Accountability Without the Drama

Jennifer Long is President and Master Coach at OwnUp!® LLC, a leader in executive skills development leadership and management coaching. Jennifer is a seasoned professional consultant with a 25-year track record in organizational development, training program/experience design, production and delivery as well as engineering and refinement of her proven coaching methodology. She is considered an industry expert in corporate coaching and has written and contributed articles to industry trade publications such as the ATD Infoline series as well as Chief Learning Officer magazine. Jennifer is the author of OwnUp! How to Hold People Accountable Without all the Drama with Forbes Books and has presented at the Chief Learning Officer Summit, Linkage Organizational Development Summit, Conference Board, Human Capital Institute, and the International Game Developers Association among others. Jennifer remains passionate about learning, thinking smarter first than taking action. She works hard to keep the experience dynamic and relevant. Jennifer has worked with Newport News Shipbuilding, MGM Grand, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hitatchi Energy, Brown University, Tucson Electric Power, Dartmouth College among others.

More at https://accountabilityatwork.com/ 

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, Founder and President of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. We create synergy as leaders by being very clear on our vision. So today, we’ve got a lovely guest who’s full of really great ideas. I’m going to share her book with you. It’s called Accountability Without the Drama. But Jennifer Long, before we go there, look at that. She’s got the book. Tell us about who you are, a little bit of your background, and your passion for doing this work.

Jennifer Long:
I am a president and master coach of Own Up. Been doing this work in corporate training, and executive coaching, and management coaching, and team coaching for, well, we started coaching technically in the late 80s. I’m second generation. It’s a family run business. And we have been working with nonprofits and organizations to do people development, right? So as a training company, we focus primarily on the soft skills and the interactions. But what I will tell you about the passion is coming in at second generation, I spent 10 years directing theater. And so I have a penchant for dialogue, for relationship, for the impact of a conversation. And because my passion around that stems from my background in theater, I’m really good and the company’s really good at communication skills and the impact of communication. And I think part of the reason that this work is so fulfilling is that I think we’ve lost the art of the dialogue. And as humans, we are wired to connect and our conversations are our relationships. And when we’re better at communicating and when we’re better at how to create space for conversation, our relationships are world’s better and our impact as leaders, as managers, as team members is also world’s better. And so I’m on the mission because everybody deserves a good work experience and better leaders and managers to make that happen.

Hugh Ballou:
Ah, so just to share a little secret with you, ensemble. My ensemble is musical ensemble and yours is the theater, right?

Jennifer Long:
Yes.

Hugh Ballou:
So We create ensemble. My center vision is the equivalent of an ensemble in a non-musical or non-drama situation. So talk about, and does that relate to you having, creating an ensemble that works together?

Jennifer Long:
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. The, the idea that you deliver anything by yourself is just not a thing. Most people are successful because of the people they’re with, they’re around, who back them up, who they participate with. And so I would say ensemble team is critical and our team experiences are some of the, our ensemble, our collaborative experiences are some of the best experiences we ever have.

Hugh Ballou:
That is so critical. I’ve been doing this work with non-profit corporations for 35 years. There’s some consistent things that I see over and over and over. And one of the pieces you’re talking about is we in the drama where it doesn’t belong. We go there. Highlight your book and talk about what’s

Jennifer Long:
I missed your question there. It broke up a little bit. So you said, I got highlight the book. Tell me what else you said.

Hugh Ballou:
What we’ll find in the book, because I’m lots of really useful stuff there.

Jennifer Long:
So in the book, I basically outlined a different approach to accountability. And I think that Most people experience accountability as a punitive experience. We hold people accountable when we’re looking for some kind of justification for why something went wrong, we’re looking for blame, we’re looking for responsibility, but we’re looking for it in a punitive sense. And when my belief, my teaching is really more about accountability is a practice, and it’s a practice around clarity. And for us to be clear is that is the act of when we have issues where people drop the ball, miscommunication happens, the results are poor, it’s really more about what’s the opportunity to learn and get better? not what’s the opportunity for somebody to get in trouble. And when we change how we think about accountability and we stop thinking about it as a punitive measure, and we start to think about accountability as a practice around clarity, our ability to have a better conversation, to engage someone in understanding the context of their decision-making, in understanding what they’re willing to do to get better, It becomes a much more trust-building relationship. It becomes a much more dynamic relationship about growth and potential and less one about who got what wrong and who needs to get in trouble.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, that’s so great. We’re not in middle school anymore. So you’ll like this. I have redefined the acronym for SMART Goals. Traditional, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed. Now we’re covering Scottish, Presbyterian, and Achievable, Realistic are too much the same. I don’t want to waste a letter. You know, frugal thing. So what really makes goals work are two things. The value of what you create. And A is accountable. If we don’t share them, it ain’t going to happen. We put it in a drawer. So that’s where people become acquainted with. If we share it, there’s a really energetic side to accountability, especially in teams. You want to highlight, does that make sense to you?

