Accountability Definition - It's Probably Not What You Think it is

[00:00:00] Nate Prosser: Hi, thanks for tuning in this is Leadership Chalk Talk. It's a podcast with a fresh take on leadership development, and it's specifically dedicated to sports fans. We do what you probably do every day, which is we talk about sports. But we do it with the specific purpose of identifying leadership behaviors that can help you to grow in your career.

[00:00:27] Nate Prosser: So if you're looking to become a better leader and you love sports, I think this is the podcast for you. In today's episode, we're gonna focus on accountability. One of the most misused and misunderstood words in leadership. We'll do that by and apologies to my Philly sports fans out there, but we're gonna break down the Sixers.

[00:00:44] Nate Prosser: Game six season-ending loss to the Heat and some of the press conference comments that we heard afterwards, we'll sprinkle in some Mike Tomlin and some Tomlinism, and we'll wrap up with a breakdown of Russell Westbrook's first season with the Lakers . Before we get going, I think since this is our first episode, I thought it might be helpful to spend a little bit of time talking about me and how Leadership Chalk Talk came to be.

[00:01:06] Nate Prosser: Basically, I've been a sports fan for my entire life, as long as I can remember. I think some of my first memories were actually whiffle ball games in the backyard with my brother and friends and neighbors growing up. I played a lot of basketball and baseball and a little bit of everything else too. Um, and I've always watched as many games as I can.

[00:01:22] Nate Prosser: I felt like I didn't wanna miss a big game because I might miss out on something. So you can always find me catching games, talking and texting with friends and really just trying to take it all in, uh, so much so that each year. My friends and I have a yearly trip planned in March to basically watch the first two rounds of the tournament and do nothing else.

[00:01:41] Nate Prosser: On the professional side. My career has basically all been about one thing and that's to help other people get better. I started out as a high school math teacher and with no surprise, a high school basketball coach. I transitioned outta the education world, but not at all out of education because I've been in learning and leadership development space for nearly 15 years at this point, doing just about every role you can imagine from instructional designer to leading the entire function to one-on-one executive coaching and...

[00:02:10] Nate Prosser: pretty much everything in between, but regardless of the role, it always kind of came back to the same thing for me, and that was wanting to help other people. So Leadership Chalk Talk is a passion project. It's taking two of the things that I care about the most, which is helping others and talking sports and bringing them together in a unique and fun way and hopefully, really to help people like you.

[00:02:31] Nate Prosser: All right. So let's do it. Let's dive into our leadership topic of accountability. So accountability is in, in the purest form of defining it. It is explaining what happened and comparing that to what was expected. Most people think that accountability is simply getting people in trouble. We're gonna, we're gonna bust that myth.

[00:02:54] Nate Prosser: That is not what accountability means. Before we do this, I have three ground rules for Chalk Talk. Quickly, ground rule number one is "Learn Don't Burn". This means we're not here to burn people. We're not here to criticize people. We're here to learn from their actions and their behaviors. And that leads exactly to ground rule number two, which is "Actions not Jackson's." We're not here to talk about people's character. We're not talking about people who they are. We're here to talk about their behaviors and their actions as ways to learn about leadership and finally, attitude of gratitude. I have a lot of appreciation for the athletes out there grinding every day, and we just appreciate them. And we wanna portray that in the podcast. 

[00:03:32] Nate Prosser: All right. With those ground rules, I have a question for you. Raise your hand if you have ever heard someone say something like "we need to hold people more accountable," or "we need to be more accountable around here." So shout out, I'm envisioning someone who's in their car right now and stopped at a red light. And the car next to them is doing a double take because their person is raising their hand. Cuz that one hit home so hard for you because you've heard that phrase so many times. And typically when people say that they're meaning that thing that I said, it's not, they're saying we need to get people in trouble when they screw up, we need to hold people accountable.

[00:04:08] Nate Prosser: But again, that's not really what it means: accountability is about aligning what happened with what was expected. It's in a way I like to summarize that is by commitment. Did people follow through on their commitments? Was the commitment clear up front and did they follow through on it? 

