S1E9: Accountability

Show Notes

Summary

In this episode of their podcast, Sara Hicks and Mathias Meyer tackle accountability, a word every leader claims to want but often struggles to practice. Sara opens with a personal story about a "website refresh" project that spiraled because she never clearly defined the goal, owner, or expectations, leading her to blame a lack of initiative rather than recognizing the real issue: unclear conditions for success.

The two unpack why accountability breaks down, tracing it to a mix of leadership avoidance (assuming people should "just know" what's expected), fear of micromanaging, and a tendency to conflate accountability with punishment or consequences. Mathias notes there's no direct German equivalent for the word, which sparks a broader discussion of cultural and personality differences in how people relate to feedback and expectations.

They lay out a three-part framework for building real accountability: (1) setting clear expectations, defining the what, when, milestones, and decision-making process, ideally documented and signed off on; (2) providing regular feedback through an agreed-upon cadence, not just annual reviews; and (3) coaching and mentoring, drawing on Andy Grove's concept of "task-relevant maturity" to calibrate how much support someone needs based on their experience and confidence with a given task.

They close with a reflective tool, the "accountability mirror," three questions leaders can ask themselves when frustrated with someone's performance (What expectations did I set? What feedback did I give or avoid? What support did I assume?), echoing Jerry Colonna's question about how we're complicit in creating the conditions we say we don't want. The episode ends with a practical challenge: pick one project this week, restate expectations, and schedule a first feedback check-in, plus some personal updates, including Mathias starting a master's program and Sara's swimming and cooking updates.

Keywords

accountability, leadership, expectations, feedback, coaching, mentoring, task-relevant maturity, micromanagement, communication, ownership

Takeaways

• Accountability failures are usually leadership and communication gaps, not people problems.

• Vague project goals (like a one-line "website refresh") create room for mismatched expectations and frustration.

• Accountability is a learnable leadership practice, not a fixed personality trait.

• The word "accountability" is often used as a stand-in for consequences or punishment, which distorts its real meaning.

• Founders scaling from doing everything themselves to delegating often stumble because they don't clearly hand off ownership and expectations.

• Setting clear expectations means covering the what, when, milestones, communication cadence, and who's involved, ideally written down and agreed upon.

• Regular feedback, not just annual reviews, prevents small issues from becoming project-derailing ones; check-ins also reveal patterns in how someone works, not just what they produce.

• Coaching and mentoring should be matched to a person's "task-relevant maturity" (a concept from Andy Grove's High Output Management): how much direction, coaching, feedback, or autonomy they need depends on their experience and confidence with that specific task.

• Coaching and mentoring don't have to come solely from the manager; others in an organization can fill that role.

• A simple self-check ("What expectations did I set? What feedback did I give or avoid? What support did I assume?") helps leaders look inward before blaming a team member for lack of accountability.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Accountability in Leadership

00:30 Practical Steps to Foster Accountability

00:54 Introduction to Accountability

02:18 The Importance of Clear Expectations

05:36 Understanding Accountability in Leadership

07:40 Cultural Perspectives on Accountability

12:20 The Role of Responsibility in Accountability

13:45 Framework for Actionable Accountability

23:03 Providing Regular Feedback

26:57 The Importance of Regular Check-Ins

28:21 Coaching and Mentoring for Accountability

33:01 Reflecting on Accountability Practices

36:45 Practical Steps for Leaders

40:44 Looking Ahead: New Year, New Goals

Transcript

Sara (00:00) So today's episode is on accountability. It's one of those words that every leader, myself included, have said that they want more of, right up until the time it's actually necessary to practice it. So today Matthias and I are digging into why accountability so often breaks down. And here's a little twist. It's usually not a people problem, it's a communication breakdown, and often it's a leadership gap.

I share a story about a project I basically watched Spiral because I never got specific about what I actually wanted. And then we break down three things leaders can start doing this week, very practical this week, to build real accountability without the blame, without the drama, or without the constant nagging and follow-up. So let's dive in.

Sara Hicks (01:02) Hello, hello, hello. Okay,

Mathias Meyer (01:04) Hi.

Sara Hicks (01:04) hello, hi. So today's topic, today's podcast episode is about accountability. yeah, lots of things come to my mind when I think about accountability, but I'll kick us off and say that accountability, gosh, it doesn't really mean micromanaging. It certainly

Mathias Meyer (01:24) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (01:24) doesn't mean calling people out.

It really means creating conditions where people can actually succeed. And then here's the kicker. It's also creating conditions where you are still involved. You're willing to stay involved. And accountability is one of those words that leaders say they want. Like everyone wants accountability. It sounds kind of like important.

Mathias Meyer (01:49) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (01:50) Until it's time to actually practice it.

and that's, I think that's what we're going to get into today. I'll tell a little story because I've certainly messed this up. I certainly have not practiced it in my days as a founder and executive. So here's an example. this was at my company, we were working on a project and the project was to refresh the website. And as I was reflecting on this story, literally think that that was what we called the project, website refresh.

And that was probably what was on the roadmap. It was probably what we had all over in our documentation. And when you think about it, like that's incredibly vague. Like it's so open to interpretation, which in turn meant expectations and what each person thought the outcome was, all over the place.

Mathias Meyer (02:37) wait,

so website refresh was the only goal slash requirement in the only thing that was documented or?

