Ever wondered why some leaders excel while others falter? Wonder no more, as we dissect the complexities of accountability and responsibility, and how they impact not just individuals but entire teams. With relatable anecdotes from our personal experiences, we highlight how poor delegation and management can spell doom for projects.
Shifting gears, we talk about how virtues and values play an essential role in shaping leaders. We help you understand the difference between accountability and responsibility, and how they often get mixed up. We discuss how virtues and values interact with accountability and responsibility, and how this interaction influences effective leadership. Join us on this insightful journey, as we explore the dynamics of leadership, responsibility, and accountability.
Ever wondered why some leaders excel while others falter? Wonder no more, as we dissect the complexities of accountability and responsibility, and how they impact not just individuals but entire teams. With relatable anecdotes from our personal experiences, we highlight how poor delegation and management can spell doom for projects.
Shifting gears, we talk about how virtues and values play an essential role in shaping leaders. We help you understand the difference between accountability and responsibility, and how they often get mixed up. We discuss how virtues and values interact with accountability and responsibility, and how this interaction influences effective leadership. Join us on this insightful journey, as we explore the dynamics of leadership, responsibility, and accountability.
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Speaker 1:
This is unleashing leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and you are listening to our special eight episode mini series on our team interview for the ideal team player. Let's jump right in, as we're trying to continue to message properly to our team members is this difference between accountability and responsibility and I think that those two terms get thrown around together a lot and what I think the difference is and, dave, I'm really interested in your opinion on this too but accountability is like, ultimately it's on me. I can give you just something to do and say can you do this for me? Just, and if you don't do it, you're accountable to me for the fact that you didn't get it done. But if you don't get it done, I'm still accountable to somebody else for the fact that I didn't get it done, and I think that that gets lost a lot in all of this discussion is who's accountable and who's responsible and how we kind of maybe abuse those terms because it becomes a good excuse I'm responsible for all of this and it's like okay, but how are you being held accountable?
Speaker 1:
Because, just being responsible so I don't have to make a decision, I don't want to make a decision because I'm responsible for this. It's better status quo, but who's holding you accountable and who's holding them accountable? It's kind of like you know what I'm doing, that I'm filling the whole hour now in Babel. So, dave, I'll let you cut it and save me here. My ship is sinking and I need a life raft.
Speaker 2:
No, it is interesting because the two words can be interchangeable if you don't define them, like if you just throw them out there. But I agree that I'll go back to our t-shirt. Right, the throat to choke is the accountable. That's the final line.
Speaker 1:
So if you're accountable it's on you.
Speaker 2:
Responsible. I look at that as there's a team effort here. There's different people, members of the team that are responsible for maybe different aspects or milestones of the project, so there could be several parties involved that are responsible to get work done, but ultimately the accountable person, that's the one who has to make sure it got done, it got done in the right way, and move on from it. So, responsible I look at as you don't. You're more than likely going to have more than one person responsible for something that you know, a bigger initiative or something like that. Accountable you can only have one. There's no option. There's only one person.
Speaker 1:
Gotcha. So it's the ramifications. Basically, like if, for instance, let's say I have a small project and let's say that I assign that project to somebody who and I say, you know, team member X, here's a project and you're responsible for getting the project done, and let's say that the project has, it requires a skill set that that employee just does not have, right, so they're responsible for getting it done, but I'm I'm pretty accountable for the fact that I need to be accountable for the fact that I assigned it to somebody who doesn't have the capability to just do it in the first place, right, like so that. So if that person fails, is that person really responsible for the failure, you know, or should they be held accountable for the failure? If I give something to you that I know that you are wholly inadequate to do and you fail, that's kind of a cop out, right. It's like, wow, well, that person failed. And it's like, yeah, but I gave you something in the first place that I should have never given you, and so that's bad delegation right.
Speaker 1:
You have a fact of delegation or poor delegation.
Speaker 2:
That's just. I don't have time for this. I'm putting it on you. You figure it out, right? That's bad management, bad leadership. You're just rolling the ball down the road a little bit. You, someone else, take care of this and then come back to me with something good, right it's kind of like the consulting thing.
Speaker 1:
It's kind of like well you know, consultant, we're going to put you responsible and coming up with a solution, Right, you know?
