0:00:00.2 Junior: How do you become good at becoming answerable for other people's stuff? How do you become good at being in charge? 

0:00:06.3 Timothy Clark: Why? Why are you even talking about this? Managers get this wrong with great frequency. This is so fundamental.

0:00:13.7 Junior: These leadership issues, let's call them, plague everyone. There's not some class that's exempt.

0:00:19.5 Timothy Clark: The majority of CEOs do not know how to create maximum organizational leverage through the transfer of autonomy to their people.

0:00:31.3 Junior: I think that there is a temptation as a manager to want to have all of the answers. You don't have to if you can effectively delegate and help other people own the critical thinking.

0:00:41.9 Timothy Clark: If you're in an executive position, you operate at outcome level accountability. The entire executive team should be operating that way.

0:00:50.5 Junior: So this is so difficult. Why do people fail granting autonomy too early.

0:00:56.4 Timothy Clark: You're managing risk in doing this, but if you over delegate on critical issues and critical priorities, you're going to fail early.

0:01:02.8 Junior: The level of autonomy you give someone is proportionate to the level of accountability that they have taken.

0:01:09.9 Timothy Clark: That's. I can't think of a more valuable form of compensation.

0:01:24.1 Junior: You're busy. We are too. We have coached hundreds of executives, thousands of leaders, and consulted dozens and dozens of organizations in the Fortune 500 big multinationals. And so we have some experience in knowing how to save time and cut to the chase. This is one of those episodes for me. If you could say one thing to a new manager, random organization, random geography, random industry, this is the concept that I would share with them, that the level of autonomy you give someone is proportionate to the level of accountability that they have taken. They have a demonstrated track record of performance. If you help an aspiring leader or a new manager understand this concept, I think you're a massive people piece of the way there.

0:02:17.6 Timothy Clark: Oh, you are.

0:02:18.1 Junior: And helping them become a good leader, you are. What do you think about that? 

0:02:21.5 Timothy Clark: Well, Junior, you can, you can have a mismatch. Two ways you can. You can give too little accountability or too much. And very, very often there is a mismatch. It's not proportionate and it needs to be proportionate. The other thing to keep in mind, as you're coaching your people, they are growing, learning and developing. And so this is not static. This is going to be dynamic and you're going to have to continue to provide the right amount of autonomy based on accountability, based on demonstrated performance. It sounds simple. It sounds like what? This is a penetrating glimpse into the obvious. Why? Why are you even talking about this? Managers get this wrong with great frequency.

0:03:16.0 Junior: All the time.

0:03:20.9 Timothy Clark: This is so fundamental to being a manager or a leader that that's why we're devoting an episode to it.

0:03:25.1 Junior: Yeah. Okay. So we understand that accountability and autonomy are two things that we're balancing as leaders. And the first time we have to do this is when we first become a manager. How effectively do most managers do this? At first? 

0:03:42.5 Timothy Clark: Not well at all, to be honest.

0:03:44.4 Junior: Not well at all.

0:03:45.2 Timothy Clark: No, they. Right. We need to match autonomy and accountability, but they don't know how to gauge the match. Right. So you have to. You have to understand the person, you have to understand their capability, you have to understand their performance patterns, and then you can give them an appropriate level of autonomy that matches that. That takes some practice, that takes some work. Often there's a mismatch. And then, of course, the person is growing and developing, so they need more and more and more as they move from level to level, as they build capability.

0:04:21.8 Junior: So as we enter the managerial world, this needs to be on our radar. So this is incredibly relevant, really, for any leader, but especially those who are new. And so if you're new to management, this is a concept that you have to understand. So as people become managers, how does that. How does that happen? How would they describe their role? What would they say is different now that they're a manager instead of an individual contributor? What I have heard from most people is, now I'm in charge.

0:04:51.4 Timothy Clark: Now I'm in charge.