Jennifer Long:
Well, yeah, accountability is fundamental. It’s part of whenever we get together to do anything. And we are always expecting people to deliver on what they say they’re going to deliver. But that all stems from mutual clarity, right? And it’s as much on the person who is setting an expectation to be really clear on what it is. But it’s also on the part of whoever’s going to engage that expectation to make sure they understand. And as things change over time, what is that ongoing conversation such that I know I’m always in a place I’m going to make good decisions? Because at the end of the day, if I miss it, if it all goes south, it’s because I probably made a decision somewhere that didn’t work. And so the book really kind of looks at what that dynamic is and how do you stay out of the drama, which is all the anxiety, all of the non-conversations, all of the holding back until it’s too late. So when you think about the drama that ensues, it’s really a lot of the emotional energy that we get when we don’t proactively and in an ongoing way, keep things clear.

Hugh Ballou:
If you’re watching this on social media and just came by, this is the nonprofit exchange. We’re talking to Jennifer Long about accountability without the drama. And there’s a lot of little. Soundbites, important data she’s giving you, do not stress if you didn’t get it. There will be a full transcript at thenonprofitexchange.org. We’ll post a full transcript so you can get those nuggets. So you just talked about a lot of stuff, but I want to highlight expectations, unclear expectations. So that’s a way leaders really set up conflict, isn’t it?

Jennifer Long:
It is, it is because there is sometimes we make a lot of assumptions about people, what they know, what we think they should know. Um, and there’s a huge issue around what I’m stating and then all the unstated expectations that I have. And I find that most of the time issues around accountability are driven by the unstated expectations, not necessarily the stated expectations. Um, and, and by that, I mean, those generally tend to be. We like to focus on results and actions and decisions and the impact of those. But really, what drives a lot of those are the behaviors that support them. Are people, do they have drive? Do they have transparency? Do they have, are they willing to learn, right? And when you think about people who are high performing, they generally show up in those expectations. But sometimes other people don’t. They don’t have the transparency and the willingness and the drive that we actually look for when we’re working with other people. And those become a lot of unstated expectations we get frustrated around.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, yes. So I’ve been doing the facilitation planning and I do teamwork by them working together to plan. Here’s the goal. The leader has a vision and the outcomes and the team works on it. So I’ve seen this play out over and over again. Talk about anxiety. There’s some myths around, you know, we worry about things that maybe aren’t real. So how does anxiety drive problems?

Jennifer Long:
Well, anxiety comes in because a lot of people, before they, when they’re getting ready to hold somebody accountable, they’re coming in with judgment. They think they know. And they’re also worried about the impact. A lot of accountability is, especially for leaders, is this is a reflection on my leadership. This is a reflection on my management. Your bad decision making and your bad results are making me look bad. So that’s creating some anxiety. But I’m also judging. what’s happened. And I’m coming in with, I always tell people that when you get good at an accountability practice, there’s three things you can’t come in with. And you can’t come in with judgment. You can’t come in to rescue people. And you can’t come in with answers. You need to come in open because you need to create space. And so when we talk about holding people accountable, I’m not holding you down and looking for the answer I need. I’m holding space for you to take responsibility and ownership of what you need to move forward.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s a great definition of how I teach leadership. We create space for people to raise the bar on their own performance. But let’s unpack the ensemble a minute, the orchestra or the drama team. There’s a peer-to-peer accountability there that we get by working together. And one of my four leadership principles is rehearse for success. we don’t practice things, we don’t plan meetings, we don’t create good systems. So part of planning is how do we, I want you to highlight that a little bit, and also you talked about don’t come in with all the right answers, because leaders really have good questions and help other people come up with the answers. So the ensemble, as they work together, how does that help accountability and teamwork?

