Excuses.

You didn’t do it, but you do have some great reasons why you didn’t.

Nobody can blame you. You’re completely off the hook.

Somehow though, even with our reasons, and even though nobody can fault us, we know our relationships are not better, and we haven’t made progress.

“Great Excuses! I’m going to rely on you for even more critical tasks!”, said nobody ever.

What if there was a different way forward?

“I did not do what I said I was going to do. I will fix it by doing it now. Would that work? How else can I clean up this mess I made?”

Now, they’re going up in your estimation, because they’re still honoring what they said they’d do, and not involving you in the drama of their lives. They’re taking ownership.

Even better, they say this ahead of time “I will not be able to make my original commitment. I can do X or Y instead. Would either of those work? How can I clean this up?”

Accountability

Why don’t we hold ourselves and each other to a simple standard of “Did you do what you said you’d do?”

Because we generally think in terms of blame and consequences, instead of accountability.

Blame and guilt are constant barriers to growth.

When someone feels blamed, they get defensive, and they shut down, and they’re not accessing their own power in the moment.

When you try to shift blame away from you, you disempower yourself, because you are now saying “I could not have done anything differently.”

Maybe that’s true sometimes, but what could you learn from how things went for the future? What’s the lesson in the feedback you got from not accomplishing what you set out to accomplish?

It’s a big thing for someone to take feedback baldly, and without either apologizing or hiding, acknowledge the truth of what was said, incorporate it, and decide to move forward differently.

Ownership; Internal Commitment

Even better than accountability, however, is ownership with internal commitment.

It’s being so committed to the mission that your particular ego isn’t really what’s on your mind. It’s the fact that the work did not get done, which you are committed to, internally.

When your motivation is coming from some deep places, you don’t have to be held accountable. You are completely committed to getting the work done, and if you can’t do it, you find the people who can.

You’re not just cleaning up messes to repair trust. You’re doing it to make sure things happen, and you’re repairing trust to help the mission keep going.

If you’re committed to the mission, only results count.