0:04:52.3 Junior: I'm in charge and... Or you're in charge now that you're a manager. You're in charge of things. And that seems to be really common language. I hear that all the time. Oh, they're in charge. That person's in charge. They're the leader. They're in charge. What does in charge mean? Now, I don't want this to sound. Anytime you talk about definitions and etymology, I feel like I'm just all buttoned up and trying to look really awesome.

0:05:21.4 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:05:21.7 Junior: But it's not true. But I do think it's relevant, so spare me. It's French, actually. In charge? 

0:05:30.1 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:05:30.6 Junior: And it means to load or burden. And I thought that that was. That was cool.

0:05:36.8 Timothy Clark: Very insightful I think.

0:05:37.5 Junior: In charge means to load or burden. The burden with what? Now that you're in charge, now that you're burdened, what are you burdened with? Leading others. That's what in charge means. You're burdened with leading others. And how might we define in charge? How might I explain it if someone were to ask me? It means accountable for others and their Work now that you're answerable for other people, that's fundamentally different from being answerable for your own work exclusively. Now, the things for which you are accountable and answerable is broad. It's bigger. There's a bigger pie, there's more people, there's more stuff. And so how do you become good at becoming answerable for other people's stuff? How do you become good at being in charge? How do you become good at being a manager? There's no other way. Aside from appropriately giving autonomy and accountability. That's the magic. That's, that's what it is.

0:06:42.4 Timothy Clark: So Junior, we could say then, based on that definition, which I think is very insightful, that the essence of leadership is the appropriate and timely transfer of autonomy to the individual.

0:07:01.2 Junior: Precisely.

0:07:02.4 Timothy Clark: It's at the heart of the discipline of leadership.

0:07:07.3 Junior: So what's autonomy? Autonomy is the degree of freedom, independence and discretion that individuals or teams have in making decisions and managing their work without requiring constant oversight or approval from others.

0:07:21.1 Timothy Clark: Right. So you can't give all that at once.

0:07:23.3 Junior: No, not at once.

0:07:24.3 Timothy Clark: That's.

0:07:24.6 Junior: And it's also not binary. No, it's a spectrum. There are levels.

0:07:29.6 Timothy Clark: It's a gradual process. Sometimes you launch forward, sometimes you pull back. It's, it can be hit and miss, it can be trial and error, but you're working with your people and you're trying to help them grow.

0:07:47.9 Junior: Yeah, and I'll say it one more time, and I guess in light of helping them grow, this makes even more sense. You're trying to transfer the autonomy and the accountability because that is precisely what makes them grow.

0:08:00.6 Timothy Clark: Exactly.

0:08:00.7 Junior: If you want to help another person develop, which is your job as a leader, that in practical terms is what you're doing. You're helping them gain more autonomy by helping them take more accountability. And if you do those two things well, then it taps into the agency of the other person they develop and it gives you time as a leader to do more leveraged work. Because if you don't delegate and you keep your cards close to the chest, you're in charge of everything your hub and spoke. You're much less effective than if you distribute the decision making power. You grant some autonomy at appropriate levels, depending on the performance of the individual.

0:08:41.3 Timothy Clark: Junior reminds me of Jimmy Carter, who was the President of the United States 1976, 1980. As a person, I consider Jimmy Carter one of the people that has probably unimpeachable integrity. That's the kind of person he is. That's the kind of man he is. And since he was president, what he's done since then, I think testifies to that. But as a president, he didn't understand and he didn't figure out organizational leverage. And he occupied the presidency with a hub and spokes model and he got himself enmeshed in all kinds of issues and details, and he could never do it. He couldn't create the leverage that he needed in that position. And so what did he fail on? He failed on giving appropriate autonomy to others. That's where he failed.

0:09:48.7 Junior: So you said leverage. You've worked with a lot of CEOs, a lot of powerful people. What is it that they understand that's different than others about leverage? How do they behave differently? 

