Take Accountability for Your Career Development

A middle manager with a large consumer products company took his direct reports through an Accountability Training and Executive Coaching process. During an Executive Coaching session a few weeks after starting the process, the manager admitted that he was allowing “pressing circumstances” to distract him. He wasn’t modeling Focused Feedback or Solve It behavior when it came to his own professional training and career development. He resolved, once again, to take accountability for his development and asked his direct reports to do the same. This time he modeled the behavior and attitude he wanted to see in his direct reports. After a few months, he and his team had moved to a whole new level of development and performance. The leader described the transformation this way: “Once I decided that seeking feedback, taking accountability for my development, and coaching others had to become an integral part of my daily leadership, I began seeing real movement in the team. It made me realize that I had to become the change I wanted to see in my team. Not only did I become a better leader in the process, but everyone on the team also became better—they actually started taking greater accountability for their own development.” Today, every member of the team has moved on to positions of greater responsibility and leadership.

Many people in organizations today feel limited in their ability to exercise real power or meaningful control over their own professional training and career development, so they react to circumstances instead of creating their own futures. Just as the foregoing story illustrates, one manager can turn things around for himself and his team by taking accountability for his own personal development and holding others accountable in a positive, principled way to do the same.

The first step to helping others take accountability for their development is to make sure you are modeling and practicing the powerful principles of ownership and accountability relative to your own development. To learn more about taking accountability for your development and holding others accountable in a positive and principled way to do the same, we invite you to join the Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review actual client case studies.

Sign up for one of our upcoming webinars to learn how to better take accountability for yours and your team’s development.

Accountability Training, Focused Feedback, and Solve It are registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership, Inc. All other registered trademarks and trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.