Step 6: Accountability
“It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.”
Sir Josiah Stamp
What is accountability and why is it important in goal setting? Accountability is simply taking responsibility for your decisions. It’s putting in place a plan of action to keep you on track with your goals. Having accountability to yourself and others will push you through difficult times. Let’s talk about both forms of accountability:
Accountability to Yourself
The first person you need to be accountable to is yourself. After all we’re only talking about your own self-worth. That’s right, if you don’t do what you set out to achieve it has an impact on your self-esteem. You’re silently telling yourself that you are a failure. Let’s talk about ways you can be accountable to yourself.
- Use the CFL Worksheets. – These worksheets have been designed so that you can easily set and review your goals. To ensure your remaining accountable to your goals, review your worksheets daily. Take all your Current Goals worksheets and continue to update your progress. Use these sheets to keep you on track with you goals.
- Take action daily. – Everyday you should be taking some sort of action towards the achievement of your current goals. This will keep you focused and on track. If you find yourself missing more than a few days you’ll need to take immediate action to rectify the problem.
- Monitor your results. – In addition to the daily review you’ll be doing using the CFL Worksheets you’ll also want to monitor your results weekly and monthly. It’s important to take a high level view of your results to ensure what you’re doing daily is moving you closer to your goals. Take the time to break from your routine so you can be sure your traveling down the right path.
Accountability to Others
Holding ourselves accountable may seem like it’s enough, after all these are your goals. However, I can tell you from years of coaching business professionals that this is an extremely difficult task. We can rationalize almost any excuse for not reaching our goals. When times get tough you’re going to need to be accountable to someone other than yourself.
- Accountability to family members. – Being held accountable to your family may be easy for some and difficult for others. I’ve seen some people that don’t want to share their goals with their family for fear they will talk them out of what they want to achieve. It’s best to find a family member that will remain positive and hold you accountable at the same time.
- Accountability to friends. – Often a friend is a better choice for accountability than family members. It’s best you find a friend that wants to see you succeed and can push you to do more at the same time. They’ll also need to make a time commitment to monitoring your results. Make sure you find a friend that can do both well.
- Public accountability. – Another form of accountability is to announce it publicly. You can find lots of groups on the internet that are trying to achieve something similar to yourself. Find these people and publicly declare what you are going to achieve and when it will be done. Then continue to go back to that forum and post updates. You’d be surprised how supportive strangers can be. You could also start a blog charting your progress. This has been done many times successfully with people trying to lose weight.
- Accountability to a coach. – I may be biased, because I am a coach, but I think this is the best form of accountability. Why? Because a coach has an investment in your success. They genuinely want you to succeed. The advantage of a coach is the weekly meetings that force you to go over your results for the last seven days. They’ll find lots of ways to motivate and push you to achieve your goals.
- CFL Goal Setting Membership. – Finally you can also join the CFL Goal Setting Membership. In this membership I’ll be personally holding you accountable to your goals. I’ll be reviewing your progress weekly and making sure you stay on course with your goals. You can find more out here: CFL Goal Setting Membership