Sara Hicks (02:45) I think there were other things that were that came along like once we started to get into the project But I don't think we had very clear

We didn't have the why really outlined

Mathias Meyer (02:54) Got it.

Sara Hicks (02:56) or if we did it wasn't concise enough or specific enough for everyone be on the same page about and so here's what was happening. I was getting frustrated like I'm

Mathias Meyer (03:06) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (03:06) the founder CEO and I was getting increasingly frustrated with the project.

And I felt that there was just this lack of initiative from the leaders on the team. I was thinking and I was wondering like, gosh, why isn't this person driving or leading this? You know, I had to keep getting pulled in and getting involved to move things along and to make decisions. And I remember even sitting down with this particular leader and encouraging them to drive it and to own the project thinking like, this is yours.

But we kept getting stuck. The designs were stalling, the content wasn't where I wanted it to be, the project was just spiraling. And only in hindsight did I realize the conditions just weren't clear, right? We hadn't made it clear exactly we were trying to achieve and who owned the project and what the outcomes and expectations were. And

Mathias Meyer (03:59) did the word accountability come up in your mind like back at that time? Was it something that you thought about? Like, you know, I mean, because the saying generally goes, I need to hold somebody accountable for this, right? That's where the word is most commonly used. And I'm curious, did anything through your mind as you were in that situation?

to in terms of you need to hold somebody accountable or somebody should be accountable for this project or something like that

Sara Hicks (04:30) think it did. think at the time I was like, I need to sit down with this leader and tell them they need to own this. I think I was looking for someone to really be accountable to drive and to lead this. I don't know if I actually thought of the word accountability. think I was already at that point frustrated and the project was spiraling and I was

grasping rather than really empowering and trying to like get to clarity for this. And I think like accountability isn't, you know, it's not this personality trait. Like some people aren't just born with it or it's a practice. It's a leadership practice. And the good news about all this, and hopefully this will come across in our podcast is you can actually learn this. Like,

Mathias Meyer (05:10) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (05:11) You can practice this and you can learn this and you know we write about accountability and what actions are required to create a culture of accountability and we hope that through this episode folks will walk away with some practical frameworks to create accountability without blame, without drama, without constant follow-up which is what was happening in my example project.

Mathias Meyer (05:36) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (05:36) Did you have projects like that, Mathias?

Like.

Mathias Meyer (05:39) yeah, mean,

I think when the word accountability comes up, think back to the conversations I've had with clients, with founders who use the word, in the context when they are not happy or satisfied with whatever somebody is producing in their work.

And they, know, accountability comes across as this top down approach to.

Well, maybe

it's punishment, maybe it's consequences, but it's really the use of the word really stems from somebody isn't happy with how things are going with what somebody produced or did not produce. And that's what my mind usually goes to when accountability is used as a means of

punishment or consequences or really if I, you I don't want to say they're using it in the wrong way because I mean, accountability is one of those words that means a ton of different things to different

Sara Hicks (06:33) Great.

Mathias Meyer (06:45) just like many other business words. And you probably, you know, when people use it in this context, they're probably looking for something else.

Or they're really, describing something else. You know, they want to talk about consequences and punishment

Sara Hicks (06:57) .

Mathias Meyer (06:58) without talking about consequences and punishment. think those things come to mind for me most of the time. mean, there are personal stories on this as well. we've come to the, how we described it in the book. Accountability is really a product of all of those conversations for me.

and distilling what I thought it described to people or what my progression of thinking about accountability was to put that into something that I mean goes counter to you know what the common idea behind accountability is and puts the makes it a different top-down approach where you

Sara Hicks (07:34) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (07:35) know this responsibility on leadership that's what I really think about.

Sara Hicks (07:41) Yeah, it's definitely one of those words. If we talk to a bunch of different leaders, they're going to have different reactions to the word and it. Often goes towards, like you said, consequences. And do you think that's where most leaders kind of misunderstand accountability? They don't think of it as.

something that can be learned or practiced as a leadership skill? Like, why does it break down? Like, what are some of the myths and things that people misunderstand? Like, it happens all the time, like even in our companies,

Mathias Meyer (08:10) huh.

Sara Hicks (08:11) right? Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:12) Yeah. I think the one thing that most of them assume is that they shouldn't need to be specific with people on something. They shouldn't need to be upfront with them about what expectations

Sara Hicks (08:27) Mm.

Mathias Meyer (08:27) are, as you mentioned, from your project. to

know, check in with folks along the way. They, you know, people should just, you know, by intuition or the word, the phrase,

Sara Hicks (08:38) Thank

Mathias Meyer (08:39) the phrase common sense is often used in this, in these circumstances as well. they should just know, right? They should just

Sara Hicks (08:45) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:46) know what's expected from them. They should just know what a great outcome is. Like adults shouldn't need to be told like what you expect of them.

There's a certain laziness in this, right? Where you you deflect all responsibility to

Sara Hicks (08:58) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:01) somebody else and not having to do the work because, mean, you know, you have plenty of other work to do you need to, give an adult that kind of direction, supervision, what not, right? And then other aspect to this that people are afraid of.

Especially like I found people who with engineering backgrounds who've been heavily on the receiving end of micromanaging in their career. They are particularly careful, maybe even hesitant to do anything that gives people direction, guidance or check in with them.

Sara Hicks (09:36) Right.

Mathias Meyer (09:40) really struggling with that idea and

Sara Hicks (09:42) Right.

