Rethinking Accountability: Why Blame Kills Culture & How to Lead Better | Michael Timms | Episode 355

Scott McCarthy:
Michael, welcome to the show, sir. So good to have you here today.

Michael Timms:
Thanks a lot, Scott. I really appreciate you having me here.

Scott McCarthy:
I love having other Canadians on the show. It feels good because normally it’s either Americans or actually Aussies experts on the show. So it’s always good to have a fellow Canadian, fellow Canuck on the show. We will not talk about hockey as we record it is in the midst of the Stanley cup finals, but we will talk a lot about accountability and leadership today, for sure.

Michael Timms:
All right, sounds great.

Scott McCarthy:
So let’s dive in because you literally wrote the book about accountability and how to inspire accountability. And first off, I’ve been saying for a while, accountability gets a bad rap. I’d love to hear your take on that from your perspective. For sure.

Michael Timms:
I think one of the challenges with. Because I know a lot of leaders want to create a culture of accountability. They want to instill accountability in others. But accountability is really kind of a bad word. I think in most workplaces, it’s oftentimes what leaders talk about when people are not performing and people are like, oh, my gosh, here comes the accountability talk again. Right. I think the problem is that what’s actually happened in our society is we have weaponized this word accountability, and we’re using it to mean something that’s not really what it was originally intended to mean. For instance, when we hear media or talk about the.

Michael Timms:
The word accountability, it’s usually in. In terms of, you know, this politician must be held accountable. Right. Or this CEO must be held accountable. And really what they’re saying is this politician is to blame and they should be punished. And that’s. And so effectively what they’re doing is they’re using the word accountability as a euphemism or as a nicer way of saying blame and punishment, when in fact, accountability is the complete opposite of blame. When you want to kill accountability, just blame somebody else and they’ll.

Michael Timms:
They won’t take accountability. And. And the very act of blaming somebody else is not taking accountability. So, yeah, we have messed up that word by just using it as a nicer way to describe blame and punishment when that was not the original intent.

Scott McCarthy:
And whenever something gets associated with blame and punishment, like, that’s it, it’s game over for us. I’m concerned because everyone will avoid it. They don’t want anything to do with it because it’s that, you know, scary ogre sitting over in a corner. But I loved how you, you know, you. You’ve kind of framed this thus far. So, you know, from Your perspective now, you kind of simplified it. But I’d love to go deeper on what you believe. Accountability is how you see it moving forward.

Michael Timms:
Yeah, the way I define accountability is really kind of there’s two parts. One is focusing or rather taking ownership of results instead of simply taking ownership of tasks. That’s part one. Part two is focusing on what you can do to improve future results. So that’s taking ownership of results and focusing on what you can do to improve future results. And so just to kind of break that down a little bit, I say accountability is taking ownership of results, not tasks. There’s a big difference. There’s a big mindset.

Michael Timms:
When you see somebody who is only taking ownership of tasks, we call that really, that is a responsible person. And that’s good. We want responsible people. We want people to do what they say they are going to do. But what I’d rather have is somebody who gets the results that they say that they’re going to get. And if they don’t, they’re going to say, you know what, this did not work out well. But I’m not going to let you bear the consequences of that, Michael. I’m going to take care of this to, you know, I’m going to own this and I’m going to fix this.

Michael Timms:
That is somebody who takes ownership of results and that is accountability. And the difference is, you know, and I don’t know if you’ve seen people in the workplace who oftentimes they hide behind responsibility to avoid taking accountability. And they say, well, I did what you told me to do. I did my job.

Scott McCarthy:
Well.

Michael Timms:
Yeah, but we did not get the results we wanted and we need follow through. Well, I did my job. And that’s a way of people sort of saying I’m out. Right? I did quote my job. I did what you told me to do and the consequences are yours. That is not accountability. That that’s responsibility. And I think responsibility is good, but it’s not as good has accountability.

