Spark: How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success

by Angie Morgan

When you can make feedback about the person receiving it, not about the person delivering it, you start understanding how to frame your message in a way that inspires, rather than alienates, the recipient.

make feedback about the standard and the expectation rather than about the person, and to choose the right tone—one that makes the recipient of the feedback want to take it to heart.

a leader is someone who influences outcomes and inspires others

When you offer your feedback, focus on what you’ve observed and what impact it’s had on you

Sparks who demonstrate accountability resist the powerful human instinct to place blame elsewhere. They seek to identify how their own actions—or inactions—have contributed to the situations in which they find themselves.

Demonstrating accountability means relentlessly seeking ownership of mistakes, missteps, problems, and any other less-than-best outcome you are either responsible for or associated with.

Accountability is not about conducting a witch hunt to figure out who did what wrong and what should happen to them. When demonstrated correctly, accountability is the acknowledgment—not the admiration—of a mistake and quickly moving beyond it to get to what everyone wants: the solution and resolution.

We need to accept responsibility when the chips are down and be supported by our environments to help us get the results we seek.

Overwhelmingly, we all seem to agree that we live in a pass-the-buck culture. Pointing to others as the reason for a problem is a typical response.

Blaming someone or something else might not hurt you in the moment, but it also doesn’t help. Your challenges won’t get better until you fully accept your role in the situations that create them.

we can learn to develop personal accountability by focusing on cognitive discipline, which we described earlier as our ability to inhibit our instincts and choose a less obvious, but more effective, response—a learned leadership response.

Sparks have the courage to face the consequences and handle them responsibly. When we do, we show others who we are and what we’re made of. And we keep our leadership reputation intact.

Let’s face it, most people don’t come to meetings ready to air their problems. Many of our clients have boardrooms—but none have ready rooms, where problems are openly discussed.

the best way to go about promoting accountability is by creating operational pauses for conversation—a chance to debrief and to discuss issues.

if you’re also forthcoming about your own challenges, you create a safe place for others to be accountable too.

When others share their mistakes and missteps, you don’t need to beat them up—believe me, all of us, as humans, do a great job of that on our own. Help them get to the action steps they need to apply going forward.

When organizations are comprised of Sparks, they’re free of blame-placing or getting lost in arguments on who did what, how, and why. Rather, they are focused on being nimble, responding to challenges, and focusing on the future. They’re also tackling problems they didn’t create, not avoiding them, because they have the mindset to be proactive, not reactive, in the face of pressing issues.

Team members would complain that their hands were tied because the state government was so restrictive on grants, or they’d explain that they “tried that before and it didn’t work” as a way to defend the status quo; they would even state that they would gladly initiate action if only it was in their job description.

To be an accountable Spark: Lead with accountability so that you’re modeling the behavior you expect from others. Seek to recognize and embrace problems. Don’t deny them, ignore them, or wait for them to come to you. The sooner you address problems, the sooner you achieve the results you’re looking for. Work to ensure that the teams you work on allow for mistakes. The best teams discuss problems openly and apply their learnings going forward.