0:10:04.3 Timothy Clark: They understand that they need to scale their own personal influence and impact. They need to become a force multiplier. And so they are going to try to accelerate the development of their people and transfer as much autonomy as they can as soon as they can. So that's what the CEO has to learn. You have to become a student of leverage in the organizational sense. You've got to accelerate the transfer of autonomy to your people. And if they can't take that. Right. If you're a CEO and you have a team and they can't move up the accountability ladder all the way to outcome, you've got the wrong people. So you got to know that going in. But all other things being equal, you're trying to accelerate the transfer of autonomy based on the demonstrated accountability of your people. That's your job.

0:11:08.6 Junior: So in your experience, having worked with these leaders, what sort of percentage of these people do it well, is it a massive group? Is it a really small group? Help us understand the level of difficulty and the level of rarity.

0:11:24.3 Timothy Clark: Yeah, I think at the CEO level, I would say you're at 25%. No higher.

0:11:29.3 Junior: 25% of CEOs.

0:11:30.7 Timothy Clark: Oh, yeah.

0:11:32.1 Junior: So you made it all the way there and still only a quarter of them are good at it.

0:11:35.0 Timothy Clark: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I, I hope that's not shocking. I hope that's not news to people, but.

0:11:40.7 Junior: Oh, I think that that is going to be news to a lot of people who don't work with CEOs all the time.

0:11:44.8 Timothy Clark: Absolutely true. Absolutely true. The majority of CEOs do not know how to create maximum organizational leverage through the transfer of autonomy to their people. They still. They've got work to do. Absolutely the truth.

0:12:05.2 Junior: Well, we're going to dig into the failure patterns and maybe you can shed some light onto why this is so difficult.

0:12:10.6 Timothy Clark: Let me just say this, Junior. If you're a CEO, every single member of your team should be operating at outcome accountability. That is, that's the job. Right. If you're in an executive position, you operate at outcome level accountability. You don't need people to work with you at task level or even process level. Now, there may be some exceptions here and there, right. Where we got to look at something, but by and large, this is how you operate. The entire executive team should be operating that way.

0:12:48.2 Junior: Yeah. Can't disagree with that. Absolutely can't disagree with that. I've seen that. Okay, let's get into the failure pattern. So this is so difficult. Why do people fail? Well, there are some predictable ways that people fail and we're going to talk about four of those today. The first one is granting autonomy too early. So we mentioned that you give autonomy proportionate to the accountability that the person has taken. If they can operate at a task level or at a, if they can operate at a task level or.

0:13:22.3 Junior: Process level or an outcome level, you're going to give them different amounts of autonomy based on what they can handle. If you walk in as a leader and give the person too much autonomy, what happens? What have you seen when you, when a leader comes in, they have a team that doesn't have a demonstrated track record of success and they just give them the reins.

0:13:48.5 Timothy Clark: Early failure. Now, there are grounds for, and there's an argument to be made to over delegate. When you're trying to, you give people stretch assignments, sometimes they can't. Okay. But you are managing, you're managing risk in doing this. But if you over delegate on critical issues and critical priorities, you're going to fail early.

0:14:11.8 Junior: Yeah. One of the things that I've learned too is helping people through task process outcome. You can move through those steps really quickly. It doesn't take forever. Even if you know that the person is likely to be able to perform at outcome level, it's nice to get a little check on the task and the process. I'll do this with new hires.

0:14:32.6 Timothy Clark: Sure.

0:14:33.0 Junior: Not. You don't babysit. Right. Let's say you hire a executive level role or you hire someone who's more experienced. You don't immediately give them outcome level accountability. They still need to onboard. They still need to get their bearings. They still need to understand some of the nuance of what's going on and they can very quickly graduate. But that's a point that I would, I would make is it's still important to go through the steps to make sure that we are where we think we are.

0:15:03.6 Timothy Clark: You gotta verify.

0:15:04.6 Junior: Yeah. Trust but verify.

0:15:05.8 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:15:06.5 Junior: Next one is giving blurry or inconsistent accountability lines. If there's ambiguity, if it's gray as to what you're responsible for, that's not going to go well. If you give so much autonomy with no guidance and you say, well you're just kind of over here, I guess you can work and the person doesn't know where the lane starts, where it ends, what the goals are, then that's obviously a failure pattern. Have you seen this one? 

