Unleashing Potential: Where Accountability, Possibility, and Listening Intersect

Imagine leading a real estate team where agents feel supported and motivated, work is fun and collaborative, and everyone feels like they are part of something larger.

A team where each agent has created a future for themselves that is inspiring to them, one that pulls them into action, and they are consistently producing at a high level.

A team where agents not only demand more of themselves than anyone else does but, if they fail to hit their goals, they ask for, and act on your coaching.

It's possible - with the right mix of accountability, possibility, and listening. Let's explore how these three things intersect to create an environment where teams can thrive.

The importance of accountability

It's not a unique idea that accountability is the access to a successful career as an agent (if not to a successful life).

It offers us the opportunity to fulfill the promises we make, not only those we make to others but also to ourselves. It's an integral part of taking action and realizing what we want.

Our lives become more meaningful when we are accountable for our words and actions, and it creates a stronger sense of fulfillment.

Without accountability talk really is cheap.

When our team knows that they are accountable for what they say, they operate with more honor for their word and become bigger people who continue to expand what they can produce.

Consider the all too common alternative - people make promises, nobody holds them to account for their fulfillment, maybe they achieve their goal, maybe they don't, but in either case their future is clear - what they say just doesn't matter.

Accountability, when done well, says what we say and do truly does matter, and to the degree we feel that what we say matters, we feel that we matter.

Access the power of possibility

What we mean by possibility here is the future that the individual agent is creating for themselves.

What are the agents on your team fulfilling? Not simply what their goals or targets are - but what inspires them? What moves them? What are they up to as human beings?

Attempting to hold people to account for meeting a target is a top-down phenomenon. Like a correction officer managing the prison work crew digging a ditch, they walk along the edge to make sure everyone is working.

The opposite of top-down, possibility-based accountability moves from the ground up. It requires a different skill set of the manager. They are no longer simply making sure the right amount of activity happens (although the right amount of activity still must happen).

For this to work, first, each team member needs the time, the space, and the guidance to create a future, a possibility that is important to them.

Now the manager can empower each person on the team to look for themselves as to where they are in reference to fulfilling what they said matters.

The manager is no longer "holding people to account" but allows each person to hold themselves to account.

When leaders open this doorway, they are inspired by their team members and their stories, creating an entirely new future for the individual, the team, and the company.

The act of listening

Where this all comes together is in the listening of the manager and individual. In fact, you might consider that a manager's true role in unlocking the potential of the people on their teams is to be their committed listener.

Committed listening (the kind of listening a committed listener provides) is distinct from ordinary listening.

Ordinary listening is much more likely to be simply hearing. You can hear what people say, you can hear people make promises for the future, and not be committed to their fulfilling them. In fact, that is almost always what's happening. People say things, I hear them say it, and I think, "that would be great", or "we'll see" or "good luck with that".

In that kind of relationship, I, as the person listening, am not committed to anything. I have nothing at stake, it's their promise and it's up to them. Good luck with that, indeed.

In committed listening, however, I am a partner. I am in essence, making a promise (I am committing myself) to that person's success. I don't just hear what they say. I inspect it. I care. I check to make sure they have what they need to succeed and that they are not only clear on what actions to take, but they have a clear path to take them.

The whole relationship is a "one voice" kind of thing. In this relationship, the manager's job is not to make sure the ditch is getting dug, but to make sure that the person whose promise they are committedly listening to is fulfilled. These are different worlds.

How accountability, possibility, and listening intersect in order to create success

The intersection of these three would go something like this:

Every team member takes the time to create a possibility, a future, that inspires them, that is important to them, that matters to them. This is shared publicly, and people become known for the future they are creating.

Standing in the fulfillment of this future, each person works backward to distinguish (and invent) what it took to get there. What steps were taken? What goals were met? What targets necessarily were fulfilled in the realization of the future?

These steps, goals, targets, etc. are created with a committed listener, someone with the experience and knowledge to help create strategies and plans to create the most effective actions.

The team member and committed listener can align on benchmarks and milestones to mark progress to act as guides to determine if sufficient progress is being made (and what corrections are appropriate).

This initial conversation is critical. The committed listener must not step over anything that they cannot see the team member fulfilling. If the committed listener can't see the promise fulfilled based on the actions the team member is willing to take they either need to see to it they take different actions or that they don't make that promise.

Regular check-ins are scheduled between the listener and the team member to give the team member the opportunity to account for the actions they took/didn't take and for the results of those actions.

Adjustments to existing (and new) plans, strategies, actions, and promises can be made here, all done in a partnership between the listener and players.

The biggest pitfalls in implementation

1. Insufficient time to create the future. Without a future that is inspiring to the individual, there is nothing for anyone to committedly listen for. You're left in the world of ditch-digging.
2. Not sharing the future. It's critical to understand that the future, the possibility, the team creates does not exist anywhere in reality, yet. It only lives in people speaking it. People speaking about what they are building is the first step in them holding themselves to account for what they are up to.
3. Lack of integrity in listening. Both when initial plans are made, and at each check-in, the committed listener is either listening with integrity, that is, they can personally see that the promised actions have a high probability of realizing the future (or represent a step on that path), or they are going through the motions. Nothing destroys a team faster than the committed listener giving up, and not saying they did so. If they can't hear the future being fulfilled it is up to them to say so, do something to change that, or, as a last resort, call the shot and let the team member go.

If you have questions about this I'd love to help. Let's discuss how these three things intersect in order to create success. I can also share real-life examples of how this has worked for my team and others.