Wisdom Wrapped in Wit: The Journey to Accountable Leadership Practices

We come up with some really good stuff and it's fine , so , yeah , so if you've never heard us before , we talk , you know , a little bit of biblical , we talk a little bit of leadership and we talk a little bit of those dad jokes yes , we do . And if nothing else , we crack up on them .

So my wife and I took a little trip and we went up north to Branson and did a little sightseeing up there and saw the play Queen Esther oh my gosh , that is just absolutely amazing and did a little shopping at the outlet mall there and normally we don't do a lot of shopping on our vacations like that , but we did .

And I went to this one store had a product that I've had for a while and I don't I won't say the name of the product or the store because that wouldn't be fair but I bought a new item that I had had that the other one's kind of worn out , and I showed him the item because I had it with me , and the store person looked it up .

He looked it up in their catalog . He said , hey , we don't have it in stock , but we'll order for you , you can pay for it and then we'll ship it to your house . I said , hey , that's fantastic . So did that . We went on our trip , got home there was a box there , opened it up , they had sent me the wrong product .

And so I called the store yesterday , as a matter of fact , or two days ago . I called them and they said , well , got to talk to the manager , don't know if we can do this or not . And so the manager never called me . I called them back yesterday and they said well , no , we can't handle that , you're going to have to deal with our national company .

And so he gave me the 800 number . I called the national company this morning and they said well , you bought it in a store and we'd only deal with it if you bought it online . So we can't help you either . And I'm thinking , wow , where is customer service gone ? And why aren't anybody accountable for the fact that they sent me ?

They sold me the wrong product , and it's very easily to tell that it was the wrong product . And it just made me think , and one of the things I think is so lacking in culture , it seems to me , is customer service and accountability .

And I think accountability and credibility are so linked together that when you get good customer service or someone is accountable for their actions either good or bad it's the exception now instead of the rule , and that's enforced . So today , before we came up to the studio . I actually went to a local store . I talked to a great manager .

I called him beforehand , went in , took the product that I got in the mail . He made everything right and so it's like yeah , so there is . I was like , yeah , that to me is good accountability , good customer service , and we can go back to the Bible , one of the very first stories in the Bible .

So I think one of the greatest things about leadership is to be accountable for your actions , either good or bad , you know . If you made a mistake , you can fess up to it , say , hey , you know , let's make this right , I'm sorry , whatever . So I know you've probably had a lot of experience of that in the building industry .

Not that you can share everything , but why don't you jump in here , brother ?

You know , I have a lot of discussions with a lot of my clients and stuff and I'm like , well , there's a lot of stuff that goes on , you know , and there's a big gap between , you know , knowledge of some of my people that are helping me build the biggest investment of your life , and there's a lot between these two little .

There's a big gap there and I sort of fill that gap and sort of moderate everything .

And you know , you know my stories of accountability on some of my guys not doing what they're supposed to do and people that you know you pay them and then you have to get something redone and then it's just , you know , bite nails , you know , because then they're paid and you're way down the priority list and you know , and they don't have the foresight to go

. Well , if they don't do this , then I'm never gonna get the next four houses with this guy and make me a lot of money like I did on this one . But you know , hey , that's , that's all right . That's why I treat business to a lot of these people and I try to help them out on that , you know , from a training standpoint .

But I mean , I think one of the things in accountability is is and I try to follow it is leading by example . You know , and whatever I do in my business , I hope it follows down to a lot of my trades that are working from me .

They understand that if I'm doing something this way , then that's what it's expected of them , and I think that's one of the biggest things we can do from a leadership standpoint is to make sure that we are leading by example . We're not , you know , when nobody's looking , what are we doing ? I had a perfect example here .

I mean it's been many , many months now but my daughter , we were at a football game at the school and everything , and and they , everybody was running around and there was three girls and they were all running around and they actually bumped into the trash can . Well , it spilled over and spilled trash everywhere . Well , two of the girls they just kept running .

They looked at it and they've got a panic . Look on their face . They ran . Well , my daughter , you know , I felt I've raised pretty good . She stopped and her friends ran off and she picked up the trash can and she started putting all the trash back in there . Now , nobody was watching it , I didn't even see it .

