Establishing accountability with quality questions

We’ve been moving through the BRAVING acronym to arrive at A for Accountability, in the next instalment of our (Re)building Trust series.

After 20 years coaching leaders and managers, I know for sure that holding a performance conversation with a low performer (the one keeping you awake at 2 am!) is one of the biggest stress creating environments for every senior leader we work with.

Your conversation needs to be delivered in a confident, yet empathic and accountable way. You want to arrive at a measurable goal. You want to build / rebuild your trust in their ability to do their work or align their behaviour with organisational values. And the overall conversation has to result in a clear commitment about what’s going to be different after this…not an easy task!

What’s surfacing in every coaching conversation regarding any type of performance discussion, is the need for accountability. Plus a few common “performance convo” fears such as: the fear of being too hard or too soft; of getting confused; of not clearly communicating; of being out-manoeuvred; etc…

So, what can you do?

One of the most effective things you can do, as a leader in building trust, is creating empathic accountable conversations. How? Ask questions!

Simple to say (write here). Much tougher to do. We humans prefer to tell rather than ask but believe me, asking is the key to so many leadership skills including connection, accountability, and trust. And like all core skills, it takes practise.

Yet, not all questions are equal.

Be careful: because if you ask a question like: “This is the standard, can you meet it?” …you’re probably only going to hear: “Yeah, I can.”

And very little (if anything) will improve 🤷‍♀️  Why? Because this was a poor-quality, closed question. One that didn’t require conversation or connection.

To generate accountability, your questions need to be good-quality, open questions (that is, questions that ask for specific measurable answers and connect the person to the outcome).

My Ask, Not Tell toolkit includes 40 questions for use in many different informal conversations and in my 15 minute Little LIFT video at the top of this Connection Diary entry, I’m sharing my 13 best questions to build trust and accountability (plus my top 5 tips for holding accountable conversations).

Doesn’t matter if the conversation is a casual encounter in the corridor, informal feedback or a formal performance conversation. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking with low performers, high performers, or someone in the middle… these questions work every time. We know because thousands of leaders have been using LIFT’s questions for over a decade.💪

Enjoy and...

PS: If you’d like a copy of my Ask, Not Tell toolkit, just email us at [email protected]

PPS: I’ve got some exciting news to share next week 🙊