Episode 84: The Power of Accountability
In this episode of “The Pursuit of Badasserie,” we delve into the transformative power of accountability in both personal and business contexts. Join us as we share practical tips, real-life examples, and actionable strategies to help you harness the power of accountability to achieve your goals and drive success. We discuss the importance of having an accountability partner, the role of personal accountability, and how different forms of accountability can impact your progress. Whether you’re looking to boost your business performance or improve personal habits, this episode provides valuable insights to help you stay on track and committed to your objectives.
Episode Highlights:
- Introduction to Accountability:
- The significance of accountability in business and personal growth.
- Personal anecdotes highlighting the impact of accountability in various industries, especially fitness.
- The Role of Accountability Partners:
- How accountability partners help maintain discipline and motivation.
- The difference between being a supportive accountability partner and a “yes” person.
- Examples of effective accountability partnerships in business coaching.
- Types of Accountability:
- External accountability (partners, coaches) versus personal accountability.
- The necessity of having someone to hold you accountable and push you beyond your comfort zone.
- Practical Tools and Techniques:
- Utilizing tracking systems and technology for accountability.
- Implementing the SMART methodology for goal setting.
- The importance of regular check-ins and progress reviews.
- Personal Accountability:
- Strategies for enhancing personal accountability.
- The psychological aspects of holding oneself accountable.
- Overcoming resistance to self-imposed accountability.
- Maintaining Accountability:
- Tips for staying committed to your goals.
- The importance of adjusting your accountability strategies as you grow and evolve.
Key Takeaways:
- Accountability is crucial for achieving lasting success in both personal and professional endeavors.
- Having a reliable accountability partner can significantly enhance your discipline and motivation.
- Effective accountability involves more than just setting goals; it requires continuous effort, regular reviews, and the willingness to push through challenges.
- Personal accountability is equally important and can be strengthened through self-awareness and practical tools.
Action Steps:
- Reflect on areas where you might be lacking accountability and consider how an accountability partner could help.
- Identify specific goals and implement tracking systems to monitor your progress.
- Regularly review your goals and adjust your strategies to ensure continuous improvement.
Resources Mentioned:
- SMART goal-setting methodology.
- Various tracking and progress review tools and technologies.
Connect with Us:
- If you need more external accountability, reach out to us for personalized support.
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Read the full transcript of this episode below!
Lynn Howard
Hey, I’m Lynn.
Amanda Furgiuele
And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast. We’re talking about one of the tried and true is the power of accountability.
It’s been huge. It has been a huge part of my businesses for years because I, for those you who don’t know, I was in the health and wellness atmosphere and there’s nothing, there are no business, this is in my opinion, that is as forward about the accountability as the fitness industry, because that is literally holding people accountable was literally what made me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And you’ll never convince me otherwise that accountability doesn’t make a big difference in your results, both from a fitness standpoint, but also from a business standpoint, it is everything when it comes
down to really defining your discipline and how far you get because we motivation discipline, those aren’t always readily available.
Accountability will get you there.
Lynn Howard
Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s funny when we decided that we’re going to, I mean, this is definitely like one of the reason why people hire us.
But I can remember like when back in the day when I first started coaching and consulting, living in Hawaii, and people would ask others that work with me, like, why Lynn?
Because she holds us accountable. Like, it’s the best thing and the worst thing about working with Lynn is that she’s going to hold us accountable.
And like, we definitely have that in common where we are like, no, and I think some of our key phrases that we use, like no excuses, only solutions, which was my tagline forever.
And then like, less talk more doing. So action, like that’s very much about, you know, ingrained in both of us, which is one thing that I think.
One reason why we work so well together as well is because we believe in that accountability, but there are some things around the power of accountability and some, I guess some agreements that need to be had in order to be able to get the most out of having an accountability partner as well.
And the first thing is, is when you’re looking for, because there’s two kinds of, well, there’s several kinds of accountability, but two kinds of accountability that really come to mind, especially with businesses, like the accountability that we have with others about ourselves, about others.
So I’ll look at that underneath one, but also the accountability that we have with ourselves, right? So there’s kind of two folds there.
Amanda Furgiuele
Absolutely. I think that it seems very easy to say that, Oh, well, I don’t really need, I can just do it myself.
I don’t need anybody to make me accountable. Like I’m disciplined. I’m motivated. I got this. And I’m going to
to go back with one of my favorite fitness examples. And I know you’re going to hear me say it a lot today.