[00:04:26] Nate Prosser: All right. Now the fun part, we're gonna go to the aftermath of game six of the second round of the NBA playoffs. 76ers played the Heat. Heat won in Philly and ended the Sixers season. So if you don't remember, it's been a couple weeks since that game. Uh, the Heat were up one in half 49, 48. And again, the, the Sixers are home. They win, you know, get to game seven on the road who knows what would happens. What became the talk of the game afterwards was James Harden's performance.

[00:04:59] Nate Prosser: So he ended with 11 points. If you're a little bit of a Harden historian, you know, that's kind of a magic number for him, but what was most interesting was he was took two shots in the second half and missed both of them. One, one middle midway through the third quarter. And the next one, basically, um, when the game was outta hand. So it seemed kind of strange of harden, right?

[00:05:22] Nate Prosser: That he wouldn't be, uh, you know, maybe taking a few more shots down the stretch. So the question here is what was the expectation going into that game, right? To hold him accountable, we have to know what was expected. So what we're gonna do now is take a pause and take a listen to Joel Embiid's, press conference afterwards.

[00:05:46] Reporter: Joel, how much more do you think he needed from James harden? When you look at his points output and whatever? 

[00:05:56] Joel Embiid: Oh, I mean, I don't know. I think he's been, uh, obviously, uh, I'm sure. You know, since, uh, we got him everybody expected, uh, the Houston James harden. Um, but that's not who he's anymore. Uh, he's more of a play maker. Uh, You know, there are times, you know, could have been, uh, as all of us, uh, could have been more aggressive. Uh, all of us. 

[00:06:23] Nate Prosser: All right. So, Embiid makes a comment about answering the question of, did you expect more from Harden? And he talks about people expecting that he was gonna be the Houston James Harden, but that's not who he is anymore. That he's more of a Playmaker now, which definitely got some press in the media, I will say.

[00:06:43] Nate Prosser: Uh, and then he goes on to say, yeah, I think at times he could have been a little bit more and he doesn't fully say it, but he says we all could have been more aggressive. And that's kind of an interesting moment, right? Because in Joel's mind, he was expecting Harden to be more aggressive and to be that Playmaker that he described.

[00:07:02] Nate Prosser: And so. You could say that there's accountability there, right. That Embiid is through the public, through the press conference, aligning to what was expected of Harden going into the game and then how he performed. What's interesting is to look then at Harden's response to a similar question. So let's take a listen to that.

[00:07:23] Reporter: You won only took two shots in second half. Was there anything Miami did or was it just, 

[00:07:26] James Harden: Uh, we, we ran. Our offense, the ball, you know, I feel like the ball moved and, you know, just didn't get back to me. 

[00:07:36] Reporter: Why weren't you more aggressive? 

[00:07:39] James Harden: Um, like I just said, we run offense, the ball, you know, Just didn't get back to me.

[00:07:46] Nate Prosser: Okay. So Harden's comment is we ran the offense and the ball didn't get back to me. So the way he's describing that, the expectation going into the game is that they would run the offense and where the ball moved and where the open shots were, those who those would take the ball. And it sounded like, although he didn't fully say it, but it sounded like Embiid's perspective going into the game was that the gameplan was that James would uou know, go get the ball, be a little bit more aggressive, uh, be that Playmaker. And so it's hard to have a culture and a team of accountability. If the expectations aren't clear now, again, we're basing this off of what they said in the press conference, going back to our ground rule, number three, we have a lot of gratitude towards athletes having to answer questions after you lost an emotional game and your, uh, your season is over, is a really tough thing to do.

[00:08:37] Nate Prosser: So, uh, you know what they're saying, versus what's reality, it's sometimes hard to pinpoint, but this is an example again, of when expectations might not be totally clear going in and then it's, you can't have a culture or you can't have a situation of accountability unless that walks in. So who who's responsible for setting the game plan is that Doc, is that a combination of the best players?

[00:09:01] Nate Prosser: Should they be recalibrating that during timeouts and figuring that out and talking about it? So you're not talking about after the game? Probably. Right. So another key element of accountability is it's not just that you set the goals or you set the expectations at the start of the project, but that you're reinforcing it throughout.

[00:09:18] Nate Prosser: So think about that. What are the timeouts that you have within your team and your office? How do you replicate that? Where you're checking in and saying, Hey, you need to take more shots. You need to be more aggressive or whatever that is for your specific project. Okay with that backdrop let's uh, let's, let's zoom out again to accountability.