0:15:35.2 Timothy Clark: Junior I just would say across the board, ambiguity is not going to ever be your friend.

0:15:39.2 Junior: Yeah.

0:15:40.0 Timothy Clark: Especially when you're managing other managing people. Other humans.

0:15:43.4 Junior: Yeah.

0:15:43.9 Timothy Clark: Ever, ever.

0:15:44.9 Junior: Next one. Running to the rescue or actively preventing self rescue. This is a failure pattern that I think is more common than others might think. Running to the rescue is very, very common. Well, I'm the leader, I'm the manager, so I'm just going to fix the thing.

0:16:00.0 Timothy Clark: Yeah, I'll come and fix it.

0:16:01.5 Junior: But we're not fixing the upstream problem. We're not delegating, we're not developing people. But this second one, actively preventing self rescue, this one is really problematic and more common than people think. Why would a leader want to actively prevent self rescue? Sometimes it's conscious, sometimes it's not. But if you want to maintain this aura of omniscience, this is something you might do.

0:16:36.6 Timothy Clark: You want to be needed? 

0:16:37.8 Junior: If you want to be needed, certainly.

0:16:40.0 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:16:40.5 Junior: I've seen people put mechanisms in place such that they're the only person who can fix it on purpose.

0:16:50.5 Timothy Clark: Can I give you an example, Junior? 

0:16:52.2 Junior: Sure.

0:16:52.5 Timothy Clark: This one's a little bit mind blowing, but I know a CEO of a very large organization, several thousand employees, who still wants to be a part of every higher decision. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. What's the problem? Well, one of two things has to be true. Either you feel that you need to be. This is, this is how you still are, are needed and you demonstrate that you need to be needed, or you, you don't believe your people can do the job. To hire people, you have an organization of several thousand people. Excuse me, what is going on? But this has literally been true.

0:17:48.1 Junior: Can we just, I want to pause and take a second to acknowledge that these leadership issues, let's call them, plague everyone.

0:17:58.2 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:17:58.8 Junior: There's not some class that's exempt from, from these types of management issues. If a CEO is doing this of a massive Organization that should be worrisome and hopeful. Right? 

0:18:16.3 Timothy Clark: We can get better.

0:18:17.4 Junior: We can get better. Like if that's happening at the tippity top of some of these big, high performing organizations, hey, there's hope for you.

0:18:24.0 Timothy Clark: Right? That's true.

0:18:25.4 Junior: But really I just.

0:18:26.1 Timothy Clark: That's a really good point.

0:18:27.0 Junior: I want to call that out because often we talk about these things. You might see others as leadership experts, you might hear us talk about the work that we do and think, well that's elite for other people who kind of have this stuff down. No, I mean, Tim just finished saying, like there are organizations that have leadership that leave something to be desired.

0:18:53.1 Timothy Clark: They all struggle with the same issues.

0:18:55.6 Junior: Yeah, yeah, right. Which I think is a really neat thing. Human issues.

0:19:00.2 Timothy Clark: That's right.

0:19:00.7 Junior: They're not just CEO issues. Okay. And the last one is taking undue credit as a failure pattern that we're going to call out today. This one is really problematic and this one I think is the most damaging potentially of all of these. Credit is a really important thing in an organization. It has a lot to do with a person's agency. It has a lot to do with the respect they have for themselves. It has a lot to do with integrity and transparency and reality. Because what are you doing when you're taking undue credit? You're messing with reality and that's a dangerous thing to mess with.

0:19:42.7 Timothy Clark: Distorting it.

0:19:42.7 Junior: Yeah, you're taking the fabric of reality and you're making a little wrinkle. And those wrinkles don't last forever. You can't wrinkle reality unnoticed forever. It has a funny way of springing back. And so no one ever gets away with that. But you can really hurt people by doing this. You take away discretionary effort for sure and you help them feel less able. Especially when you do that in the minds of other people, that's super damaging to, to others. If you have a team and you take credit for something and you know that it really wasn't you, it was them, well, you're trying to make other people think it was you, which means that you're trying to make other people think it wasn't your team, which hurts their credibility.

