Accountability Doesn’t Work?

Is accountability for a Realtor© necessary or in a boss/employee or coach/client dynamic? What really happens when we hold someone accountable or you allow yourself to be accountable to someone else? Accountability is a huge focus for many organizations including the real estate business.

Employees are accountable to managers who are accountable to CEOs who are accountable to business owners. Those in leadership positions assign tasks then consistently follow up with their team to ensure that said tasks are done well and in a timely manner. Likewise, most business coaching models encourage coaches to hold their coaching clients accountable – in other words, to monitor their actions until they reach their goals, or to call them out when they don’t follow through.

So why don’t I like the accountability model?

It’s because, let’s say I hold you accountable as a coach and it works and you’re happy. Then what happens when your coach goes away? You’re left to your own devices. So what I’ve done as a coach is I’ve created a dependency, and that’s not very ethical in my mind.

But it gets worse.

Why do people come for coaching in their real estate careers? Typically people come for coaching because they are frustrated they haven’t achieved their goals. Typically they are frustrated and they have a whole set of beliefs about themselves: “I should be further ahead,” “I’m not doing a good job,” “I can’t do this on my own,” etc. What happens if the accountability model doesn’t work? Now I’ve made that situation worse. So at best it’s unethical and at worst it’s detrimental. They walk away in a worse spot than when they started coaching.

From my perspective, coaching isn’t about accountability. Coaching is really about examining a person’s thinking and helping them line up their thinking with their goals and desires. And once we line up someone’s thinking with their goals and desires, they naturally do the things and have the behaviors that lead them to those goals. I don’t have to monitor, or keep track of or hold anybody accountable. My interest is in what’s preventing you from holding yourself accountable. What’s preventing you from keeping the promises you make to yourself? That’s an interesting question. You don’t need to answer to me – who am I that you should answer to me? But why aren’t you answering to you?

Strength and courage,
Wade