But I don’t have a personal trainer because I don’t know how to do a squat. I when I’m hiring a personal trainer, I’m hiring them to make me do the squat.
I know how to do squat. I know I was a personal trainer for 20 years. I know how to work out and how to create nutrition plans.
But it’s not about knowing and having the knowledge, it’s not about knowing how to do your business, how to run your business.
You ideally all know how to run your business and you know how to do your passion. The accountability comes in because they’re going to make you do it.
When I’m doing a workout plan at home and I just did 10 reps, I’m like, yeah, 10’s good enough.
Accountability is the personal trainer being like, no, you’re doing 15. And I just told you to do 15. And now you’re going to do 20 because you fought me on doing the 15.
And that’s what accountability is. And when I think about it from a business consultant perspective because I’m absolutely a accountability person.
That’s exactly what I do when someone pushes back, oh, well, maybe I don’t need to do that. I just kind of client just this last week.
I like, well, I know that we said I was going to do this to make X amount of dollars, but I’m really feeling like I need to be more altruistic and really get into the community.
she was basically, it’s not that she shouldn’t be altruistic. It was that she was trying to use that to avoid the work that she didn’t want to do because she was trying to refine sales process.
And she was nervous and scared of sales. And I flat out told her like, no, you need to get paid now.
Like, I know you were not shying away from this because it’s hard. And so if I could easily have just been like, yeah, we could do that instead and just been her yes person, but I’m holding her accountable to her original goals.
Her original goal is to increase her sales and to refine her process. So my push is to hold her accountable to that and the goals that she had set forward and what she wanted to achieve and when.
And so when you think about accountability, building in your business and having an accountability partner, you want someone who isn’t going to be the guest person who just lets you let go because times are tough, like, oh, yeah, you’re right, you haven’t had a hard day.
Sure, let’s take off the next three weeks. You want somebody who’s going to say, yeah, you didn’t have a hard day that sucks.
Buck up, get your work done. And again, there’s always a reason that you would say no to that. But overall, accountability is getting it done, even when you don’t want to get it done.
It’s it’s somebody else holding you accountable because they’re holding that discipline for you. They’re holding that space for discipline when it falters and it’s it’s very easy to let go of your discipline.
It’s very easy to lose motivation in everything in life, not just in your business, but in literally everything we could fall off the wagon.
So having that accountability buddy that that partner whether they’re paid or not paid is really going to help you accelerate whatever your goal is and get to your goal faster because
somebody is holding the space for your discipline when it falters.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. Well, an accountability partner too can. Also, what one of my mentors used to say is keep you out of the weeds, right?
So a lot of times we can kind of get in the nitty gritty or the mass or like the drama or the, the shoulda, coulda, woulda’s or whatever like that.
And I know that you, you set it from like they can like, like call you out on it, but they can also keep you out of it as well.
So because they can give you a different perspective, they can see the forest through the trees. They’re able to like really hold and just to give kind of our example or even like a fitness example, the fitness instructor typically knows that you want to get healthier, that you maybe want to lose weight, that you want to fit into that dress.
Or whatever, us as consultants, we know, well, because we make them. give us their goals and we work with them on their goals, we know where they want to go.
So we’re able to hold them accountable based on the direction in which they want to go, because there’s a difference between just being a jerk accountability, which I can definitely be sometimes.
know I call people out on their , but also people don’t come to me for the warm buttsies, but also to help keep them in alignment of the direction in which they need to go to accomplish the things that they want to accomplish.
So we’re able to see the forest to the trees, to be able to help guide them. And this isn’t just us, other people can do this as well.
Like Amanda said, paid or not paid, profession or not profession, right? So it is very much something that somebody can help you do, because otherwise, in my opinion, without accountability, and this is personal accountability or external accountability, like we are just kind of like
and going through the motions. We’re not necessarily, it’s not as efficient maybe or as productive as one could be if they had that accountability measure.
gives you the consistency. accountability individual can give you a consistency that can build new habits, build new neural pathways for you to be able to have a better mindset, a better foundation and fundamentals for you to actually whatever you’re being held accountable for to like be able to set up the even the mental systems to be able to make sure that you naturally do that right that you automatically do that unless it’s just kind of like for a one-time that’s slightly different but it’s a long term like helping you stay focused in the right direction.