[00:09:37] Nate Prosser: So again, an accountability conversation should sound something like you were expected to do A and you did B. And what's interesting is people like, like I said, They often mistake that is, let me get you in trouble. You were supposed to do A, and you didn't do it. You did B and I'm very annoyed by that.

[00:09:54] Nate Prosser: And I'm gonna tell you about it, but just as much as it's, when someone misses an expectation, it also could be someone that nails an expectation or exceeds it. So you have to think about accountability, both in the positive and the negative of aligning on what was expected and what happened. And if what happened, exceeded that expectation, you have to make sure that you reward people.

[00:10:15] Nate Prosser: And now of a sudden, when you're creating a culture of accountability, it's not just to get people in trouble. It's to constantly help people to understand what's expected and where they stand. So, the part that people tend to shy away from here is that this requires that feedback piece, right? In order to tell you what you did, that second part of it, here's, what's expected. Here's what you did. That requires feedback. And so. As I mentioned, the tough part for professional athletes is that feedback often comes through others. So if we try that, uh, you know, raise your hand game again. How many of you like critical feedback to be publicly shared in front of your entire team?

[00:10:56] Nate Prosser: Probably not too many hands in the air. Right. And so, uh, Embiid and Harden are basically forced to answer questions about each other and about the team and about themselves in a public forum, which is a really hard thing to do. So tip tip of the day, here is no feedback triangles. Don't give feedback about other people to someone else, right?

[00:11:16] Nate Prosser: The triangle of, let me go tell someone's boss so they can tell that person. Give that feedback directly. And that's when you're gonna have the best, the best accountability on your team. 

[00:11:26] Nate Prosser: All right. So my key question for you and the lesson learned here is, does your team know what's expected of them? Because it's really hard to have an accountability conversation. If the expectation isn't clear, if you don't know that you're supposed to be aggressive going into the game, it's hard to after the game fault someone for not being aggressive. And I know that sounds super simple and basic, but more often than we realize people on the team don't know what's expected of them and don't take the time to do it. 

[00:11:57] Nate Prosser: So with that, I think this is a good time to shift gears a little bit and move from the NBA over to the NFL. So we're gonna look at, uh, full disclosure, one of my favorite teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers. So I grew up in Pittsburgh and it's hard to do that without becoming a lifelong Steelers fan.

[00:12:14] Nate Prosser: And so I definitely fit into that category. And the Steelers coach is Mike Tomlin. So if you've spent any time listening to his press conferences, you probably know that there's lot of good leadership content to pull out of what Mike Tomlin has to say. So he'll probably be a pretty frequent guest on the show if I were to guess.

[00:12:36] Nate Prosser: All right. So one of his favorite quotes, his Tomlinisms, if you will, is, well, in fact, instead of me telling you, why don't we have him tell you 

[00:12:46] Mike Tomlin: The standard is the standard. That's our motto. That's our creed. That's our approach. 

[00:12:51] Nate Prosser: The standard is the standard. All right. So what does that mean? Let's break that down.

[00:12:56] Nate Prosser: So, first of all, if you've ever seen a picture of the Steelers locker room that is up on their wall, as the players walk out in those Steelers block block letters, uh, the standard is the standard and he repeats that often. So you'll hear him when he is micd up, you'll hear him saying that on the sideline.

[00:13:14] Nate Prosser: You'll hear him say that in press conferences. You'll hear the him say that in interviews with the media, he says that all the time. And so what does that mean? It means that the expectation is the expectation. It doesn't matter if you are first team, all pro like TJ wat or your third string backup because people are hurt.

[00:13:31] Nate Prosser: You go in there. And if the expectation is that that's your assignment and you're gonna make the tackle. That's the standard. Right. And he, uh, borrows from his mentor's phrase, Tony Dungy, which is no excuses, no explanations. So if you didn't make that tackle Tomlin, doesn't have a lot of time to hear about why he wants you to know that that's the standard and the standard is the standard.

[00:13:55] Nate Prosser: So how does that play out in terms of accountability? Well, he not only says that, uh, in a macro sense all the time, the standard is the standard, but he's reinforcing that in every play. So again, if you, the, probably the easiest way to think about it is assignment football. So who's assigned to make the tackle.

