and would never even consider asking questions that empower people to set up their own rules around how they want to be held accountable, managed and motivated!

What If They Say, “I Don’t Know?”

When coaching or asking people questions they’ve never been asked, or questions where no foundation of positive intention was clarified, some respond viscerally in the moment, while others don’t have an immediate response & need time to carefully process & respond to the question.

There are times people will tell you exactly how they want to be held accountable, times when people tell you but it didn’t work, so you need to re-calibrate & times when they may say, “I never thought about that before.” Here are 3 questions to respond with to help develop this essential benchmark.

1. If you were in my position, how would you approach this conversation?
2. Can you remember a time where you responded positively when someone (prior boss) held you accountable to your commitments?
3. May I share how I like to be held accountable & use that as a benchmark to outline a first draft we can refine to ensure it works for you?
4. If you had to come up with something, what’s your opinion on what this could look like? (Remember, EVERYONE has an opinion vs. solution!)

Keep in mind, there are people who will not answer the questions because if they don’t, in their minds, they don’t have to be accountable!