My mom , my wife , saw it from a distance with watching her and there was no expectations . Nobody was watching her . It was just what she did . She felt those accountable , they , they made a mistake . She took care of it , even though all her friends ran off and my daughter's young she this is a something that's you know I felt pretty proud .

My wife was really proud and I was really proud of her . She stole me , but that's what it is . You know , lead by example . What do you do when people aren't watching ? You know , or are you telling a different story when you're , when you're not sitting with your loved one or your , your family or your , your somebody who's going to hold you accountable ?

And I think that's one of the things that we can apply to almost every aspect of life , even in our families . You know , for raising children , if we're blessed to have children , then as they grow older , then you know , hopefully , that parents have them do chores around the house or whatever .

And and there's a list of expectations of things that , okay , we expect that these are your chores for this week or this day or this month or whatever it may be . And um , and then one of the after thing okay , these are the expectations . It's like teaching a child to ride a bicycle . You're not just gonna give them a bike and then walk away .

You wanna be sure that they understand what the expectations are . You wanna be sure that you're with them , you encourage them . You have to show them sometimes how to do what they're supposed to do . If they fall over or make a mistake , the last thing you wanna do is start criticizing .

That doesn't help at all , especially when someone's in the learning mode , and so you want them to be as good at it as you are . It's something , and so , to me , accountability has a lot to do with your character , and do we allow ourselves to be held accountable for the things that we do , right and wrong , or do we only hold other people accountable ?

Someone told me a long time ago we value others by their actions . We value , we critique ourselves by our intentions , and so it's like no , we need to hold other people to the same standard as we hold ourselves , and hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others , and so accountability is one of those areas .

If you define the roles , you define the relationships , you define what you require as a business owner , as a leader , and if you can define that down , that's how you're gonna be able to hold those people accountable , because you've defined it . How many times is like that wasn't my job ?

And then instantly I tell leaders I'm like well , did you tell your employee that was his job ? Well , I mean , it was implied . Well , that is not the same as telling them right , you think that you might have said it . You can't hold that person accountable if you didn't set the expectations , if you didn't define it down . That's what in business .

That's why we have job descriptions , that's why we update job descriptions , that's why we define out roles , that you're supposed to be doing this , you're supposed to be doing this because we can hold you accountable after that .

We had staff meeting once a week for everybody and during those one-on-one times we would look at things that they were responsible for , ask them where they were kind of a status report and do we had to modify the expectation ? Do we had to modify the timeline ? Did we have to just scrap the project , whatever it was and so .

But there has to be somebody has to be making the decision , and so working together , and I think the more you get input from the other person about helping them set their own goal , then you can hold them accountable to what they set for themselves , and I think that's a real big part of accountability .

And then you go through the process of talking to people and setting the goal of if they make a mistake , don't blame the apple over here , right , Take ownership of it . And I think that's one of the biggest things that I'm really . I thought of all the stuff that you did when you're young .

You're growing up and stuff and I think we've talked about this on an earlier podcast is some of those little things stick with me when I didn't own up to them . Now , those are the things that bother me .

Now , right , when you're younger and you're like , well , it was his fault , and I still remember that , right , and I'm like it wasn't that hard to say , oh , it was my fault , I'm sorry I screwed up , right .

And now , when you're older and I try to ensure this back to my kids , you know and let them know it's okay , right , Even if you do something really bad , or you're doing something and you wreck the car or something . Don't blame it on somebody or whatever . Just come back and say it was my fault . Am I going to be mad ? I won't be as mad .

Is your mom going to be mad ? Oh yeah , she's going to be mad , right , but we'll get through it and I'll respect it more and we'll work through it .

Just because you did own up to your mistake and I think that's one of the most important part of accountability is owning your mistakes , is figuring out what's expected of you and then , if you do mess up , you know , say yeah , let's figure out how we do this together .

with other team members . They make mistakes , they don't own up to them , they're always blaming someone else . There's got to be a line in the sand where to say no , enough is enough . You know , this is hurting the organization , and I've had to do that , unfortunately , a couple of times in my career .

It's never pleasant to do that , but you can't just do it without forewarning . So you've got to be able to say okay , you know we're going to hold you accountable to this , and if this is not done by this particular time , then we're going to look at , you know , some other course of action .