0:20:32.6 Junior: You can see how damaging that would be. Not just the first order consequence, but the second and the third. And when your team sees that happening, they won't trust you for one day. Not one day. And are you ever going to get that back? It's difficult. It's really difficult to do. Well, you gotta be careful here.

0:20:51.8 Timothy Clark: It's Fundamentally dishonest. And it reflects your own insecurity as a leader, and that's going to hurt you. And by the way, as you said, Junior, it deprives the person of going all the way through an achievement cycle.

0:21:10.3 Junior: Yeah.

0:21:11.3 Timothy Clark: And reaping the rewards of that achievement cycle, which they need to do for their own growth and development. They need to be able to feel good about that. They need to be acknowledged and recognized for doing what they've done.

0:21:24.4 Junior: Yeah. That acknowledgment should be proportionate to whatever it is we're doing. And that's why we don't like participation trophies either. Those are equally damaging on the other side of the ledger.

0:21:39.1 Timothy Clark: That's true.

0:21:39.8 Junior: Because what are you doing? You're interrupting the achievement cycle. And so you can cut it from the bottom or you can blast it from the top, and that's not good.

0:21:49.7 Timothy Clark: It makes me think of something that I think, you know. I think you know what this is, Timothy Clark? An Alphabet crown. Can you explain what an Alphabet crown is and why it would not be a good idea to give that before it is earned? 

0:22:11.4 Junior: Yeah. So I have a child who's in school and was recently learning the Alphabet at school. When they can demonstrate that they know the Alphabet, they know the sounds the letters make, they get an Alphabet crown. They have to know all the consonants and all the vowels. They have to know how they're different. They need to be able to identify them and write them and so on. And every once in a while, they'll evaluate the students when they think they're close. And so...

0:22:45.4 Timothy Clark: To get all the letters.

0:22:46.7 Junior: To get all of them, and you have to do them all at the same time. And if you miss one, you don't get it. Fail. Right. It's pass, Fail.

0:22:53.6 Timothy Clark: Even one? 

0:22:55.1 Junior: If you miss one, you don't get the Alphabet crown.

0:23:00.2 Timothy Clark: And isn't that harsh? 

0:23:01.6 Junior: Well, it depends on who you ask. I'll tell you why I don't think it's harsh. And even if it's harsh, it's right. My child came home from school the first time they tried and said, I tried to get my Alphabet crown today. Did you get it? No. And why? Well, I mixed up B and D. Fair. A lot of people do.

0:23:29.6 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:23:31.2 Junior: When are you going to try again? Oh, I'll try again next time. And it was interesting the way that they spoke because it was really optimistic and almost like, oh, yeah, it was not a big deal at all.

0:23:47.0 Timothy Clark: Resilience about trying again.

0:23:48.5 Junior: Right. So it took my child Four times, five times maybe, to get the Alphabet crown. And when it finally happened, they're exuberant.

0:24:03.9 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:24:05.0 Junior: And with full understanding that they earned.

0:24:08.3 Timothy Clark: Earned it.

0:24:09.4 Junior: They earned it.

0:24:10.5 Timothy Clark: And they were recognized.

0:24:11.6 Junior: And they were recognized. Now, here's a cool part of that story the. The headmaster, they call the headmaster at school told all the parents at the beginning of the school year, anytime you see a child walking around with an Alphabet crown, you congratulate them.

0:24:31.2 Timothy Clark: Really? 

0:24:32.0 Junior: Yeah. So people will roll down their window in the pickup line to pick up their kids from school, and if there's a child with an Alphabet crown, they'll yell out the window, hey, nice job. Right? You did it.

0:24:46.9 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:24:47.4 Junior: And how does that child feel? It's amazing, right? Because often it takes the children several times to do it.

0:24:55.2 Timothy Clark: Right.