Michael Timms:
So that’s part one. Part two is focusing on what you can do to get better results or rather improve future results. And that’s different than me saying than focusing. Well, you know, if Scott would just do his job, you know, if he would just do his job, then I could do my job. I can’t do my job until Scott does his. So again, that is not accountability. Accountability is saying, hey, look, Scott’s going to do what Scott’s going to do, but what I can do, this is the part that I can control. That’s what I’m going to focus on and I’m going to focus on what I can control to produce better results.

Michael Timms:
So that’s the mindset that I have seen transform cultures from finger pointing. Two, I’ve got your back. I know you’re going to drop the ball sometimes and so am I. But I’m here to pick up the balls that you drop. You’re there to pick up the balls that I drop. We are just moving forward to get better results. We’re all about improving ourselves and improving our organization to be the best we can be. That right there, that definition of accountability, the way I defined it from my perspective, that’s what I have seen really make that transformation.

Scott McCarthy:
Love it. Absolutely love it. And aligns very well with how I operate because I have a saying. My saying is, so actually I’ll back up. So right now, before we hit record, I told you I was part of the Canadian army, right? Senior officer in Canadian Army. So my day job, actual day job is I am the commanding officer of our largest supply depot in the country. So I got 185 folks that work for directly. Well, not directly for me, they’re not all direct reports, but you know what I mean.

Scott McCarthy:
So my saying is, with them is like, listen guys, I’m responsible for our failures, you’re responsible for our successes. And with that is like, hey, that means I’m going after to find and take care of everything which is directly linked to, as you said, the results and do what I can. And the end of the day, if we don’t achieve those results, that’s on me because I haven’t done something that I had ought to have done, right? It’s not like, oh well, you know, they didn’t give me enough people. Well, you know, you gotta figure, you gotta figure something out, you gotta figure out a plan, right, to move forward. But my team, you know, they’re the ones that do the day job. They’re the ones that are actually packaging and shipping the goods. They’re the ones that are taking care of this stuff. They’re the ones for my success.

Scott McCarthy:
Ain’t me. I ain’t on the shop floor. I was down there today checking things out, but still I’m not the one doing the day to day business. And I feel like if people just had a very similar mindset, then suddenly you hit that, but you hit something which I’d love to dive into. And that is what I refer to as the blame game. And it’s like pointing in the finger like, well, if they had Done their job, we wouldn’t have been messed up. And it just drives me nuts because I find there are never any winners when we start playing the blame game. So I’d love to hear from your research, your expertise.

Scott McCarthy:
Why the hell do we end up in this space where we’re just pointing fingers all day long?

Michael Timms:
Yeah, you know, it’s a good question. A lot of people don’t ask that question, but that is the right question, is why do we blame. Why, why do we blame so frequently? And I think one of the things it’s. I do an experiment with my clients to have them pay attention to how often they’re tempted to blame in a week. And most of the time they come back and they report back that they are surprised how often they feel the urge to blame somebody else when something goes wrong. Well, there’s a reason for that. There’s both a psychological and a biological reason for that. It’s literally the way we are psychologically and biologically wired.

Michael Timms:
They’ve done a lot of tests on this. It’s called the fundamental attribution error. That’s the psychological term for it. And they’ve later. And they’ve actually done some research to find out, you know, FMRI studies to actually look inside the brain to see what is going on. Why do people do this? And let me explain what this is. If you walk into a room and you see a problem, and you also see 10 things that could have possibly created that problem, if one of those things is a human being, that’s the only thing you see. And you immediately assume that person created that problem, and you are blind to the other nine possible reasons why that bad thing happened.

Michael Timms:
You know, how, you know, we’ve always been told, oh, we’ll give other people the benefit of the doubt. That’s the right thing to do. But it’s completely the opposite of what we are wired to do. We are, we are wired not to give people the benefit of the doubt. We are wired to assume people make mistakes and create problems on purpose. So. And it really honestly, when it comes down to it, it appears like it actually just is a wiring problem in our brain. It’s actually the routing problem.

