Accountability for adults

When my sons were young, they each had assigned duties appropriate to their age. I made a weekly chart that hung on our refrigerator listing the duties each son had, and I included a box for each duty each day so I could check off when they had performed the task. Peter, Joel and Aaron knew that the marks would show how accountable they had been for what they needed to do to earn their weekly allowance.

We adults aren't really so different. Being accountable to someone helps motivate us, too. It's one of the principles I learned in my life coach training program.

My coaching clients set their own agendas. When they come to me, they know what issue(s) they want to work on (or if they don't, they soon identify it in initial conversations). In early conversations, we learn where they are now—and where they want to be. The task then becomes establishing goals at each coaching session to get my client where she wants to be. The goals are hers to choose and hers to carry out. But each week I ask what happened on each goal she set the previous week. We celebrate goals reached—and we look at those that weren't reached to see why. Perhaps it wasn't a workable goal. Perhaps it needed to be broken down into smaller, more attainable goals. Or maybe it was a goal for later; the time just wasn't right.

Over and over, I've heard from my clients that the accountability piece is so important in our coaching sessions. That's true in my life, too. I may have outgrown many things from my childhood. You have, too. However, the value of accountability isn't one of them.

Please contact me if you want to explore coaching sessions. I'm happy to provide an absolutely no-obligation, complimentary strategy session before you even decide to proceed.