Far too often, business owners or managers try to hold people accountable without a relationship. When accountability is done right, people will want to be accountable. They will want to be better. There’s a big difference between forcing someone to be accountable and inviting someone into accountability through support and encouragement. As the old saying goes, “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Zig added “about them.” “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care about them.”
Accountability is much more effective and lasting when it’s built on a foundation of care and concern. Once you’ve invested in others by supporting and serving them, and you’ve built a stronger bond by inspiring emotional trust and practiced gift exchange, the foundation exists to move into this level of relationship, which is the most meaningful and most transformational level of all.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t hold your people accountable to do the things they are supposed to do if you don’t have that kind of relationship. You do. But accountability without a relationship doesn’t last. No one wants team members that only do what they’re supposed to do when someone is watching. The kind of accountability that builds community is a different kind of accountability.