Michael Timms:
It’s a routing thing of how our brain processes information and it routes things directly. When we see bad things, we immediately ask our amygdala, which is the fight or flight center of our brain. It says, why did that bad thing happen? And our amygdala is super fast at coming to a conclusion, but super stupid. And the only thing it can come up with is that bad thing happened because they did it on purpose, because they’re lazy, they’re unmotivated, they’re careless, they’re stupid, whatever it is. That is an amygdala produced response. And it is the first thing that comes to our mind. And it. And we come to these conclusions so quickly, we don’t even realize that we have just made an assumption.

Michael Timms:
So that’s maybe, I guess more, that’s maybe more than you were asking for. But that’s the long.

Scott McCarthy:
I love it. Keep going, keep going. I love it.

Michael Timms:
Okay, well, that’s the long answer to why do we blame. And it was actually, you know, it wasn’t until realizing that was a huge turning point in my life when you start to be able to look inside your own brain to see, hey, wait a minute. You know, I immediately assumed that the reason I can’t find this thing is because my wife has hid this thing on me maliciously, right? Is that probably what happened? It’s probably not what happened. But why did I assume that immediately without even like, like it’s happened so fast that I just know that when I can’t find something, it’s because my wife has maliciously hid this on me. Maybe because there’s a pass of that happening to some, to some degree. But more than, more as more than likely it’s because that’s an amygdala produced result. And it was really transformational when I started to realize, oh man, you know, that is why I’m coming to that conclusion. It’s my amygdala that’s doing that.

Michael Timms:
Right? It’s this psychological gremlin I’ve got in bad wiring in my head that now allows me to sort of reverse engineer my own behavior and say like, and start to retrain myself so that when I see something, I know that my immediate, my immediate reaction is probably going to be to blame somebody. And if I know that and if I’m prepared for that, when I notice that in my behavior, I can stop hopefully before I say something and then I can say, hey, what are the other factors that may have contributed to this problem, including my own behavior?

Scott McCarthy:
Right?

Michael Timms:
Because any problem that you come to, one of the possible reasons for that problem is almost always going to be your own behavior. But that’s the last thing that we want to look at, right? The first thing we want to look at is other people’s behavior. So. So yeah, that’s helped me, I think, become a better human being. I think it’s helped me Build better relationships with my family and my coworkers, and it has certainly helped me get more sustainable results.

Scott McCarthy:
No, that’s really fantastic, man. Like, I’ve. Wow, that’s a much deeper question answer than I ever expected for sure. And just, just, you know, to wrap that up, it just feel there’s something comforting about just blaming someone else, blaming something else to us. But I think you kind of hinted at, like, we need to look internal first. And that’s one of the things I feel leaders have such a difficult time doing. Oh, heck, human beings in general have such a difficult time doing is like looking at ourselves first. And when, you know, when I’m working and I don’t achieve the results, the team, we don’t get the results I’m looking for.

Scott McCarthy:
The first question I ask myself is, okay, what did I not provide? Where did I fall short here? Which is something I find a lot of leaders don’t actually do because the first thing they want to do is like, well, how come you didn’t do this? Or how come you did that? Right? So why is it so difficult for us to look in the mirror and look at ourselves and go, hey, like, have you got this sorted out or not?

Michael Timms:
Well, that’s another really interesting question that most people don’t ask is why do we, if that’s true, that when we encounter a problem, when we have a problem, one of those reasons almost always is our own behavior. And if that is true, which it is, well, why don’t we look at our own behavior? Why do we almost never look in the mirror and say, hey, you know, what, what, what did I, what did I do? You know, did I do anything to contribute to this problem? The reason is because again, another psychological gremlin that we have roaming around in our brains is called the self enhancement bias. And we have, you know, if you believe in evolutionary psychology, the person who said, who looked at the woolly mammoth, you know, he’s holding the spear and sees the woolly mammoth and says, holy crap, that thing is going to trample me. That person likely did not live like. But the person who said, I got this. I can take this sucker down. Those are the people that we’re related to. We’re related to the people who had the confidence, even if it wasn’t justified, right? The confidence to go after and to do hard things.

