Support and Accountability

SUMMARY

• Are you a self starter who always finishes what they say they're going to do or do you sometimes start well and not get the results that you want? Do you work better when you've got someone giving you a little bit of a push and encouragement along the way?

•  Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around changing behaviour, around emotional control by talking about two key elements that will help you go from a behaviour that isn’t serving you to the behaviour that's going to get you the results that you want. These two elements are support and accountability.

• Read / watch this vlog to learn more about these two key elements.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Are you a self starter who always finishes what they say they're going to do or do you sometimes start well and not get the results that you want? Do you work better when you've got someone giving you a little bit of a push and encouragement along the way?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around changing behaviour, around emotional control by talking about two key elements that I definitely needed in my life and continue to need so that I can make these changes we've been talking about over the previous weeks. 

I remember years ago, I was living down in Wagga Wagga in regional New South Wales, a beautiful place, and it was where I was in part of my military career and I had an  amazing friend called George. George and I used to do lots of stuff together and we decided that we wanted to get more healthy or healthier, if it said the right way. So, what we did is we joined a gym. 

Now, we then decided to play the smart game and that was we made sure that we kept each other motivated and accountable to go to the gym. Now, what I used to do is I used to actually come down past George's place and pick him up at 6 in the morning, whatever it was, and go to the gym and we would both do that before we went off to work.

The beauty of that is that George got out of bed a lot of those days because he knew that I was picking him up. And let me tell you, I got out of bed a lot of those days because I told George that I would. So, just having that implied accountability and that support from having someone else involved in the process meant that, most days, we went to the gym.

Now, we're humans. So, sometimes we didn't go. Sometimes one of us would get up the courage to send a message or ring the other person or whatever it was the night before and go, "Hey, I'm going to give tomorrow morning a bit of a miss." And on most occasions, when we talked about it later, we found that we decided to have a day off that day too. And that's okay because all things in moderation, but the result that we wanted was achieved because we had these elements that I want to talk to you about today.

Now, before we get into looking at what these elements are and talking a little bit more in depth about those, I want us to understand that whenever we want to change things, just like we talked about last week, it takes a period of time. We've got an old way of doing things that we need to change. We need to unlearn that and we need to then relearn a new pattern and then repeating that over and over again, rewire what it is in our brain and that becomes the new normal. So, the elements of that that we really want to bring in are incremental improvement and consistency.

It's not about going from where you are now to where you want to go in one big chunk. That is not always achievable and it's not always healthy. But, if we break it down into bite-sized chunks that are achievable, that are realistic, and then we consistently make the changes and do the new behaviours that we learned, then we'll get the result that we want.

Instead of having this big expectation, which a lot of times is a self-sabotage strategy. We go, "Oh, I tried that. That was just too hard. I am not able to do that." No, what it was is you set an expectation that was a little bit too large, whether it be subconsciously, done on purpose, or just because you didn't know any better and therefore, you threw the baby out with the bath water. But, every journey is one step after the other.

So, if we can break that down into increments and have incremental change, incremental improvement. So, if we look at my traveling in the traffic, as we did a few weeks ago, if every third or fourth time I still, for a while, had one of those situations where I allowed the emotion to take hold of me. That's okay. But, every time I got a little bit better at recognising and then I eventually was able to reject it and replace it and continue the new behaviour. So, continuous improvement, incremental improvement, and consistency is what it's all about. 

Some people say it takes 21 days, some people say 30, some people say 60, 90, whatever it is to change a habit. I don't know about the actual number of days. It's different for everyone in my experience, but the key element there is consistency.

So, if George and I had goals, which we did, and we went to the gym once this week, but we didn't go again for three weeks, well, the consistency meant that what we did was totally wasted. So, consistency is the key.

So, let's now have a look at these two elements that we all need so that we can go through with what we said we want to do and go from the behaviour that we had to the behaviour that we want. Go from the behaviour that wasn't serving us to the behaviour that's going to get you the results that you want and the two elements are support and accountability.

So, let's talk about the first one, support. We all need support from various places so that we can have that space that we need to do the unlearning and the relearning and the incremental improvement. I remember, in my corporate career, being sent on courses 'cause I love to learn and so they'd send me on something. It might be around something like time management or something. One of those old, out of date things. And then, I come back and there's an expectation. "Well, we sent you on that course last week. You should know how to do that now."

Well, that's not really providing a support environment so that you can make the incremental change. Also in time management, for example, if the people that I was working with didn't go on the course with me and they had their own time management issues and the strategies that they use are actually hampering mine so I couldn't use them, then that's not support.

So, whatever it is that you're wanting to change, you need people in your corner. By the way, people who want you to change people who have an invested interest in you changing, not people who see your change as an indictment on their inability to change. People that love you and care for you and have respect for you and want to see you improve for you. You need those people in your corner.

Now, whether that be someone in your family, whether that be a friend like George, whether it be someone who is a peer or a leader of yours in your organisation, whether that be your kids, or whether that be a professional coach like me, you need someone or people who can give you that support.

The second element that you need is accountability. You need an environment where people keep you accountable for what you said you going to do. So, if we look at what we learned about recognising and then rejecting and then replacing and repeating so that we rewire those replace strategies that we had, if we don't employ those consistently, then it's not going to work.

 So, when we have an element in an environment of accountability and we've got people go, "Well, hang on a minute." Like I've got my kids in the car and I'm driving them to school, back in the days when they couldn't drive themselves, and the lights down on Narellan Road change and the person doesn't move because they're on their phone. And I beeped the horn or I'll go, "Hey, haven't we got a color you like?", like I talked about a few weeks ago. I empowered my kids to go, "Hey, dad. It's okay. We're still going to get there on time."

So, whatever it is, whoever it is, whether it be a system and or a person who can give you that accountability can remind you of what you said you were going to do. When I work with my personal coaching clients, my one-on-one coaching clients, I have a post-session form that they complete at the end of the session. And it talks about what their key learning was from the session. And it talks about what are the three, in our case, actions that they're going to do to implement that learning.

And in the question I say, "What are the three things that you committed to do that you want to want me to keep you accountable for?" That accountability, although it's not best that it's the main reason for doing it, spurs them on to get it done. So, having that encouragement, having that support, and having someone who will kick you in the backside when you're not doing what you said you were going to do are critical elements of the behaviour change process. 

So, who do you have as your support and accountability? Are they people who will step up for you and will give you that support and accountability that you need? Or do they say yes because they feel obligated to, but then they just let it slide and let you go back to the behaviour that you were having before? So, let me encourage you to get involved with your own behaviour change process by getting yourself a coach, whether that be someone like your spouse, your family, your workmates, or a professional coach, like me.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue to change our behaviour so that we can go beyond COVID-19 by looking at some key competencies of Emotional Intelligence that we really need to operate in our own life right now. I'll see you then.