Jennifer Long:
Because what you need is people to think through where did they make a decision that didn’t work? Do they need? So a lot of the, all behavior is contextual. All of my decisions are driven by the context in which I have to operate and, and understanding, do I have, um, a self-destructive behavior that gets in my way? Do I, am I a micromanager? Do I try and control everything and then try to control everything? Do I make things late? Right? Do I, am I missing a skillset? Do I not understand a process or a system, or do I not have good communication or relationship skills? Is it a skills-based issue that’s showing up? Do I have, I have the behaviors and the skills, but yet I’m choosing not to use them. So that’s where attitude problems come in. Right? Habitual tardies tend to be attitude problems. They have the skills and behaviors to get there on time. Choose not to, right? What’s going on there? And then there’s things that come in around conflict of what’s important or what’s true. And I might think it’s true that I deserve the promotion, I’m ready for it, I have the skills and experience, but the organization doesn’t think that’s true. And so do I go into conflict? And so I start to make decisions from a place that drive in a A place emotionally based decisions of maybe I’m not going to give my all because they don’t see me the way I see me and I feel under appreciated. And so when we come in to a conversation and we haven’t done a little bit of due diligence to think through what is the context of someone’s decision making. When I come in making assumptions or criticizing or knowing and saying, this is what I need you to work on, this is where your issue is, here’s what I need you to do, which means I’m providing the answers. What I’m not doing is giving you the space to think critically about where it is you might be making decisions that don’t work for you. And in that, how would you like to handle that? Because if you’re going to be truly accountable, I don’t need you just to own a bad decision and a bad outcome. I need you to own what you’re going to do to improve and learn. And I need you to own the effort to do it. And I’ve got to have ownership of all of those things if I’m going to have real accountability, real formation and change around how you improve, how you perform.

Hugh Ballou:
I’m hearing you define, tell me if this is true, the difference between micromanaging and mentoring, which are just the opposite. Am I hearing you correctly?

Jennifer Long:
Well, because what I need to do is I need to have the right conversation about the right thing. And I need you to hold you accountable about the right thing. And I think when we come in knowing and rescuing, we’re assuming we know. But when we create space and we approach it thinking maybe it’s skills or behavior or thinking maybe I’ve got conflict or an attitude issue, and I let you take ownership of that. And then I say, what do you want to do with that? Because your decisions aren’t working there. How would you like to, what might help you? in that conversation, learn how they need to learn and also guide that learning. It does become more of a mentoring, coaching engagement. It becomes an opportunity to really hear and then formulate things around, meet them where they are and create the right level of challenge. And those are all mentoring coaching techniques.

Hugh Ballou:
Yes, now I’m gonna clarify something for our viewers, listeners, our audience. There’s no difference in what you’re talking about, whether you’re running a community charity or a multinational corporation. Correct. Or a church or other in our synagogue. In my world as a conductor, what they see is what I get. So the culture is a reflection of the leader. And I think what you’re describing is how leaders really set up an underperforming culture. And that’s not what they want, right?

Jennifer Long:
Right. Right. I mean, your conversations are your relationships and your relationships are your culture, how you engage with people, right? Sets the standard. That is the gray area that all things stem from. And when you change the conversations, you can change the culture very, very quickly.

Hugh Ballou:
I love it. I love it. I bet in that book you showed us, there’s some, there’s some tools and some tips in there that we can learn from. Are there.

Jennifer Long:
There are. So in the book, I outline a six-step process called the SOS model, which is six ownership steps. And it walks you through what the process is to prepare yourself for a good conversation. for accountability. And so it gives you, and I’ll walk you through them real quick. The first step is really identify your issue. I think a lot of people come in, assuming things, knowing things, and really don’t think through If you’re not, if you’re because talking about the results isn’t going to change the results, talking about what drove the results is what’s going to give you a different outcome and really thinking through what’s the issue that you need to address. So that’s the first step. The second step is analyze the context. So that whole, um, framework I kind of walked you through around skills and behaviors and attitude and values and beliefs is in the book. And it’s it talks about how do you start to understand the context? Because context drives behavior so that you can approach the conversation appropriately. What angle are you coming in at? The third step is to identify the impacts. What are the impacts of what’s happening so that you can compel ownership quickly? It’s not the case you need to build. A lot of people, when they start a conversation, are like, let me look through the last six months of email and build an argument about all the things you’ve done that have led to this outcome that we have. And I’m like, you don’t need to go to all that work. You really just have to, once you identify the issue, what are the impacts of that? What are the impacts of not being a team player or having poor communication skills relative to a product? What are the impacts of that? Then the fourth step is rehearse it. And this is where my directing background really comes in. We are brilliant in our own minds. We can get in the car and have a conversation with ourselves. We are outstanding. But when we get across from somebody else, and accountability really is a contact sport, because a lot of our communication is nonverbal. It’s paralinguistic. It’s the tone of our voice. It’s the words we’re choosing. And if we’re going to be in that moment to really understand where someone is, we want all the signals, right? We want to have the full conversation. So when, if we don’t rehearse and we get eyeballs across and people respond in ways we don’t anticipate, that’s when we fall off our game and end up having conversations we don’t expect. So say things out loud. What are the first things you’re going to say to another person? How are you going to set the table on what your issue is? And that’s an important skill to develop because language matters. It impacts people’s neurochemistry. It demonstrates how thoughtful you are about the conversation you’re going to have, because if you’re having it, it’s because you care about this issue and it’s because you care about this person. And how do you demonstrate that? And that’s why the fourth step is rehearse. The fifth step is engage the conversation. So the first four steps are all things you do on your own before you get to step five, which is to have the conversation. The sixth step is about how do you build solutions that also include ownership. And then in the middle of all that is how well are you listening? Because it’s a dialogue.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s the top way to spell this underutilized, isn’t it?

