January 31, 2014 | SharkAdmin Living the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” created by the late Stephen R. Covey is not always easy. In this space, the goal is to remind you to put your training from the “7 Habits” to use. If you haven't yet signed for the training, there's classes available in February. Go to Alamo Learn in ACES to sign up. It’s Not Me, It’s You: Holding Others Accountable Contributed by Lisa McDanielCoordinator of Communication/NVC Public Relations Accountability. That is a word often used at work during meetings, development training and reviews. We know what it means: being responsible for results. But, it’s also about credibility, trust and success. So, why is it so easy to look for accountability in others, yet harder to look to our own actions? According to Steven M. R. Covey in “The Speed of Trust” (2006), producing results are the key to increasing your credibility. Credibility is one of the most important personal attributes that will lead to trust. Without being believable, reliable and genuine, how can we expect others to be confident in our ability to produce results? Trust, therefore, is gained by being credible. Where we don’t have trust, we often have uncertainty. This uncertainty can make it harder to be innovative. Having trust among our workgroups makes it easier to speak up with new or conflicting ideas and gives us the confidence to try something different. Workgroup accountability starts with personal accountability; let’s keep track of our own actions before we look at what someone else is doing. The OZ Principle (Connors, Smith & Hickman, 2004, p 69) states, “It always takes courage to acknowledge a difficult situation,” and we must see things realistically in order to move forward to effectiveness and success. Finally, why it so easy to hold others accountable before we hold ourselves accountable? Covey (2004) explains that it’s human nature, or more specifically, the personal values and communication style we learn as we grow into adults, that reflect our viewpoint of accountability. We see things from our own perspective, but don’t always look through another person’s eyes, so to speak, to understand their perspective. Consequently, we sometimes make the assumption that “I am accountable, but you are not.” What happens if two people working together both think that? In the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” professional development course, we learn about our personal values along with topics such as responsibility, empathy, trust, accountability and effectiveness through logical and practical behavior changes. We learn that we can choose to see things differently—to change the boundaries of our current viewpoint. In the end, we want to be successful. One way to reach that goal is to learn to say, “We are accountable.” 7 Habits Facilitator Jim Lievens added if you think to the Emotional Bank Account discussions in “7 Habits,” building trust includes what he likes to refer to as competency. “I've always preached trust is built through competency (can you do you job?) and character (honesty, ethics, integrity),” Jim says.