Mathias Meyer (09:43) prefer to be, you know, hands off. But then are again, like frustrated that they're not getting the results that they want, not in the time frame they want or that people don't have the experience or the same skill set. And some get so frustrated they would rather do the work themselves.

Sara Hicks (10:02) Right, right,

right. They get into those classic patterns of like, well, I'm

Mathias Meyer (10:06) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (10:06) just going to do it myself because they don't understand or I don't want to micromanage or I'm this laid back culture.

Mathias Meyer (10:13) Yeah. I mean,

Sara Hicks (10:14) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (10:14) the part about consequences is what people also struggle with, right? Like what are consequences you have? you

Sara Hicks (10:20) Right.

Mathias Meyer (10:20) can fire people, right? That's a consequence. But then also again, like it means an odd shortcut of thinking from your own frustration with not getting what you thought you would get. And then immediately thinking about consequences,

I can understand it, it's still somewhat odd to me. But like when your mind is all over the place, you just go the shortest route in your thinking from A to B. So there's

Sara Hicks (10:47) Right.

Mathias Meyer (10:48) something there, but yeah.

Sara Hicks (10:50) Yeah, you go to these extremes. I hadn't thought about this and this is a little bit of a curve ball, but I imagine there are cultural impacts, cultural and different norms around accountability. mean, like you and I talk about, I'm Californian, you're German. talk a lot about feedback and the culture of feedback and how that, you know.

plays into everyone's lived experience. Accountability must be the same. And of course it is. Huh.

Mathias Meyer (11:20) Yeah, mean,

the funny thing is, I don't think there's a German word that's an equivalent to accountability.

Sara Hicks (11:27) Wow, and there's so many great

not not one super long accountability word like.

Mathias Meyer (11:30) I know it's very shocking. There should be like a

really long compound word. it may, maybe

Sara Hicks (11:36) Yes, a good one.

Mathias Meyer (11:37) there is, but there's no direct translation and I mean, to be fair, like the word accountability in English even just means to give an account. Right. That's, that's, that's all, that's all it means. And there's

Sara Hicks (11:49) Great.

Mathias Meyer (11:50) probably,

I could probably come up with a compound word for that.

Sara Hicks (11:54) Right.

Mathias Meyer (11:54) just I will put something in the notes for this episode because that's a task.

Sara Hicks (11:58) Yeah, I mean, now we're

now I'm even curious. I'm going to look at the notes because I want to know if there is a German word. You know, one thing that

Mathias Meyer (12:03) Thanks

Sara Hicks (12:05) I also thought of is, you know, we often work with startups and we're startup kind of founders and leaders. And, you know, when you're, you know, the founding team, you're doing everything like you're you're responsible.

Mathias Meyer (12:15) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (12:16) You're wearing all the hats. You're pushing everything and everything's urgent.

Nothing's stable, everything's on fire. And then you start to hire people and you see this breakdown all the time. Like teams start to grow and the founder hasn't really made it clear again, expectations, who owns what is able to kind of let go of certain areas.

Give people the responsibility and the accountability to drive and to lead certain areas of the company and that they were, the previous day driving.

And it just creates a lot of bottlenecks and lot of frustrations.

Mathias Meyer (12:51) Yeah, I do love that you mentioned responsibility because that's what most people mean when they talk about accountability. There's a weird mix

Sara Hicks (12:58) Yeah. Weird,

Mathias Meyer (13:00) up of those two words. But you can't have responsibility without understanding what that responsibility is. And so it's easier to use a different word and mingle, the work of

that comes with giving someone a responsibility,

Sara Hicks (13:17) Right.

Mathias Meyer (13:18) mixing that together with an easy path towards consequences.

Sara Hicks (13:24) Yeah. I think we should start to shift towards some solutions here.

Mathias Meyer (13:29) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (13:30) I'm the solution Let's get to some help here for our audience. But I think the summary of accountability and where it breaks down is that accountability failures aren't necessarily in people problems.

their process and leadership gaps. And again, this is

Mathias Meyer (13:48) Hmm

Sara Hicks (13:49) is some hope because some of these things can be learned. Actionable accountability. We defined accountability that it requires three main leadership actions. The first is setting clear expectations. The second is providing regular feedback. And then the third is coaching and mentoring along the way.

Mathias Meyer (14:13) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (14:13) Not

just one and done along the way. And I think if any one of those is missing, one of those three, accountability often just collapse. And so we thought with this episode, we try to go through each of the three in a little more detail and kind of break down each of the kind of specific actions. So the first one is setting clear expectations and

I don't know, Mathias, I think you're exceptionally good at working to make sure we have clear expectations. I can't remember how many times you would come into a project or a meeting and be like, hold on, hold what's happening here? What are we doing? But

Mathias Meyer (14:50) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (14:51) yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts on, especially your German perspective on setting clear expectations.

Mathias Meyer (14:57) I mean, as Germans, we're very upfront with everything, right? But I mean, even to me, even as a German, to be fair, like at some point, my leadership coach told me that I've become very American in my progression and working with her, which was, that was a difficult time. took

Sara Hicks (15:15) Ouch, ouch.

Mathias Meyer (15:18) some deliberate focus to get out of.