She's always been the number two , and one of the things that she said that was probably it was so impactful to me when she said it is she always likes to be in the number two , because it's usually somebody else's idea or somebody that you know they've worked on it together , it's a co idea , but if it fails , she's not the one held accountable for it .

It'll be the number one person held accountable for it , and she'll get away unscathed , and if you think about that , that's a safe spot for a lot of people . Right , that's where employees are . That's a lot of people don't run businesses . They don't want to be the number , though , and they don't want it . They want to be in that number two role .

They want to try a new path , a new product or new something , and they don't want to be the first one there , and if you can find that safe spot and I would tell you that with that and we talked , and they went through many different things to say you need to be the number one , because you're not , so the one thing you're doing is you're not being held

accountable , but also you're not getting the credit , you know , and there's a lot to that , you know , so you're feeling insecure about doing that because somebody else has taken all the credit . They haven't patted you on the back . If you scored a home run , that's fine In business .

There's so many times , you know we talked about in this conference that I've , you know , hit home runs and then , you know , didn't hit home runs and you just got to get to the point where you just keep forging along . And if you are accountable to your actions and you know what went wrong , analyze it .

In our business , in my business , a lot of times I do LBs and NTs what did I like best about a situation ? And next time , what would I do differently ? And if you think about it like that , it's an easy path that you can take to become , you know , accountable person .

You know , I didn't have to motivate them to come in and do their work , and the more the more I would hire people that were very self-motivated , the easier it was to hold them accountable because they were very motivated to do whatever it was that you know the church needed them to do .

It could be a hospital business , it could be mission work , it could be leading worship , it could be office staff , it could be finance person , whatever it was . But the more motivated they are to come and do their best every day , not only were they easier to work with , but the accountability when they had to do something . It was an easy conversation

to have . So what is your experience in the building industry with that ?

But I mean I'm not saying it doesn't . There's a lot of people that are . A lot of times I will put people in teams because a lot of times they don't wanna hear it from the boss that I'm motivating them every day , because that would be like micromanaging and everything .

And it becomes that riff where that and I have no problem with it , especially as corporate trainer and all that .

But at the same time I have my number three and number two sometimes keep my number one accountable and then I'll mention some things to number one and then I'll have number two or three go talk to my number one and then I sort of drop the seed in their head . So I'll have a conversation .

Then number two will have a conversation and then it'll work on something together and it sort of says , okay , maybe I'm not being self-motivating as much as I thought I was . There's a lot of people in their head think I'm kicking booty , but they're not .

As a boss we can see 10 different people and we know that this one number one , number three and number seven they're not kicking booty . So if you take number eight and nine work with number seven . Number five and four work with number three . A lot of times you don't have to consistently say you're not kicking booty .

It's like it's implied once they see the work ethic of working in a team , so that's really good advice . Yeah , you just gotta watch that from a . You don't wanna be a micromanager , but at the same time , we're in business . I need to have things get done on a daily basis and that's one of the things .

And that leaves me into for me as a boss , one of the things for accountability that I tell leaders they need to be is more transparent . A lot of the leaders like to hold all the cards close to their chest , right .

This is what we do , this is what I do as a boss , and the more transparent you are with what you do , how you make money , what do you do on a daily basis , how does the business run ?

Well , these are the tasks that we need to accomplish to be able to pay the bills every day , and the more transparent you can come , that establishes credibility as the company and whole , instead of you holding all the accountability and then trying to motivate everybody else .

It's nice when you have 10 different people being accountable instead of you being accountable as a boss , because you can't always motivate the other people , but if they know the whole situation , they know what's going on . A lot of times , being transparent's a good , easy way to motivate somebody .

We don't have the expertise in house to do that , so let's hire somebody . And so we went out and looked for some people and but then we hired a person that was really able to do that kind of work and since I had no knowledge of how much work that takes , I had to get educated on expectations .

And the other people were throwing work at this person a lot , and we had to sit down and we finally said , okay , if I want you to do this , here's a list of things that you're saying that you need to do . Let's say there's 30 of them and I put something else on your plate .

Then this person would respond and I think it was a good learning experience for me . He says , okay , of the 30 things I need to do , and you asked me to do this , where do you want me , what do you want me not to do in order for me to do that , and where in the priority list is this new thing ?