0:24:55.9 Junior: And so what would happen if you said, oh it's okay. It's all right. You tried hard and you missed five, but here you go.

0:25:07.3 Timothy Clark: Right.

0:25:08.2 Junior: The child feels like, well, I didn't, though. I didn't achieve it. Right.

0:25:15.9 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:25:16.8 Junior: And then think if the teachers came out and said, oh, yeah, I've been working really hard with this child. And we finally got it done. You know, I had to come up with a few different tools and ideas, but we. We managed to get them there.

0:25:29.7 Timothy Clark: Yeah, we.

0:25:30.5 Junior: Right. Yikes.

0:25:32.1 Timothy Clark: Yo. And so don't do that.

0:25:34.6 Junior: No. And you can see have to. You have to be so careful with this idea in making sure that the person gets the right amount of credit proportionate to the accountability, the. The responsibility, and that we're not giving undue credit and we are not taking undue credit.

0:25:57.7 Timothy Clark: That's right. That's right. Great example.

0:26:00.8 Junior: Sorry for the monologue.

0:26:01.7 Timothy Clark: No, that's a great.

0:26:02.6 Junior: Hopefully it's relevant.

0:26:03.8 Timothy Clark: It is.

0:26:04.4 Junior: Okay, next we're going to get into the consequences. What happens when we do that to people? If we give undue credit, we take it away. We don't give the appropriate amount of autonomy. We don't give the appropriate amount of accountability. We get suboptimal performance on the team and stagnant people. So that's the gist. We are not going to perform as we otherwise would if we don't do this well and our people aren't going to develop.

0:26:27.8 Junior: So let's go to contributor safety. We have not talked about contributor safety for a minute on the podcast, so here's a spot to throw it in. Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need for autonomy and contribution. You feel safe and are given the opportunity and role clarity to Use your skills and abilities to make a difference. So the social exchange for contributor safety is autonomy with guidance in exchange for results. And this is the magic bullet of the whole episode if you want to learn how to do this. Well, autonomy with guidance in exchange for results. So I give you an appropriate level of autonomy with an appropriate level of guidance. Depending on the situation, that could vary.

0:27:08.4 Junior: I'm going to be very explicit. Maybe if you're brand new and we're doing something very specific, or I'm going to give you some vague instructions if it's something that maybe I know little about and you know more, or so on. And then as you demonstrate an ability to perform, I'm going to give you more. So it's reciprocal. Once you demonstrate an ability to perform and deliver the results, I'm going to give more autonomy and we're going to do that over and over and over again.

0:27:34.6 Timothy Clark: So it's an exchange.

0:27:35.9 Junior: It's an exchange.

0:27:36.8 Timothy Clark: So in case it. It's not clear. I'm sure it is abundantly clear by now. We don't give autonomy for free. We don't distribute autonomy.

0:27:44.5 Junior: Yeah.

0:27:44.9 Timothy Clark: It's always on an exchange basis for the accountability for the performance, for the results.

0:27:50.7 Junior: Yep. And you want people who are motivated by that and if they understand that there's reciprocal, that there's reciprocity in that cycle, I'm going to deliver results and I'm going to get more autonomy. That's incredibly motivating for a high performer.

0:28:05.2 Timothy Clark: It is.

0:28:06.0 Junior: You're saying I get as much autonomy as I want, I want more of that. Yeah. And I've seen it. People will show up and perform because who doesn't want more autonomy? Oh, I get to do more of my work more my way. I get to take more responsibility and I can operate with more volition.

0:28:24.5 Timothy Clark: That's right.

0:28:25.3 Junior: I'm for it.

0:28:26.3 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:28:27.1 Junior: And if on the opposite side, people show up and demand autonomy without giving results, you know you have the wrong person manage them out.

0:28:38.2 Timothy Clark: Yep, you do.