I think the setting expectations part is really what so many people struggle with. Because I mean, you don't have to just think about the task at hand, which, you know, might be to some, might be as easy as, you know, writing as you did in the project that you talked about website refresh. Right. And it's like everything else should be clear based on this decision. that should be enough, right? That should be enough

for the person to understand what they need to do maybe how they need to do

Sara Hicks (15:48) Yeah, because everyone's

an adult, everyone's experienced. Come on, just do it. Yeah, right.

Mathias Meyer (15:52) Exactly. Everyone,

everybody intuitively knows what I want from them. It's just

Sara Hicks (15:58) you

Mathias Meyer (15:58) common sense. you know, talk to clients about expectations, it's, that's where even the fear of micromanagement starts, right? It's the fear of, know, telling somebody what to do. But really what you're just, what you're talking to people about.

is giving them guideposts, right? You provide them with boundaries they can move in, right? They know if I step outside of this, that's probably not good, or I'm probably going in the wrong direction. So the conversation is really just about, does a good outcome look like? What does success look like in this project? And maybe also a discussion about, do we think this is going off the rails?

Right? So maybe the experience of someone who's giving someone a task of responsibility, maybe also allows them

Sara Hicks (16:39) Right.

Mathias Meyer (16:48) from their experience, from what they've gone through, what they've seen to understand what those flags are.

Sara Hicks (16:55) Hmm.

Mathias Meyer (16:57) In Expectations, you can talk about timelines. is a good timeline for this to be finished?

when should we check in on milestones? What are those milestones, right? In terms of like progress? what do I expect from you as the owner of this work

Sara Hicks (17:15) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (17:16) of, you know, communicating progress on this project, which is like also something that people who are on the receiving end of this process also sometimes struggle with.

Sara Hicks (17:26) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (17:27) people are afraid to micromanage, but it's really

Sara Hicks (17:30) Right.

Mathias Meyer (17:30) just, these are, you know, checkpoints that provide everybody an opportunity to course correct. Right? That's, that's the important part about milestones. anything moves outside of those boundaries. Ideally, you discover that early and not at the end of the project when everybody gets upset. And then.

You know, you talk about where things are documented, document decisions, who is a good person to talk to, who should be consulted, right? All of those things are just easiest to describe upfront, Maybe you uncover more stuff along the way, but is where you discuss all of that. And it doesn't even need to take long.

But one important thing here is also, not a one-sided process. I'm not monologuing at somebody. I'm also

Sara Hicks (18:16) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (18:17) talking to this person about, are they confident enough that they could do this? Am I confident enough that they could do this? I will get to how you can counteract that if the confidence is lacking, but this is the place to discuss that. Is this a stretch work for this person?

Are they entering for themselves uncharted territory? then, you know, there's the commitment is writing these all of these things down because we're just forgetful as humans and having Everyone involved sign off on them That's mean there need

Sara Hicks (18:49) Mm.

Mathias Meyer (18:50) to be set in stone But at least every you know when you come back later or there's confusion later you at least there's a written document

Sara Hicks (18:59) Yep.

I mean, so many good things I had to get my pen and start taking some notes there. I love that you brought in the word boundaries. Setting clear expectations actually means having some clear boundaries and some guidelines. These aren't negative things. These aren't consequences.

Mathias Meyer (19:16) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:16) These aren't repercussions. It's just getting clear on. I even wrote down not just the what, like what is the task, the website, refresh, whatever, but kind of the when. Generally, when do we think, you know?

Mathias Meyer (19:28) Hmm

Sara Hicks (19:29) this can be complete, what are some of the milestones? You brought in like how are we gonna talk about progress and what sort of check-ins and I love that you, know, let's write all this down.

Mathias Meyer (19:41) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:42) And let's get everyone to review it and to sign off and to contribute to, you know, some people from different parts of the team might have different perspectives that should be added and considered.

And then revisit that. That's so good. any other things you could think of that would help or have helped you or have helped folks that you've coached to set clear expectations? Any sort of tidbits that you got?

Mathias Meyer (20:06) I think even just starting with what we just described is like gets you there. I don't want to say 80 % but if that's what you do with the people on your team, you're probably doing more than most other managers or companies do in this entire process.

Sara Hicks (20:22) True. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (20:24) And I think maybe one thing I want to say to this maybe this affects like the expectations and

the whole process of accountability, the framework of accountability as we lay it out here. someone said to me at some point that all of this sounds like overhead to them, like management overhead. this was someone to management, still finding their path and still deeply involved

the conclusion was that I could just do all of this myself. Right? But ideally this process over time gets ingrained. Like the conversation becomes easier, conversation becomes faster. Maybe you build a template for this. But, you know, it's overhead that you don't necessarily have to do every time. It's overhead that gets easier.

or takes up less time things progress, as people grow in their own confidence, things like that.

Sara Hicks (21:14) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (21:16) I think that's just a reminder I would put into this because I mean, on the surface, like even looking at this framework, as we go through it, yes, it is work, right? It

Sara Hicks (21:26) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (21:26) does take time, just like most things do that you do in management, but over ideally, it's time that you, where you over time need to invest less and less.

Sara Hicks (21:37) Yeah. Gosh, I've heard that so many times. Yeah, this is this feels like more work.