[00:14:13] Nate Prosser: That's your expectation. That's your standard. Who's assigned on the offensive side to make the block. The wide receiver's job is to run a fly route, to take the safety out of the play so that someone can come over the middle. That's the expectation. And if you, uh, jog on that fly route, then the stan... you didn't meet the standard.

[00:14:31] Nate Prosser: And so he uses it both ways, right? So I made a big case in the opening of the podcast that it doesn't mean getting people in trouble. It means whenever the expectation is set and people then perform the act. You talk about whether they met the expectation or they didn't. So you'll hear him say if a tackle wasn't made that, you know, he'll get on someone, but conversely, if someone does make the play and they live up to the standard, you'll see him pointing at that person and saying, Good job.

[00:15:04] Nate Prosser: Good job. Yes. So it's that reinforcement. It's that recognition and the way you need to think about that from your perspective as a leader, is, are you doing both, are you balanced in your approach or you're looking at both ... Did they meet the expectation? Was that clear and when they hit it, did I reinforce that?

[00:15:24] Nate Prosser: So again, some of the language that you'll hear him saying in a press conference is I appreciate the effort. I appreciate that those guys lived up to the standard today of Steelers football, but then if they don't, you'll hear, 'em also say things like that was a JV performance from all of us. So both publicly and privately he's reinforcing the standard.

[00:15:46] Nate Prosser: And then he's also praising and being clear on when people met the standard and what they did. And conversely, he's letting them know when they came in below. And so this, uh, reputation and this sort of ongoing reinforcement of accountability is really powerful. Uh, not to say that the Steelers have done amazing in free agency, but you will hear some people say that I wanna play for coach Tomlin.

[00:16:10] Nate Prosser: I met with coach Tomlin and I love his approach. You you've heard Ryan Shazi and others say one of the things they love about him so much is he's completely transparent. It's no fluff, you know exactly where you stand. People like to know where they stand. So if we turn that over to the business side.

[00:16:29] Nate Prosser: One of the biggest reasons that people leave companies is because they don't know where they stand, or they don't feel like they're developing, or they feel like that they can't progress in their career. And so it's this kind of lack of accountability. It's this lack of reinforcement of here's what is expected of you.

[00:16:45] Nate Prosser: And here's when you met it, here's when you didn't and you should be having those conversations all the time, right. In this sort of credo that Mike Tomlin shares. Because when you do that, your people feel like they can trust you. They know that if you say great job, that you really mean it. And they know, if you say, Hey, you didn't really come through that time.

[00:17:04] Nate Prosser: We need you to do better. They're motivated to do that too. So as you think through this, my again, challenge to you is what is your reputation in terms of accountability with your team? Because if you can get a Mike, Tomlin, like reputation, not only are you gonna retain the people on your team, but you're gonna build, uh, You know, a culture that people wanna be a part of. So it's gonna really help with your recruiting, um, with your acquisition, both externally and within your current firm. 

[00:17:34] Nate Prosser: Okay. It's now time to shift back to the NBA. So what we're gonna look at next is Russell Westbrook's first season with the Lakers, and we're gonna specifically jump into his postseason exit interview.

[00:17:48] Nate Prosser: So a little bit of background on Russ. Uh, if you didn't know, he's the fourth highest paid player in the NBA. His salary came in at $44.2 million, uh, just above him was James Harden, who we talked about earlier and John Wall, which is of course interesting at $44.3 million. And then Steph Curry at $45.7 million.

[00:18:11] Nate Prosser: Lakers finished 11th in the West, missed the playoffs in the play-in game with a record of 33 and 49 and Westbrook average for the year 18, seven and seven. After, uh, last season's triple double of 22, 11 and 11 with the Wizards. Westbrook's PER this year was 15. I know there's, you know, some critics of PER but his career PER is 22.

[00:18:37] Nate Prosser: So pretty clearly a down year for him. And he, uh, he described that in his exit interview that he wasn't happy with his play, but he also said a bunch of other interesting things. So. THe first thing I wanna dive into is expectations. So coming back to kind of where we started with the NBA, with the Sixers around, you know, what was the expectation, uh, not just going into a game, but going into the year.

