I Like The Way This Guy Thinks…

The Myth of Accountability

What a jam-packed day for discovery!!

Hats off to Mattison Grey [www.greystoneguides.com] for showing me Catalina Coffee, an eclectic roasterie and coffeeshop in the Historic District of Houston.  I highly recommend the experience: the coffee is superb, the baristas are performance artists, the ambience is delectable and the patrons are warm, open, talkative and an utter joy.  2201 Washington- get off I-10 at Taylor exit, head south, keep right when it turns to Sawyer, turn left on Washington and it’s on the right on the corner.  I expect to have many many more of my “thousand cups of coffee” there.

Mattison is a coach, and as she explained, she is a “real coach“.  In a time when so many recently terminated mid-level managers are rebranding their unemployment as “executive coach”, it is understandable that she might seem a bit peckish about that distinction.  As always happens in these encounters, the conversation wandered.  Actually “wandered” might even be too weak a word.  “Caromed” comes to mind: women’s rugby, aerial photography, CrossFit Training [all the rage; look it up], Superperformance, underperformance, “Crossing the Chasm”.  Did I mention that I love this project?

About midway through our stay, we ran across the concept of accountability.  I had recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, a coach, a real coach, about the notion of “contructive accountability”, a topic on which he and another colleague of mine have done a great deal of work.  Expect to hear more about “constructive accountability” on this blog at a later date.  But Mattison took the position that accountability is actually a myth in the way it is implemented in most circumstances: “we only use it to get people to do something that they don’t want to do”. 

Think about the last time that you heard the word “accountability” [or "accountable" ] used; most likely it was on a newscast, or immediately after some report of a failure, when someone is demanding that someone else be held accountable.  When was the last time you heard someone insist that another person be held accountable for having done something positive?  “Accountable” strikes fear in our hearts.  What image does this sentence conjure for you: “Someone has to be accountable for this.”  Do you see a mother standing in the doorway with an armful of flowers and adoring children and husband looking on, or do you see that same mother finding a peanut butter and jelly rendition of “The Last Supper” on the dining room wall?  When we hear “accountable”, we internalize “punishment“, creating a response of fear and dread.

I had to ask if this weren’t simply a semantic manipulation, but I have to admit that Mattison’s examples and points did lead me to her same conclusion.

How are you using accountability?  Are you perpetuating the myth?  Why?  Can the dread internalization be changed?  Need it be changed?  I wonder if JP’s ideas about “constructive accountability” will help this.

I would like your opinion on this concept.  Drop me a line through the Comments section below.  I’m going to hold you accountable.

And as for Mattison, I like the way this woman thinks.