Mathias Meyer (21:42) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (21:43) Yeah. Or overhead, as you've said. And, going back to some of our examples and the story that I shared, we spent so much time and so many cycles, in that disappointment, frustration, follow up cycle that had we just spent

a day, a few days, a week upfront, just outlining and documenting some of the I think we would have saved ourselves an incredible amount of time and energy. And I see that happen all the time. know, a leader says, do this. And, the team thinks, OK, we got to do this. We got to get it done. Ship it.

you know, the leader's expectations are that

going to be this polished on brand. We're going to stakeholders involved. We're going to have check-ins and milestones. We're going to go through a whole process and content reviews. And then the result is exactly what we expect. There's disappointment, frustration all sides. And the project takes a lot longer. yeah, it requires

Mathias Meyer (22:43) Mm-mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (22:43) more time up front for sure.

You know, at the start of any project or any initiative. But like as you said, over time it just becomes ingrained,

And what a great idea. Put some templates involved. Put some of these questions and some of these things into a simple, one-pager. Just have folks fill it out, you know?

Mathias Meyer (23:02) huh.

I

do love one-pagers. Two-pagers are acceptable.

Sara Hicks (23:07) True, true. Okay, let's move on to the second step in our little framework, which is kind of providing regular feedback. And so have a whole chapter just on this topic, on feedback and a podcast

Mathias Meyer (23:21) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (23:22) episode. a critical part of accountability. It's not about

You know, a performance review, it's not about consequences. It's really how you keep work and people drifting.

Mathias Meyer (23:37) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (23:38) And, you know, I think leaders forget to give feedback, right? Like I certainly have. you do it at the end or you do it at a monthly check-in or a quarterly or, gosh, annually.

different types of feedback. There's reinforcing feedback, that's when things are working. There's course correcting feedback that's early, you know, not late.

And I think that's what like provide regular feedback and a cadence around that, simple structure that you agree upon upfront. Like if there's gonna be short weekly or bi-weekly check-ins.

Are those going to be synchronous? Are they going to be in writing? Kind of who's involved? I think like, often overlooked as a part

Mathias Meyer (24:17) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (24:17) of accountability. You you think like, we've done all this work. We have the one pager, the two pager. We're very clear on all these boundaries. And then you jump into the project and you don't have this cadence.

agreed upon of regular check-ins and feedback channels. Does sound familiar, Mathias

Mathias Meyer (24:39) It does. Yeah, I mean,

it's painfully familiar. I mean, there's still, you know, the setting expectations part is you could just leave it at that and then hope for the best. But you still might be this cycle that you mentioned about disappointment and frustration because you're just waiting slash hoping.

the result will just magically be you described, but I it's just generally not how it works. Like as work progresses, I mean, this is true for, you know, software projects and any other projects that you hand off to somebody. can't foresee every circumstance, everything that comes up along the way. And that's also not the idea of this entire, of going through this framework.

Right?

Sara Hicks (25:25) Right.

Mathias Meyer (25:26) And people might run into roadblocks that they, you know, nobody saw coming. Or they might get stuck somewhere, or they might get, you know, also time-wise overwhelmed. They might have too many other things to do. Like progress on this particular project might be stalling. And you might never find out until it's too late if you don't have a level of check-ins. Right? And I think...

Sara Hicks (25:49) Great.

Mathias Meyer (25:49) There's something in there like we talk about milestones and we talk about these feedback check-ins where not everybody is comfortable or has the experience or confidence to work in a way where progress is easily presentable, right? Like as things progress, where they can show milestones. Like every time you do this kind of check-in.

It's a style of working that people also need to be comfortable with. So there's also like a meta-feedback opportunity here where you don't just talk about the project itself, but how people go about it. If you have your second or third check-in with somebody of a total of five or six, and there's still researching or gathering notes or whatnot, then that's a warning sign about

their style of working, not necessarily the work itself.

Sara Hicks (26:46) Right, right. Yeah, such an interesting point. Like, and again, this gets back to, you know, feedback and the cultural differences, the gender differences, your lived experience of how people

Mathias Meyer (26:57) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (26:58) receive, and then also give feedback. For a lot of folks, feedback can be, I'm doing something wrong.

Mathias Meyer (27:04) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:05) And our job as leaders and our jobs is

managers is to clearly say that this check-in isn't because there's a problem, it's to make sure that we're clear,

that we can support each other, or even just asking like a simple question that I often like to ask is what feels, unclear or kind of

Mathias Meyer (27:25) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (27:25) been harder than expected right now with this project. And just asking that every single check-in and just seeing that, I'm like, what's going on? And you're right, as you point out, Mathias, it could be an individual development opportunity. It could be with the

Mathias Meyer (27:38) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (27:38) broader team or the project itself. And that's our job to figure out, OK, what are the patterns here? And you can only do that by having a regular structure for

offering feedback and

having a set agreed upon, you know, check in about what's going on.

Mathias Meyer (27:59) Yeah, I do love that question. it's, which goes to show that these check-ins aren't just about feedback, they're also, right? Like reflection on is what set out in the expectations or is what we assumed or thought to be true about your skills, your

Sara Hicks (28:16) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (28:19) your confidence in this or anything else

in the

Sara Hicks (28:21) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (28:22) expectations part, does that still hold true? Right? Or is there something we need to adjust?

Sara Hicks (28:26) Right.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

So our last kind of the third item in our actionable framework for leaders around accountability is is coach and and mentoring. And so, Mathias, I thought have you kind of talk a little bit about. how you think about coaching and mentoring around accountability and some of the things that you've found to be effective and

you can be explicit around coaching and mentoring and obviously overlaps with feedback, course, coaching

Mathias Meyer (28:56) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (28:56) and mentoring. But it was important enough that we made it its own item, the third item in being accountable.