[00:19:00] Nate Prosser: So, you know, brought Westbrook on supposed to be a three-headed monster with AD and LeBron. And so. There's this idea of let Russ be Russ. So a reporter asked this question of Westbrook in the, um, exit interview and said, uh, you know, didn't LeBron and AD support that. And his quote I have here was basically saying, yeah, they said it, but let's, let's be honest that wasn't true.

[00:19:33] Nate Prosser: So saying that they kind of paid lip service, this idea that he could be himself throughout the year, but he really wasn't able to do that. He was stifled throughout the year. And so that's interesting, right? Because the whole crux of that of Let Russ be Russ is really high usage, heliocentric approach to the game ball dominant.

[00:19:54] Nate Prosser: So when he had his MVP in OKC, he had, I think it might be the highest usage rate of all time, if not one of the top usage rates. Uh, and so he wanted to have the ball he wanted to, you know, I heard a story that he wanted to bring the ball up. Uh, Vogel's approach was a little bit more open-minded of, you know, who got the rebound, could bring it up and run.

[00:20:15] Nate Prosser: So there was kind of a lack of understanding of how they would approach the game. What I think is really interesting is we talk about setting expectations. So I'm sure they talked about, you know, letting Russ be Russ at the beginning, but they didn't recalibrate on that along the way, because clearly it wasn't happening and it wasn't feasible.

[00:20:35] Nate Prosser: LeBron ended up averaging 37.2 minutes per game per the year, one of the highest, um, minutes per game in the league. So LeBron was gonna be out there and we've seen for 20 straight years that LeBron is incredibly ball dominate. So he plays, he sort of dictates everything. The ball is in his hands. So where were the minutes for Russ to be Russ, especially when you consider that he was not interested in coming off the bench to sort of stagger the minutes. So that only leaves, you know, a, a shade under 11 minutes for them to play opposite each other. That's not enough, but you're probably asking what does this mean for me in my business?

[00:21:14] Nate Prosser: Well, we talked a ton about setting expectations and how important that is. But the key learning here is setting realistic expectations that are feasible and then checking in on them in a macro sense. So they had a game plan going in, right. That was. Russ was gonna be Russ. They would sort of share time.

[00:21:32] Nate Prosser: They would share the ball and pretty quickly you could see that it didn't work. So LeBron got hurt a number of times throughout the year. And Westbrook actually averaged 22, 8 and eight when LeBron wasn't out there. So he played better when he could play his style. When the two of them were together, it just really didn't work.

[00:21:50] Nate Prosser: And so, uh, there was a lot of scrutiny and a lot of question asking when the signing happened before the year, like how could this work? Their plan wasn't realistic. Right? It seems pretty clear that the way they were gonna approach this, uh, it wasn't gonna work out and they should have been able to figure that out pretty quickly.

[00:22:08] Nate Prosser: Right. So when we go back to what I was talking about with the Sixers of, you know, in the middle of timeout, so that's at a macro sense, are you checking in on the expectation of you know, we thought one of us thought that harden was gonna be a Playmaker. And the other thought that he was gonna let the game come to him.

[00:22:23] Nate Prosser: Are you checking in and sort of recalibrating on that at timeouts, uh, in a longer project is the, you know, analogy of the whole season for the Lakers. Are you checking in at those moments to say the expectation that we set at the beginning of the project is that unrealistic. And we do, we need to change our approach and change the project, uh, or change the expectation around that.

[00:22:45] Nate Prosser: And you know, maybe they did have that conversation and Russ wasn't receptive to that change. I don't know. But this idea of setting an expectation that's doomed from the start seems to be a pretty good analogy for the Laker's season. 

[00:23:00] Nate Prosser: Okay. Now looking at kind of the next part of the exit interview, that's worth breaking down. And this goes to what I would call is self-accountability. So we've spent a ton of time so far talking about leadership, accountability, setting expectations, checking in. If they happen rewarding when they're hit or exceeded. Punishing or talking about or coaching whenever they're not, but there's also this element of self-accountability, which is I as a leader, step up and I take the blame and deflect the credit.