Jennifer Long:
Right. And so in the book, I walk you through all the steps. I give you tips about each step and I give you sample conversations so that you can start to understand what it might sound like based on how you’re actually doing it now.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, speaking of that, let’s go to your website. Um, the link to your website is what accountability at work.com. And what will people find when they go to that page, that website?

Jennifer Long:
They’re going to find, we’ve got a specific program that works alongside the book. So the things that you’ll learn in the book will actually give you comprehensive skills and practice that you can take into your organization. And you can do it live with an instructor, you can do it in webinars, or you can do it on your own through a self-paced learning program. And all of it comes with an option to have a live coach work you through the applied skills. Because what we find is you can actually change your behavior very, very quickly. How well you do this in a short period of time, but it’s really helpful to have an accountability partner. which means I’m going to help you apply it and I’m going to make sure you’re having the conversations you need to have. And I’m going to make sure you get better at how you do it every time you do it. And so it’s kind of built in as an option to make sure that if you’re going to make the investment, you’re going to be accountable for changing your behavior, getting a better conversation at the end. So that’s what you’ll find on the website. In addition to all the other stuff we do, a link to my book. If you get to the book page, you can download a free chapter.

Hugh Ballou:
Where’s the book page?

Jennifer Long:
It should be down there on the bottom. I think you link to the book.

Hugh Ballou:
Okay. The book, the book, the book, the book. I’m going, I’m scrolling.

Jennifer Long:
There’s the book. Check out the book. And then you can link there on that green button.

Hugh Ballou:
There you are. Check out the book. And I believe you said there’s a free chapter people can get.

Jennifer Long:
Get a free chapter that was inspired by Own Up. There it is. And if you click on that, you can fill out a form and download a chapter.

Hugh Ballou:
I’ll point out the number one Amazon.

Jennifer Long:
Number one Amazon bestseller. And I did the audio book. So you’ll have my voice in your head if you pick out the audio book.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, that’s cool. Christopher does it better than Jennifer Long. Um, we got a minute to, is there, um, people have worked with you and your family for years. What, what difference did it make in their lives? You want to highlight one? You don’t have to give names.

Jennifer Long:
Um, yeah, I would tell you the the number one thing that we hear when we get feedback from people who go through the go through the program and who work with us on on release, you know, they usually come to us looking for we need to do accountability better, we need to learn to have these conversations, we need a practice that actually sustains in the culture. And the thing we hear the most is When I changed the conversation I started having around accountability, I changed the relationship I had to my team. And those are the things that tell me it’s working because the anxiety, the stress, the heightened pressure people have around it goes away. It becomes way more incorporated. The lines get clear. Engagement gets better. And the dynamic of the day-to-day stuff, right? So the mission being everybody deserves a great leader and manager. And that’s because they’re good at talking to you. They’re good at connecting with you. And there’s one thing that they change is my ability to connect with people, my fear of saying things that previously felt difficult, now don’t feel difficult because it’s a relief when we all understand and we’re all clear.

Hugh Ballou:
Jennifer Long, this has been so helpful. And even if we knew some of this stuff, you’ve put it in, which we probably didn’t, you’ve put it in a context that we can actually learn it and apply it. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange. People can watch this, go to the nonprofitexchange.org. You’ll have the transcript and links to the website. So Jennifer, thanks again for sharing this wonderful information with our audience.

Jennifer Long:
Hugh, it’s been great. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I appreciate it.