Mathias Meyer (29:04) That is true. Originally

it was just two items and our editor said it would be really nice if this would be three steps. So that's why it's three steps. She's not wrong. I mean, a two-step

Sara Hicks (29:15) She's not wrong. She's not wrong. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (29:18) framework is, you know, it's lacking. lot of how I've even come, like for myself and my thinking about accountability arrived at this. I can attribute to Andy Grove.

who wrote High Output Management, which is still one of the greats. It's one

Sara Hicks (29:35) One of the greats, one of the best, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (29:37) of the densest books about management in truly practical terms. Anyway, I don't want to gush too much, but in his book, he talks about task-relevant maturity, which is a nice TRM, nice cool acronym. And I think that's also what I use when I

this talk to talk to my client about this. Because it's like, I don't need to invent anything else like Andy Grove has done the work to describe

Sara Hicks (30:01) Thank

Mathias Meyer (30:02) this in the most succinct way. what he really talks about is like that people, you know, we talked about confidence earlier, and there's also experience, like skill set, in addition to confidence, and maybe a few more angles that somebody could think about about, like as their manager.

How effective do I think they will be in taking on this work? And or to what level can they do the work on their own? And to what level might I need to be involved? Right? And it's not a zero or one. It's not a binary thing. It's more there's it's a level, right? for somebody, it might be really high. It might be, I need to check in with this person every week, or they might need a lot of help and support in this.

Sara Hicks (30:22) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (30:47) maybe not from me, maybe from somebody else. For other people, I can just trust that they will A, do the work completely on their own. And if they need help, they will come to me or they will go to the right people on their own, right? There are different levels of motivation or again, it's a lot about, of it is about confidence in yourself and your own abilities of solving a particular problem. And also speaking up when.

it's not, you you're not getting somewhere. And then as you said, there's also this gender differences and cultural differences to account here as well. So when

Sara Hicks (31:23) Right.

Mathias Meyer (31:23) I think about this, like the support part of it, like that's where of this has come from for me. you know, when we talk about coaching and mentoring,

And in terms of skills and confidence, there's like a few dimensions to think about. is this a completely new domain for somebody, right? As somebody stretching themselves into an area of expertise that where they have no experience, which is like it's

Sara Hicks (31:48) Right.

Mathias Meyer (31:49) a completely new project, or they need to work on a project at a scale they haven't done before, right? They're familiar with like with building

a thing or creating a project or process or creating software or product for one scale, but creating it for another scale is an entirely different thing. Or

Sara Hicks (32:11) Right.

Mathias Meyer (32:12) then it's like, these are completely new expectations where this person has not had to live up to these anymore. Like it's a new set of responsibilities. And

there's probably more the lack in experience and confidence in this particularly.

Sara Hicks (32:29) Right, right. I love that you brought in Andy Grove's book and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. Because a masterclass leadership and accountability and coaching.

support angle of, being clear that coaching doesn't mean a failure, right? It's not incompetence.

Mathias Meyer (32:44) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:46) And like you said, it could mean that this is a new domain or new expectations, a new growth opportunity, something new that someone is learning.

that goes back to in some of the feedback cycles you could ask, hey, you know.

How's it going? What are you learning? know, how are you being stretched? cause you want your team to be learning. You want your team to be growing. You want them to be stretching into these new domains and these new expectations and new scale.

Mathias Meyer (33:12) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (33:13) And that's, that's where the power comes from. Cause then it starts to repeat and your leaders are growing and scaling along with the company. Yeah. I love all of that. Kind of just normalizes coaching and mentorship

as supportive rather than as

Mathias Meyer (33:28) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (33:29) punitive.

Mathias Meyer (33:29) Yeah. And I think one key thing there is also not all of the coaching and mentoring needs to come from you as the manager.

you can involve other people in this. mean, you know, coaching specifically could come from you or from somebody external,

But from mentoring specifically like maybe you as a manager don't have the expertise But somebody else in the company has right for you It's just comes back to expectations in some way talking about like who? Who can I have you know my person? talk to to speed them up on prison experience Maybe a little bit of confidence and skills for somebody who's already done

this or something similar before, right? That's what we talk about when we talk about mentoring.

Sara Hicks (34:17) Yeah, such an important point because I often fall into the like, I as the leader or the manager, you know, have to give the feedback. But part of our job is also, encouraging others to coach and to mentor and to give the feedback and for the team to be accountable with each other. And that means

Mathias Meyer (34:35) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (34:36) obviously giving feedback and coaching and mentoring.

and doing that in ways that inviting rather than, you know, this scary, you know, after the fact consequence type conversation. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (34:48) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (34:49) I put in our notes kind of some sort of like a simple framework. I don't know if it's helpful, but like, you know, support has different. I call it a spectrum, you

Mathias Meyer (34:59) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (35:00) know, like if you're a leader.

you're thinking about coaching and mentoring, you're thinking about feedback. there are a few things you can kind of ask yourself. Like, does this person need direction? And, you know, do you need to like help them understand like, okay, what does good look like? What does the outcome look like? Just give them a

Mathias Meyer (35:17) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (35:18) little bit of a glimpse of the picture. And that's, that's one. Do they need coaching?