[00:23:30] Nate Prosser: Right. It's uh, definitely a best practice if you want to be a leader, take the blame, but deflect the credit and then coach afterwards, of course, but. And one of the, uh, in, in the press conference when asked about his play, uh, Westbrook's quote was, "You know, just my play in general, not my best season, just going off my own personal scale because that's the only thing I go off regardless of the season, obviously I'm coming off averaging a triple double, so anything less than that would not be a good season in my eyes. You know what I'm saying? So that's why the scale of where it comes from is a little bit different." 

[00:24:12] Nate Prosser: Now as a Lakers fan, which I'm not, that's a tough thing to hear. I think, as a Lakers teammate and a part of the organization, that's a tough thing to hear because he says specifically just going off my own personal scale, because that's the only thing I go off of regardless of the season. So he only goes off his own scale and his scale is based on stats, which is the triple double. So I know I'm cherry picking one quote from his press conference, but in terms of best practices of accountability, of having a goal and evaluating yourself against that as something that feels selfish, that's a difficult thing for the team.

[00:24:55] Nate Prosser: So when you think about self accountability, The question for you is if something goes wrong, how do you approach that? Are you the one to step in and say, Hey, that's on me. Uh, as a team, we didn't get it done. Right. And take collective blame as a team. Or are you the one to point fingers and say, this was because of the coach.

[00:25:14] Nate Prosser: This is because of this teammate, or this was because of this project disruption or whatever it is. So. The self-accountability piece of this is really important, too. Um, if you listen to that exit interview in more depth, you'll hear that there is a lot of, um, pointing to the coach and Westbrook talks about how it ...Vogel had a problem with him, which was kind of an interesting spin. The nugget here is the way I summarized accountability initially, which is commitment. So are you clear on the commitments you are personally making to the team and when you fall short of your commitments, are you calling yourself out and holding yourself accountable?

[00:25:58] Nate Prosser: Uh, and letting the team know that you came up short, right? And, uh, hopefully you're not celebrating yourself as see the other side of that. You can deflect that to the rest of the team, but being clear on your commitments and how you met them. And if you feel like you're skating around your commitments or you're kind of explaining away why you didn't make good on your commitments, which definitely had a feeling in that exit interview with Westbrook, um, that's not the way to show leadership.

[00:26:26] Nate Prosser: That's not the way to build trust within your team. 

[00:26:31] Nate Prosser: Okay, thanks for tuning in, uh, let's recap. We broke down accountability today. It does not mean getting people in trouble. So if you hear that, make sure you correct people in your office. Accountability is about aligning what was expected and what actually happened.

[00:26:48] Nate Prosser: So my easy summarization of that is did people follow through on their commitments? Was the commitment clear? Did they follow through. We talked a little bit about the Sixers and their game six loss where it wasn't, it wasn't really clear based on harden and Embiid's post game press conferences of how aggressive Harden was expected to be into the game.

[00:27:09] Nate Prosser: We talked about the Tomlinism of the standard as the standard, and then we broke down, uh, let Russ be Russ and how those expectations weren't exactly clear too. 

[00:27:19] Nate Prosser: For now less talk and more action. So it's time for the LCT weekly challenge, which is something you can put into practice right away. So what we'll ask you to do is to sit down with people on your team and whether that's your direct reports or project team, or anyone that you work with and have that person write down...

[00:27:39] Nate Prosser: what they think is expected of them and concurrently you write down what you think is expected of them. And then after you each write it, share your sheets of paper and compare and see how similar they are, and then you can flip it and do it for the other person as well. You'll be amazed at what you might learn in those 10 minutes of how you might not be as clear on the same page as you want.

[00:27:59] Nate Prosser: And you can do any variation of that, that you want in terms of what exactly are we talking about in terms of what's expected of me? You can get specific. However you want to do it, but take those 10 minutes would love to hear from you. Um, and how it goes. You can email me. The email address is Nate@LeadershipChalkTalk.com.

[00:28:18] Nate Prosser: Love to hear how your challenge went. Would also love to hear if you have any requests for future episodes. So if you want a particular leadership topic you wanna break down or you have a press conference or, uh, a tweet or some social media that you think is really interesting, that might be good to talk about on the show.

[00:28:35] Nate Prosser: Please let me know. And hopefully we can feature it on a future episode. Until next time, give that challenge a try, get clear with your team. And be that awesome leader you were meant to be. All right. See ya.