What is the goal of accountability?
Goal accountability is the hardest part when it comes to achieving goals. You heard me right: being accountable to your goals involved more heavy-lifting than actually achieving goals. Goal accountability includes all the tasks that you really really don’t want to do in order to reach your end goal.
It’s waking up an hour earlier to hit the gym when all you want to do is sleep in – for more than just a week! A summer beach body doesn’t come from one week – or even one month – of effort. The only thing that will get you beach ready is goal accountability.
How You Can Create Goal Accountability:
Find a Partner:
One of the best ways to be accountable to anything is to have someone to keep you on the right track. Accountability partners are great because you get to help each other complete goals. In fact, according to The American Society of Training and Development, you have a 65% greater chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone.
To stay on the right track with your accountability partner, make sure you schedule reoccurring meetings where you touch base and manage each other’s progress. This will increase your likelihood of achieving a goal by 95%. Goal accountability partners are such a great tool that we use the practice in our training and in our very own internal work at CFS.
Be Willing to Change:
You’ve heard us say it before: willingness to change is a crucial part of success. You need to know when to change a process if something isn’t working. After tracking your progress, maybe you’ve come to realize that you aren’t as far along towards your goal as you thought you would be. Analyze what isn’t working and tweak it.
Be Honest with Yourself:
The easiest part about goal setting is doing just that: setting them! We can all dream up ideas of where we want ourselves in a year, a month, or even a week! But for goal accountability to be possible, our goals have to be realistic.
Don’t Give Up:
Goal accountability means that you are 100% committed to completing the tasks necessary to achieve your goals. Even if you have to completely change the route you take to accomplish your goal, do not give up on it. Giving up sets you back farther than where you started. Not only will you not reach your goal, you just wasted however much time working towards something that will amount to nothing.
Commit to a schedule.
One of the biggest missteps with accountability is setting deadlines for reaching your goals, but failing to set a schedule that will actually get you there. Often, we’re so focused on the end goal (losing 20 pounds, writing a book, launching a business) that we forget that any goal can only be accomplished through a step-by-step process. We may hope, wish and desire with all our heart, but it will never magically happen if we don’t actually commit to making steady progress.
It’s paramount that you set a schedule you can commit to. This will give you a game plan you can follow and a way to evaluate if you’re consistently and persistently working toward your goals. Your schedule should set specific and time-oriented objectives, but they should be within reason. This will help you translate big goals into concrete, actionable steps.
Three goals of accountability
It is useful to identify three goals of accountability:
- Financial accountability
Have funds been properly used or has there been fraud?
- Effectiveness accountability
Have objectives been achieved? Are beneficiaries pleased with the processes and outcomes?
- Efficiency accountability
Have the limited resources been put to the best possible use to provide value for money? Were the activities the best option for contributing to the mission?
Why be accountable?
Being accountable helps everyone involved to learn from your current activities – and work more effectively in the future. This is a very important aspect of accountability to beneficiaries, managers, trustees and donors. It is the engine that helps people improve how they work.
Benefits Of Accountability To Achieve Your Goals
You’ve set your goals…now what? What do you plan to do differently this year to ensure that you actually reach your goals? Are you tired of just carrying them over from year to year…slightly disappointed for lack of achievement, yet a little bit hopeful that this year will be different?
Take some time to consider for a moment… “How can I make this year better than the last and actually accomplish my goals?”
As entrepreneurs, we are passionate about our business and very hopeful to achieve great things. Whether you’re a solo-preneur or have your own team, you start out believing you can manage it all. You’ve made your goals, set a strategy…but as the days go by…you have yet to implement your plan of action.
Accountability accelerates your performance.
When you connect with a coach (one-on-one or in a program) you can work the kinks out of your plan, develop a sure-fire winning strategy and execute with confidence, knowing you have been guided by the best to achieve your goals.
Accountability helps you measure your success and progress.
A good coach will help you define what success looks like and set milestones to measure your progress along the way. You can easily track how close you are to reaching your goals.
Accountability keeps you engaged. There are things that will come up that will distract you from your goals and take you off course. Even when you’re bored, distracted or tired, knowing that you have to answer for your progress will keep you going to the finish line.
Encouragement to keep going
Sometimes we attach so much significance to achieving a goal that when we experience a setback — which is inevitable at some point along the way — we just throw our hands up in the air and decide that the goal isn’t worth pursuing after all. An outside party can encourage you during setbacks and plateaus or when you experience a lack of motivation, helping you look past the momentary failure to see the bigger goal.
Ideas and inspiration
Sometimes, you may look for someone who is more of a mentor than an accountability partner. If they’ve walked the road before you and achieved the goal you’re striving for, they can share ideas, tips and experiences that will help you along the way.