Do you need to kind of help maybe riff with them on how to think about this problem or how to think about the team dynamics or how to think where you're trying to get to? Do they need feedback? Do you need to actually hold up a mirror and reflect with them on what you're seeing what you're hearing? Or

Mathias Meyer (35:40) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (35:41) my favorite one is do they just need autonomy? Do you kind of just need to?

Like get out of the way and you can kind of ask yourself as a leader, like, hey, step back. Does this person need direction or do they need coaching? Do they need feedback? Do they need autonomy? And ask yourself that at every check-in. don't just assume, well, things are good. Things seem good. It's always an opportunity to kind of step back and just assess what the individual needs and also what the project or the team might need.

Mathias Meyer (36:13) Yeah, those are four great little framework elements that really summarize task-relevant maturity or make it more practical in a way. That's nice.

Sara Hicks (36:22) Yep.

Task relevant maturity. Yeah, I haven't heard that one in a long time. It's so good. Thank you, Andy Grove.

Mathias Meyer (36:29) Uh-huh.

1994 I think is when he published the book initially.

Sara Hicks (36:32) Wow.

Mathias Meyer (36:33) Must have been the only book like it at that time.

Sara Hicks (36:40) Now there's whole subsections upon subsections of books like that.

so I thought as we start to wrap up, can kind of, think about, OK, I called it the accountability mirror. You know, like

Mathias Meyer (36:51) and

Sara Hicks (36:52) when someone when you're thinking someone or the project or the team isn't accountable, what are some of the things you can kind of like ask yourself to get

unstuck from thinking. And

Mathias Meyer (37:04) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (37:05) back to the project that I shared at the website refresh, some of the things I needed to ask myself are like, what expectations did I set? What feedback did I give or what feedback, maybe did I avoid giving?

what were my assumptions? What support did I assume? What boundaries were...

were shared and

Mathias Meyer (37:24) Uh-uh.

Sara Hicks (37:26) documented if they were, right? Are there any, think about that a mirror if someone's really stuck in your coaching class, like frustrated and they're in this cycle of despair with a project or an initiative and there's a lot of finger pointing, no one's accountable. Any other sort of things you can think of to help folks get unstuck?

Mathias Meyer (37:47) I think these these three questions are great because I mean they remind me of conversation that I have with clients when unhappy with somebody's performance, right, which is a slightly different spin on accountability. But that's usually when you know, unhappy with somebody's performance. And that's when then where the word accountability comes as a as a follow on of that conversation.

And I mean, I've had many conversations like this with clients and I asked them these three questions, no more than these three, you don't need any more. Just even just taking them

Sara Hicks (38:20) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (38:23) back to the very beginning rather than talking about performance right now, right? Because

Sara Hicks (38:30) Great.

Mathias Meyer (38:31) there's parts where this person might not know what's expected for, it's very likely in these scenarios.

person doesn't know what's expected from them. They have never gotten feedback that they're not meeting those unspoken expectations or assumptions. And there have not been any check-ins or any feedback along the way because we, mean,

Sara Hicks (38:53) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (38:54) we shy away from feedback in general. And it's just these three questions. if, you know, you can catch yourself in a moment where you are frustrated with somebody's quote unquote performance.

this is the stuff to go back to. And I think this nicely sums up the accountability framework as we like to think about it in terms of create reflection. should, accountability

Sara Hicks (39:18) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (39:19) should go inwards rather than

Sara Hicks (39:21) Hmm.

Mathias Meyer (39:22) to somebody else. And I do love

Sara Hicks (39:23) Mm.

Mathias Meyer (39:24) these three questions embody that very nicely.

Sara Hicks (39:27) Yep, I love that should go inward. I just thought of the kind of famous question from Jerry Colona, someone we both know, you know, how am I how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?

Mathias Meyer (39:43) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (39:45) Which is kind of the golden question here, right?

It's kind of a summary of these three questions. So let's close out

Mathias Meyer (39:51) Yeah, man.

Sara Hicks (39:51) Anything else we can make it practical.

Mathias Meyer (39:53) I was just saying that questions are difficult to ask yourself. Or there's one question about the Jerry Colona question. It can be challenging, not just because it takes time or is quote-unquote overhead, but because you need to face yourself and face what maybe all we don't need to label them.

shortcomings or anything, doesn't need a negative label, but it creates a reflection that really forces you to, as I said, like, look inward. That can be very uncomfortable because you might not, you know, like what you find, but it gives a path forward, right? Like what you learn from that reflection, or even from this one moment where somebody isn't quote unquote performing or somebody isn't

accountable, in quotes,

Sara Hicks (40:44) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (40:46) it gives you a moment to step beyond that and ideally not have, not having to ask yourself or point to these two specific things anymore in the future, but rather be proactive, right? So asking these questions can be very uncomfortable, but they, hear me out, they offer a path to freedom.

Sara Hicks (41:12) Very, very true. And I thought we could close it out and try to make it practical because sometimes folks are like, like we said, it's too much overhead or, I got to get I got to work on the one pager or the template for the one pager and I got to do all these things. And I think it's actually you could start today like you can, you know,

Mathias Meyer (41:32) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (41:33) this week, you know, pick

pick an individual or a project and explicitly restate the expectations with that individual or state them or state them and write them down

Mathias Meyer (41:42) Or state them for the very first time.

Sara Hicks (41:49) and then schedule your first feedback check in. And this can happen today, this week and ask yourself like what kind of support and coaching and mentorship would be most useful and then do that.