0:28:39.1 Junior: Okay. The next model we're going to show is something we've talked about before, the autonomy and accountability relationship, broken down into three levels of accountability. We have task, process, and outcome. And this is a very actionable framework for people, especially new managers, to understand how this exchange works. So a task is a single indivisible unit of work. It's a thing to do. One process is a variety of tasks put together into something we do in a cycle. Could also be a project. And then outcome is an end state. I want an effective Lead flow. Right. I want a book printed.

0:29:23.2 Timothy Clark: So you line up all these tasks.

0:29:25.1 Junior: Yeah. And you're also not going to reverse engineer all of the tasks for the person that's going to be up to them. If they're at outcome level responsibility, you're going to give the desired outcome along with an appropriate amount of guidance, and then you're going to let them rock and roll.

0:29:37.8 Timothy Clark: That's true.

0:29:38.6 Junior: And if you have high performers, that can happen. Right. It's a very beautiful thing when you can get to that level and say, here's the end state that we want. Ready, Break. Right.

0:29:52.7 Timothy Clark: I like it.

0:29:53.3 Junior: Okay, let's go to the next slide for the coaching and accountability matrix, and then we'll talk about this one a little bit. So, coaching and accountability matrix. This is the main model for the coaching and accountability matrix course. And this combines coaching and accountability. It combines the three levels of accountability that we just talked about. Task, process, outcome, and then the tell to ask ratio.

0:30:20.6 Timothy Clark: So we're putting it all together.

0:30:21.8 Junior: We're putting it all together. If there was one single model that I would give to a manager, again, for time's sake, this is what I would give them and this is what I would explain. You will give autonomy as people demonstrate the ability to do task, process and outcome. And as you move them from each of those levels to the next, you're going to do so from moving from tell to ask. Instead of being explicit, you're going to lead with inquiry and you're going to try to get them to take responsibility by asking more questions.

0:30:57.4 Timothy Clark: So at each level, Junior, there is a journey to mastery.

0:31:01.8 Junior: Yeah.

0:31:02.5 Timothy Clark: So we start at task accountability. You're going to tell them, Right. They're learning, they don't know anything. But you're. You move to ask. By the time you can coach them at the ask end of the coaching continuum, they have come to mastery with task level accountability. Then we go to journey number two. Process, we're going to move to mastery. And then finally, outcome, we're going to move to mastery.

0:31:33.3 Junior: Yeah. We have another episode that we can link that goes into this in even more detail, which is a really great episode. So if you want to learn a little bit more about that, you can go there. I want to ask you, you talked to me prior to, to shooting this episode about someone's appetite for accountability.

0:31:56.0 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:31:56.4 Junior: And I thought that there was some stuff in there that our listeners could benefit from, and I wanted to ask you about it on the podcast. So tell me about someone's appetite for accountability. How you might screen that and why it's important.

0:32:08.3 Timothy Clark: Well, Junior, earlier the discussion you asked, okay, say you are a new manager and now suddenly you have a team to manage. How are you going to do that? And it's also very common to get the match between accountability and autonomy. Wrong. Okay, so one of the first things that you need to be able to do is with each of your direct reports, you need to be able to assess their appetite for accountability. How much do they want, how scrappy are they, how hungry are they, how gritty are they? How much do they want? And so you can assess that in talking with them, and watching them in... Do they take the initiative? Do they catalyze action? 

0:33:00.9 Timothy Clark: Do, do they move under their own power? Do they, are they agents? Right, so there's a but, but just through observation you can see where's the appetite and then you can start to match the autonomy with the accountability and you can see how fast they're going to move. Right. I think about some members of our own team, they've moved so fast to outcome accountability because they have the appetite for the accountability.

0:33:35.9 Timothy Clark: Okay, great. We will move you along as fast as you are able. Why would we slow you down? Why would we get in the way? Why would we be the obstacle? When you have the demonstrated ability to do this and you're ready to go to the next level next step and.

0:33:53.8 Junior: As you move them to outcome, you only go back on an as needed basis.

0:33:58.0 Timothy Clark: That's right.

0:33:58.6 Junior: So if there's some small issue, great, you can go back.