It absolutely can help you kind of like the coach like I learned so much from my last coach. I loved my coach I still do he’s amazing and there’s so many things that I personally do now because I’ve learned from him things that he Set up in my little mental bank My brain bank in order for me to be able to like Be able to have a great workout a well-rounded workout when I’m working out and stuff And then I go to a class or whatever for that accountability Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of practical tools and techniques that you can use to enhance your accountability.
Amanda Furgiuele
So Obviously, we’ve already talked about accountability partners, but there’s tracking systems There’s all sorts of technology that you can use you can use things like like your smart method of a goal setting So it’s specific measurable achievable Sustainable Relevant and time-bound so you can have that smart methodology You can have regular check-ins
and progress reviews and you can have people that sort of sent those benchmarkers for you. So you can use all those things to help keep you accountable.
But ultimately, Lynn said, you’re creating patterns and things that will change your life. It’s not just, oh, well, this one thing is going to work and I’m going to be done with it.
Because if you’re really putting it, if you’re really holding yourself accountable from a personal standpoint, as well as having these external, whether it’s paid or unpaid people or circumstances technology, holding you accountable, it’s going to trickle into the rest of your life.
And there are things that I have learned over years that it triggers in my brain every time I think about it now.
like, oh, well, this is the more efficient way to do that. This is the way I’m going to be able to get that done.
And it trickles down into creating basically part of my behavior and persona now because I have learned these things and they become ingrained in me.
so having that accountability partner or that system of accountability is more than just that one thing you’re trying to get done that one time.
It’s more than just the one squat you’re trying to get through. It’s all the thing that progresses. It’s not just doing a squat to do a squat.
It’s doing the squat to get the gains. Ain’t nobody to write a song about a flat booty.
Lynn Howard
It’s the same. Yeah. Gotta have the banana dog. It’s my favorite part of out. It’s one of my best assets.
Um, absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about personal accountability. One of my favorite things is the only person you lie into is yourself and it’s truth and you know it’s hard sometimes.
It’s also that integrity thing, which I know integrity is a word that’s ambassadors, but really integrity is doing doing the thing that needs to be done even when nobody’s looking.
And so personal accountability can sometimes be hard because it’s easy for us to say, ah, I’ll do it tomorrow.
Ah, just this is one extra cookie or just, you know, I I whatever, whatever it is, personal or professional and holding ourselves accountable is like pulling in my opinion, it’s almost like pulling from a new space to be able at least when I’m trying to hold myself personally accountable because there are times where those are probably things I’ve said to myself, ah, I’ll start tomorrow or I’ll do that later and later comes and I’m like, shut, later means five days later and I still haven’t done it, you know, and that comes into the procrastination thing, which Amanda and I can definitely talk around, but that personal accountability, I feel like when I’m like really, really leaning into it, one I am like, ah, it’s because others rely on me, so I’m very much, ah, don’t want to let people down, right, it is like, that’s a, a learned behavior, I think it’s part of my behavioral style, which is interesting.
because I’m a go getter and they don’t necessarily always care about people, but I’m joking, but kind of not.
But also I know it’s like it’s from my past and stuff like that. So there is a part of me that’s like, I don’t want to let other people down.
And this could be my family. This could be without them even knowing, like they might not even know. It also comes from a place of me calling myself out.
Like, I’m definitely a self-talker. I’m going to call myself out. come on. Like, would you want some your client to act this way?
Would you want this to happen? Like, so actually like calling myself out. I’m not always the nicest to myself.
Amanda Furgiuele
And it’s actually we’re waiting to ourselves that we would be the anyway.
Lynn Howard
Yeah, but it does come from a different source that like personal accountability, especially when I kind of lean more into procrastination mode or if I’m leaning more into like overwhelm or like exhaustion mode.
Um, it is then I have to like prioritize to hold myself accountable and I do have more grace and compassion, but that personal accountability, it almost, and I don’t know about you, Amanda, I know, I don’t think we’ve actually spoke about like where that I feel it in my body, like I feel like it comes from a completely different source like I’m pulling the fire out it to like push myself forward.
And not always, sometimes it’s natural, but I’m talking about when I’m like trying not to be accountable to myself.
Amanda Furgiuele
Oh, no, I absolutely. And it’s funny you talking about this coming from another place because I have a tendency, we’ll say, to resist authority and just a tendency, a slight, a slight authority issue.
Even when the authority is me. So there are times that I resist from a personal accountability standpoint, if I impose something on myself, I’m like, I’m not going to listen to that.