It doesn't require bunch of meetings, a bunch

Mathias Meyer (42:05) No.

Sara Hicks (42:06) of templates, a bunch of time. It's like, OK, state expectations or restate them, clarify them, schedule the check-in, ask yourself what kind of support, coaching, mentoring. And pick something. That's the challenge we can maybe give to folks is make that your homework for this next week and give it a try.

Mathias Meyer (42:23) Yeah, and the beauty is,

once you've stated expectations, giving feedback becomes a lot easier because you have a guidepost. And also,

Sara Hicks (42:34) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (42:34) when writing down expectations, maybe something to add there, whatever it is that you want from somebody, write it down. As weird as it might feel, you can always go through it later with the person, but I will also say more often than not,

This entire process will not take longer than half an hour. Even if this is very first time you're doing this, people generally know what they expect from other people. They just shy away from verbalizing that.

Sara Hicks (43:04) Yep. Yep.

Good conversation.

Mathias Meyer (43:07) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (43:08) Lots to ponder. Like we said up front, our book, The Intentional Organization, we've got an entire chapter that goes more into framework. We invite you all to make it practical, this 30 minutes just to get started. Remind yourself that accountability's not about control.

It is a leadership practice.

Mathias Meyer (43:31) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (43:32) And so with that, let's end on a fun note. Not that this wasn't fun, but let's end on a fun. We are in a new year. We're recording this episode at the beginning-ish of January. So, Mathias, what's something you might be excited about for this year? What are you looking forward to?

Mathias Meyer (43:52) Well, I'm going back to school. That's what

I'm excited about. I just signed up for a master's degree on a program on work and organizational psychology. I I've worked as a founder, CEO, CTO for many years, I've been doing leadership coaching for many years.

I I'm on eight years now on the leadership coaching part. And I'm looking forward to putting all of that into maybe a academic context. Or maybe even finding new ways to think about, the stuff that I keep thinking about, the work that we do, and new approaches to that.

Doesn't exactly feel odd to even at 48 go back to school. I'm looking forward to learning something like you, or, you know, learning

Sara Hicks (44:43) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (44:43) something that allows me to put, you know, all of this into different contexts, different framing, and maybe even,

Sara Hicks (44:50) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (44:50) you know, do some studies and research around these things with clients or with companies in general. That's what I'm looking forward to over this year. Big change.

Sara Hicks (45:01) It's a great one. We'll definitely be talking more about that as you start your coursework and go through the, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (45:09) For sure.

Sara Hicks (45:10) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (45:10) How about yourself? What's the new dot dot dot?

Sara Hicks (45:16) New year, new me. I don't know.

I am excited about... I've started working on a new... I guess we're in stealth mode if there is a... We haven't launched yet, but it's a new idea, new product. I realize that I do love creating. I love building and designing and shipping products. It's what I've done my career and as I...

stepped away from kind of the product roles. I just found myself interested in creating something, creating something. We'll be talking about that, I'm sure, over these episodes. But I'm looking forward seeing that come to life. think

Mathias Meyer (45:59) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (46:00) we're in the first part of this year, we're looking to launch and to start talking publicly about what we're building. So I'm looking forward to that and kind of putting myself

Mathias Meyer (46:09) Me too.

Sara Hicks (46:09) out there.

putting myself out there creatively. It's a little daunting, but exciting. I'm

Mathias Meyer (46:15) It always is. Yes.

Sara Hicks (46:18) also looking forward to, I recently started swimming again. And so I've been doing lap swimming at the local community college pool and gosh, I just love it. And I'm just excited about that for this year. It just feels like, I feel strong in different ways and healthy in different ways. And I'm

Mathias Meyer (46:35) Yeah?

Sara Hicks (46:36) looking forward to doing more of that.

Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (46:39) Anything interesting you've been reading?

or listening to or cooking.

Sara Hicks (46:43) Yeah, I recently made, I think I told you or we texted about, I made some mushroom lasagna recently that was very,

Mathias Meyer (46:48) Mm-hmm

Sara Hicks (46:49) it was so simple. But, man, it's been really good. We actually still have some in our freezer that we saved. really, really tasty.

Mathias Meyer (46:58) I do

love a good vegetarian lasagna, whether with mushrooms or vegetables overall, it is really nice. Yeah, I've been, last night I made again, aubergine unagi, and I refuse to call it eggplant. shout out to everybody who thinks of that particular friends episode when they hear the word unagi.

Sara Hicks (47:19) We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

Mathias Meyer (47:24) It's probably called the one with unagi, but I've really come to enjoy aubergines a maybe even main food staple. And I think this is just like, I've also gotten a lot more into Asian cooking or specifically maybe Chinese and Japanese.

That's what I've been cooking that I enjoyed.

Sara Hicks (47:45) Okay, sounds so good. We're gonna put a link to that recipe and the mushroom lasagna recipe in the show notes. I mean, why would you

Mathias Meyer (47:48) For sure.

Sara Hicks (47:52) call it eggplant? I aubergine is just such a better word to say. Rolls off

Mathias Meyer (47:56) It suits.

Sara Hicks (47:57) aubergine like eggplant. There's no comparison, right?

Mathias Meyer (48:00) Yes, and where's the egg?

Sara Hicks (48:03) a good note. That's a good note for us to end on.

We will leave it there. Toodles!

Mathias Meyer (48:07) Toodles, see you.

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