And I had to learn to be patient , because I had an expectation of something that would happen a lot faster than it really was , Because I had no knowledge of technology about how to build a website and do all those kind of updated and all those kind of things .

And so the employee helped me have proper expectations , because they were able to be transparent about how long something a project was actually going to take , and not that they were wasting their time .

They were really really good at what they were doing , but they just had to help me understand that my expectation was a little too much for a timeline , and so we just had to modify that and everything turned out great at the end . But that was a learning experience for me .

I mean , everybody has different moral standards , so what's the accountability there ? I'm like , well , everything I'm doing is totally okay , right Cause there was no ethics in place . There's no guidelines to put in place .

And one of the things that we always do with companies when I'm consulting or coaching is we go through and write down all their items , that they guidelines that their company goes by If it's to make a profits number one . The customer service is number three , product quality is number two , you know .

And all this Because a lot of times , from a business standpoint , I can't be accountable . The situation that you mentioned about you know that you were trying to get the product . That person hasn't figured out that they've , they have put profit over customer service Because at some point they just said go away , we've already got your sale , we don't want it .

And customer service . So if I have a , if I've done this and I've looked at all the values of my company and I know that customer service is number one in my head . I'm gonna do everything I can , even giving you refund . I'll send you a self-addressed envelope . Put this in there , send it back to me .

Whatever needs to be done , I'll refund you , cause customer service is gonna trump profit and a lot of times I'll do this on like what's the values of your company ? And we need to not only establish what your top five values are , we need to put them in order so we can hold your employees accountable , Cause a lot of companies they don't know .

Maybe it was the boss , the owner of the company great , you would have got him . He would have said , sure , not a problem , but his employees might not been coached and says customer service is our number one value here . Do whatever we can to make the customer happy . And that might come from a leadership down .

It might not have made it down , so it's tough to say well , can we hold that a person accountable ? You know the $10 an hour guy that's answering the phone . I don't know , we gotta ask , and I know that you called back and talked to a manager , but even that that might be the $12 an hour guy right .

You know and you know and we don't know , we don't know the situation , and that's one of the things that I always try to have companies think about . You know , how can we , you know , be accountable ?

And let me ask you a question on that and I'm tying into business coming out the church , cause I know we have a lot of people that run churches , that listen to our show and everything . How do we make a church more accountable ? Or how does accountability really dig through it , through the church leadership , or any thoughts on that ?

Programming , theology and the denomination that I was in the Methodist church , they were built in accountability structures . You had like a finance committee , you had a trustees committee , it was . You weren't responsible for property . So I didn't have the authority unless someone just blatantly did something immoral .

I didn't have the authority to hire or fire anybody , you know , and especially hire somebody .

So I had to go through different groups of people to process it , to submit , and sometimes it would be , you know , they would agree with me and sometimes they wouldn't , but there was an accountability structure there and then we also had an annual report that we had to fill in for the denomination on different things , and so those kinds of things I think are

important in any organization , whether it's a church or whatever nonprofit . I think nonprofits get in trouble sometimes and corporations get in trouble .

If there's no accountability built into the system and you have one or two people making all the decisions , that's just eventually gonna be a disaster , and so I think accountability can be a good thing if it's done properly , right ?

We set her down and told her how good of accountability , how good that was . We rewarded her . I think we went out and bought her a new dress . I mean we really wanted to give her the recognition to go . You did the right thing , you know .

And then it wasn't because we were expecting it , right , you did it when nobody was watching and that is one of the biggest qualities that you can have .

And I think that you , if you think about what can you do to really cement that into somebody when they do good Cause so many times people don't get the pat on the back , they just say , okay , thanks for being accountable . You know that . But I mean you've got to really figure out a way to cement that .

You know , you might have a reward for your family , because you've gotten to some families have you know a , you know a chart that they're supposed to do all their chores and if they do so many , like 10 days in a row or 30 days in a row , then they get a special thing .

You know , go out for ice cream or something like that , and that , to me , you are going to reward . And if you reward that , that builds confidence , but it's also built in accountability , without having to say it , you're rewarding something that you want that , that behavior to be repeated .

Have a great Christmas and happy new year . We'll catch you on the flip side . All right , take care . Thanks , you guys , vamos .