Preface
Accountability partners help co-workers succeed and here we show you how to win with your accountability partner. What format topics and process and structure of the partnership arrangement will gain you the most wins with your accountability partner? If you’ve never had an accountability partner and are new to the idea, you may wonder how to handle this new relationship and what to discuss. Don’t agonize! It can really by quite simple.
Here’s how to get started and win with your accountability partner relationship. Remember one thing – An accountability partner relationship is a two-way street. You must support your accountability partner in taking steps that help meet his or her goals and win.
Resolve Your Meeting Process
You should have regular, consistent meetings with your accountability partner to maximize their effectiveness. These sessions might be in person, off-site at a coffee shop or if you’re virtual accountability partners, then these meetings might be held on Zoom or Google Hangouts. It doesn’t matter if you use technology to meet up or not. But you need to have a regular meeting place or process.
It may seem obvious but you should select an accountability meeting frequency that with both your needs and availability. It can be helpful to start meeting each month twice to four times. This allows you both time to review progress or obstacles and delays as you encounter them. It’s enough to get into a groove without becoming cumbersome. I use that frequency myself and find that anything less is just not effective
Determine When You Will Meet
But be mindful that the watchword is flexibility. You should have permission to change your meeting place or time, depending on what’s going on in your job or your accountability partner’s work schedule. For example, if you become accountability partners with another worker during the summer months, you both may have greater flexibility when to meet. But then during the school year you may find that you need to adjust your meetings so that you can spend more time with your children in the shorter time they have available after school.
This is a normal part of a accountability partnership arrangement. So, it’s important to periodically review your respective schedules to see if another time slot would work better for both you and your accountability partner.
First Meeting: Point Out Your Goals for this Relationship
Mark Twain famously said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” During your first session, you will want to talk about your values and goals with your partner. You will probably have a mix of short-term and long-term business goals or for your life.
You and your accountability partner can help one another break down each other’s long-term goals into easy, manageable steps. For example, if your long-term goal is to publish a Kindle ebook on your market or industry to achieve peer recognition, respect, and admiration, then your short-term action steps would be items like ‘outline my Kindle book’ or ‘contact a designer to create my book cover.’
Follow Up to Really Win with Your Accountability Partner
In follow up meetings, you’ll want to review the steps you took since your last session together. Did you complete all your agreed action steps? Did you forget something or run into a problem that prevented you from completing one of your action steps? Can your accountability partner come up with ways to try to overcome this roadblock?
Celebrate a Win with Your Accountability Partner
Don’t just review the difficult tasks – the ones that you or your partner are struggling to accomplish. Be sure to celebrate when either one of you meets a milestone or accomplishes a goal. Celebrating accomplishments can be simple—like going out for lunch together or if you’re virtual accountability partners, you might send your accountability partner a small gift card that may be pertinent to the achievement. By celebrating your success together, it further motivates you and makes it more likely that you’ll achieve even bigger goals.
Wrapping Up
Be understanding and tolerant with yourself and your new accountability partner as you both learn how to navigate this new arrangement and meet your goals. If something isn’t working for either of you, you should articulate that and ask for what you need to succeed. That is how to win with your accountability partner.
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