BRX Pro Tip: Hire More People Who Demonstrate Accountability
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today’s topic, personal accountability.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:09] Yeah. This is so important to me and it’s so important to your company. When you’re working with people, you have to have people that demonstrate accountability. Accountable people don’t make excuses. They don’t play the blame game. They take responsibility and they have that make-it-happen attitude. And they don’t wait around for someone to tell them what to do. They take action when action needs to be taken. And you have to have a culture that enables that action to be taken in a way that they don’t feel like their job is on the line or that’s not their job to do some of these things. So, that’s the leader’s job to make sure that the culture is right in order for people to feel safe in order to take that accountability. But you also want to attract and hire people who, as their default position, is personal accountability.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] And in order to foster this kind of culture, you have to be able to share a clear vision of what is expected. Your people have to understand the outcome you desire, and on both sides of the ledger that the things you expect and most importantly, what you will not tolerate. There has to be a true north. There has to be what is acceptable, what is desired, and what is unacceptable. And if somebody honestly tries something and makes a mistake, you can’t shame the mistake. You can’t tease them about the mistake in a way that makes them afraid to take more risks down the line. You have to role model looking at a mistake as a learning opportunity, not a failure. That’s so important because people are afraid to take action because they’re afraid they’re going to make a mistake, and they’re going to afraid they’re going to get embarrassed or fired for it. So, create a safe culture that allows people to, you know, when their heart’s in the right place, and they’re trying to do the right thing, if they make a mistake, you got to let them know that that’s okay. And finding that right best fit team member is critical to your success. So, always remember you want to hire slowly and fire quickly.
Stone Payton: [00:02:15] Well, and I have a book recommendation on this topic. It’s called The QBQ!. And QBQ stands for the Question Behind the Question. The author is John Miller, a personal friend of mine, a colleague of mine some years back. But I highly recommend getting that book. It’s a quick, easy read. It is chockfull of operational examples of personal accountability, the price you pay when your organization doesn’t have it. It speaks to returning the learning to the organization and cultivating that culture, that environment of personal accountability. But I mean, the fact is, if you can build a culture of personal accountability, you can produce much better results in a lot less time. So, check out that book, The QBQ! By John Miller.