I think she’s crazy and I will absolutely resist the authority of myself because my personal accountability comes from a specific space and depending on how how I see I’m being that day I can actually push my own accountability away because I feel like I’m my like the authoritarian threatening me is threatening me and so it’s an interesting dynamic that I actually have to navigate with my own psyche because I do feel like that personal accountability comes from a specific space and depending on where my mindset is in my headspace and my workload I can absolutely have a fight with myself it’s like a staff meeting where I’ll get heated so I’ll have a fight with myself over that personal accountability because I don’t like authority and I don’t like me telling myself not to do something so it’s probably too little TMI but you can see it to my psyche folks but
It’s a dangerous place over here, but personal accountability is something different than just having an external accountability, which is why I often will do better with an accountability partner that I trust and have built a relationship with.
Like with Lynn, for example, because I know that it’s not an authority thing that’s having her keep me accountable.
It is a mutual understanding of what my goals are. So it feels different because my personal accountability, I get all mad at myself or being too authoritative with myself.
So it helps to have an accountability buddy, but I know that about myself. So it’s important to really examine like it could be a cultural thing.
It could be the way you were raised. It could just be your weird behavioral shifts, like your psychosis, but understanding how personal and external accountability really play out in your life can really change how you perceive it and how ultimately it helps or hurts you.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. One other thing. to help keep you personally accountable is you can lean more into the vision or the why.
So kind of two separate things. So a great example is maybe you’re not having the personal accountability to put down the extra cookie or to work out on a consistent basis.
like in its moment, but essentially you want to look fabulous because of X, right? She’s a bomb. But still, you want to look, it flowed nicely, didn’t it?
But you want to look fabulous in that dress or when you go to that particular on that meeting or whatever.
So you can look into the future and I’m using the weight thing for, you know, the eating out and the things like that, the personal physical fitness.
Yeah. As an example, because it’s something that most of us can relate to. So, so instead of me being like, oh, put it off, instead, I’m going to throw myself into like, is this helping me?
we get to that particular that particular goal or the why of like I don’t want to let people down like I want to kind of what I was going to before like you know what I want my kids to be this way what’s the what’s the ripple effect is this is this living in my purpose if I choose this over why so so you can actually pull from I see this working you can pull from the vision of like you the benefit of or not the benefit of and then also your why as well to kind of help hold keep you personally accountable.
Amanda Furgiuele
No I’m only smoking because I’m just imagining if I employed some of those tactics on myself I’d be like whatever I do what I want and because when I was younger and I was a bit more of a people pleaser or I’m not supposed be a people pleaser but I was I’m a little bit more concerned about what people thought of me when you’re in your 20s your teens and 20s you care a bit more about
about what people think. And so the way I held myself accountable back then was more like, am I letting somebody else down?
Whereas now, I don’t care about that, because not about, there’s very few people that I really have that level of respect for them.
But there are very few people that it really is about letting them down. And it usually is, if I really care that much, then there isn’t even a question of accountability.
It’s more like, this is what’s coming down, because at that level of really not wanting people to be let down, I personally, at that point, it’s not even a question of discipline or motivation or accountability, it’s just straight up, this is what’s happening, because if I had that kind of respect for you, then that’s what’s happening.
But it’s different, but think about from my early 20s, it would have been absolutely, I would have been much more cognizant of what other people thought and letting people down and really wanting to…
cater to that side of myself, but it just changes. as I said, it’s just important that you really think about what accountability means to you and what it’s going to give you and how you need it to happen, because everybody’s different in how they see it.
Lynn Howard
Yeah, absolutely. 100%. I feel like we can keep going, but I think it’s about time. um, yeah, what we would encourage you at the end of this podcast, I guess, is to like kind of like look at where you’re not holding yourself accountable.
Like we’re the only person you line to is yourself. So, where are you making excuses that is not helping you be the best you, helping you not grow to be, you know, grow into what you’re destined to be or whatever that is.
So, and where can you use an accountability partner? And is your current accountability partner, the right partner, because they typically don’t stay, it’s usually not a one
dimensional thing or one person thing, but also they typically, once you grow, you typically need somebody else who can hold that space for you, right?
Unless you’re both growing at the same kind of capacity. So yeah, just kind of double check, like, where are you not holding yourself accountable?
And where can you use more external accountability?
Amanda Furgiuele
And if you need more external accountability, we got you.
Lynn Howard
We love it. We love it. And we do this while helping you set up fundamental systems to be able to hold yourself better accountable.
Amanda Furgiuele
So I guess until next time, get after it.