Recently, I wrote a post outlining the concept of accountability partnering—a powerful tool for achieving your personal goals.
In that post, I made some suggestions for accountability success, but none of those tips will get you far without the right partner. In choosing the best person for helping you achieve each goal, consider these 4 key factors:
- You trust them
- You care what they think
- They care about you personally
- You can admit failure to them
When you decide to select an accountability partner for a specific goal, 1 person might spring to mind immediately. Now, hold that person up in light of these considerations. Can you answer yes to all 4?
Great. Now it’s go time.
Kickoff
When you try your first accountability meeting, don’t give your new partner your entire life plan and all your goals. Instead, start with 1 key objective, even if it’s a small one.
You both need to get comfortable with this process before you go all in, and starting with one goal is a good way to build momentum without anyone getting overwhelmed and giving up on the whole thing.
Keep in mind that it might make sense for you to select different accountability partners for different goals. Your wife might be the perfect person to hold you accountable on engaging with others on a more genuine level, while your son could be great at following up as you strive to learn some new and emerging technologies.
Partnering with Yourself
For some goals, you might want to use only yourself as an accountability partner. This can work with the right approach, but we have to overcome our tendency to rewrite history. If I try to hold myself accountable, it’s easy for me to look at my vision and say, “Yeah, I’m doing okay with that” or “Well, I must have meant to state that goal differently.”
In short, I have a tendency to bend the vision to match the results.
The remedy to this is simple: write yourself a letter, seal it, and give it to a friend to return to you on a specified day. Or schedule an e-mail to yourself for some future follow-up date. Seeing your own objective written in your own words is immensely powerful.
Once you have read over your goal, amend or expand your description, reschedule it, and keep tracking toward your vision.
And let me know how it goes.
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