Speaker 2:
what I mean. And then, and then, we're not going to give you all the resources or what you need to choke right there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we're going to, we're going to hold you accountable for something that you actually can't even administer, right, like we're not going to give you the authorities, and I think you see it all the time. I think maybe where we can go with this next is this idea between values and virtues. You know, values are things we talk about. We like to tell everybody we're all about it's the buzzwords and the signs on the wall and stuff like that. It's like dream big and all this other stuff. Right, work hard and you know work, life balance and all these other buzzwords and a lot of them are pretty undefinable, like somebody's got to come up with what that means.
Speaker 1:
And then you have virtues, which are the things you live by, and I made a point and one of the episodes I did to talk about the fact that I think that the terminology in the book is wrong. I think that these are virtues, are not values. I think you either live by the fact that you're striving to be humble, hungry and smart, or you don't. If you talk about them, you know, if you say I'm a very humble person, the first thing I think about when somebody says they're very humble is I'm like they're not very humble because they're bragging about being humble, right.
Speaker 1:
They're literally bragging about being humble. So it's, it's the virtues, is what you live by, and I think that that's you know. Maybe sometimes we're accountability and responsibility Clyde too, because if you're accountable and you're saying I live by something, then there's, like this force that makes you want to act a certain way. There's that makes you want to look at yourself and say and not beat yourself up and say how do I get better? Because this is literally who I think I am as a human being.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
Yes, so Jess jump in on this.
Speaker 3:
Yes, I, I mean it's oh gosh, I got to unpack some of that too. I totally agree with you, kind of like tying the virtues into the accountability part of it and going back to what we were talking about the example that we were talking about before where you have this manager that's delegating something inappropriately. Well, that person should be held accountable for that choice. Like that's really the accountability that ties back to that virtue of you know making the right decisions, doing the best that they can do and in making those those proper choices. So I do think that the virtues and the accountability tie in perfectly.
Speaker 1:
That's maybe where that smart lives. To right, Because it's it's easy and I think I think smart is the hardest one to number one really identified because it can be so manipulating. But it's also easy to misunderstand smart and to get offended. Because if I were to say it just comes up with the terminology, right. But if I were to say, hey, Jess, you're not very smart, First thing you're gonna be is like Good call a good call.
Speaker 1:
No, but I might get slapped. I mean, it's kind of like you know who. Are you to say that I'm not very smart? I had a boss one time, my first job at a cash, my first real job. Well, I can't say it was my first job, but it was my first job that meant anything to me, let me put it that way. And I was at a restaurant Barton Grill in Pittsburgh and I was managing and in order to manager, you had to learn all the different lines and parts of the restaurant and everything.
Speaker 1:
And I type up this like eight page 18, page eight, I don't know. It was a big report about all the things that were wrong in the restaurant and how we could save money and make more money and all these types of things. Right, it was pretty much not about how we could do more, it was just basically, you know, trying to point out how smart I was about. You know what was going on in the restaurant. And I handed it to my boss and he threw it on the pile. And I go back in like a week later I'm like did you read my report? He's like, yeah, I threw it away. I'm like what do you mean you threw it away. He's like I said, you know he goes.
Speaker 1:
Well, it starts out by saying you're the smartest manager I have, and he goes. It was a pizza and grill restaurant, like we were making ribs and hamburgers and pizza and serving drinks. And he turns around and he goes do you know more about making pizza than rolling? And I go well, no, and he goes. Do you know more about cars than math? I'm like, well, no, but it has nothing to do with this. He goes you know more about 80s music than Robbie? And I go no, he goes. Well, how are you the smartest person in the room then?
Speaker 1:
And so, you know, we get stuck sometimes, as smarts is about what we think we know, and that's not what this smart is about. The smart is about how aware we are about what's going on around us, right, and so if I could be, I could be very humble and I could be very hungry and I could still be really, you know, not doing a good job, let's say, as a manager or as a leader, because I'm assigning things to people and I'm trying to hold them accountable for stuff. I'm trying to give them my accountability. This is your problem now, because I've assigned responsibility to you, but I'm assigning the responsibility and the accountability to somebody who is unfairly accepting it because they have to and they don't have the skills to be able to handle it, and so I would say that that's. It's just a really not smart thing to do, right, and I think that that maybe encapsulates what we're talking about with smart a little bit.