0:34:02.6 Timothy Clark: It doesn't mean that you're not going to make mistakes and you're not going to get some things wrong. Yeah, that's going to happen.

0:34:08.6 Timothy Clark: And it's not punitive either. It's just the reality of the situation. We all need to go back to task level occasionally and say, okay, where are we at? 

0:34:15.1 Timothy Clark: What happened? 

0:34:16.3 Junior: Where what happened? 

0:34:17.4 Timothy Clark: Yeah, we'll crash and burn once in a while.

0:34:19.2 Junior: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, as I've done this, there are a couple of things that I've found as results. One is that I don't have to have the answer to every question, which is really nice. I think that there is a temptation as a manager to want to have all of the answers all the time. You don't have to. If you can effectively delegate and help other people own the critical thinking, then great. You just have to manage that process and help them do what they're best at. You're certainly not going to have all of the answers. Especially if you're managing a cross functional team, you're not going to have the answers. Yeah, you're going to have to help them get the answers. And I've also noticed that our team has become better, period. As people take more accountability and get more autonomy and move toward outcome level, they get better, they get better and that's a reinforcing cycle. They fulfill the full loop of the achievement cycle and they see what that feels like, feels good, and then they continue doing it. And then lastly, I'll call out that those who don't move up the accountability ladder opt out and they choose a different path, which is useful because I don't have to choose the different path for them.

0:35:41.6 Timothy Clark: That's a good point.

0:35:42.7 Junior: If you provide that option and say, hey, here's where we want to go, right? We want to get you to outcome level, we want to give you more autonomy, but we need results. And if they're not comfortable with that, then they're probably not going to be a good fit for that type of environment then great, they can go find something different. But here we want to move to outcome level accountability. That's where everybody's going to do their best work. That's where we're going to perform best competitively as an organization. And then when we get out there in the marketplace, we're in clean house. So that's what we intend to do. For anyone listening, bring a clean house in the marketplace. That's my competitive edge. Anyway. Coaching and accountability matrix in the app. It will literally plot your people on here and show you what box they're in based on the feedback that you give the assessment tool about their ability to have accountability.

0:36:32.3 Timothy Clark: Each direct report.

0:36:33.6 Junior: Each direct report. Yeah, we'll plot them on there. You have a node for each one, give you coaching suggestions as to how to move them to the next level. So I think that that's a really, really neat feature. If you haven't seen that yet, please go check it out. Okay. The best leaders in the world have learned how to transfer accountability to their people. They've learned how to transfer autonomy. And that's the difference maker. That 25% of CEOs who do this well. If 25% of CEOs do it well, it means that a much lower percent do it well in other pieces of the organization. So a very small percentage do. If you want to be one of the small percentages of people who do this well, here are your tools that's right. These are the things that you have to do. You have to delegate, transfer critical thinking. You transfer ownership. What are your final thoughts Tim? 

0:37:20.0 Timothy Clark: My final thought is that your deepest satisfactions will come as you're helping your people grow and develop as you transfer the autonomy based on the accountability that they demonstrate. That's I can't think of a more valuable form of compensation as a leader than that.

0:37:43.1 Junior: Agreed.

0:37:44.1 Timothy Clark: So you got to get this right.

0:37:45.5 Junior: I felt it. And with that, we'll end. So thank you everybody for spending time with us today. We appreciate your listenership very much. I would love to hear what you loved about the episode. What stood out to you? Comment below so that we can see that your feedback is always super helpful. So if you hit us up on LinkedIn, if you leave a YouTube comment, all of that stuff gets back to us. We read and it informs our topic decisions and the things we do in subsequent episodes. So if you liked it, share with a friend. Subscribe if you haven't already, and we will catch you in the next episode. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.

0:38:23.6 Jillian: Hey LeaderFactor listeners, It's Jillian. If you liked the content in today's episode, we've compiled all of the concepts and slides into a downloadable resource for you. Click the link in the description or visit LeaderFactor.com to explore our full content library. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll catch you in the next episode.