Michael Timms:
Those are the people who have better life expectancies. And so our brains know this. And so our brains are constantly doing things to make us think that we’re better than we really Are because here’s a key. Here’s the ultimate performance enhancer, confidence. Confidence is the ultimate performance enhancer. It can actually screw you up if you get overconfident, right? But confident people almost always perform better than insecure people. You’re like, ah, I think I’m going to screw this up. Yeah, you’re probably going to screw this up, right? It’s the people who say, I got this, who are more likely to nail it.

Michael Timms:
And our brains know this. And so they’re constantly shielding us from our weaknesses. And that’s one of the things, that’s why we don’t look in the mirror as often as we should, is because our brains are trying to protect our fragile egos. Because we know. Because our brains know we have a better chance of survival if we don’t look at our weaknesses. But the problem is our brains learned this in a time where our life was constantly at risk. We don’t live in that time anymore. And so this self enhancement bias often works against us.

Michael Timms:
So that’s again, probably a longer answer to why don’t we look in the mirror? That’s why.

Scott McCarthy:
It’S beautiful, man. I absolutely, really enjoy it. And I like going deeper because it’s all about the understanding in the background. Like, oh, you could go, oh, well, we just don’t like doing it. Okay, but why? What’s the rationale behind it? And actually understanding so that I find what it does when I’m using all the. Like, this is my education, right? Leadership 101 for me, this podcast for the past eight years. And what I find it does when I learn this stuff, it goes, okay, now I can actually attack it when I’m in that space, you know what I mean? Like, I understand the background now. I’m like, okay, this, understand I can go ahead and get after the fallacies that are in my mind so I can take it out and actually do what’s right.

Scott McCarthy:
So we’ve talked about what accountability is from your perspective. We talked about the blame game and why we do it so much and why we shouldn’t do it. We’ve talked about this bit now. Now let’s dive into actually establishing true accountability. Because when you talked about accountability near the beginning, you mentioned something which I absolutely love and which. Which I believe accountability is too. And it’s like, hey, I got you, man. Michael, I got you, right? Like, I got your back.

Scott McCarthy:
Because, yeah, we all slip up, you know, maybe someday. It’s like, kid was sick last night. I was up, you know, till 4 o’ clock trying, you know, cleaning up, you know, the mess in the bathroom and the bedroom and all this stuff. Didn’t sleep well. Oh, I got this TPS report I got due now. All I’m trying to do is get this coffee down range so I can actually somewhat function. I got you, man. I got you.

Scott McCarthy:
So I love to hear about how we can instill that type of accountability in our teams, because that, to me, is where we actually hit peak performance with our teams.

Michael Timms:
Exactly. And it is, you know what? And that’s the answer to that question is really the answer to, you know, why is it helpful for us to look in the mirror and to get to that kind of culture? Really, the key thing number well, the two key things to get to that type of culture is, number one, stop blaming people. Because nobody’s going to have your back if they feel that you’ve just stabbed them in the back, right? If they feel that, you’ve just blamed them. And our brains interpret blame the same way they interpret a physical attack. So when we’re blaming people for problems, our brains totally interpret that as that this person is attacking me, like, with a knife, basically. And we remember that, right? Like, we will remember that for years. And so I’d say if you want to build that kind of team environment where it’s like, hey, man, I got your back, you know? You know, you got my back. Number one, get rid of the blame, right? Do not tolerate it.

Michael Timms:
First of all, don’t do it yourself. But secondly, don’t tolerate it in your teams. But it goes back. Okay? But the second step is acknowledging your part in problems. Verbalizing does. It does a couple things. Number one, it actually allows you to model accountability. It allows you to realize, what do I have control over? I have control over my behavior.

Michael Timms:
I do not have control over your behavior, Scott, or anybody else’s. Honestly, even people who report to me, I can’t control their behavior. Hopefully I can influence it. The only thing I can truly control to change my outcomes is my own behavior. And so as you verbalize it, you say, you know what? I didn’t do this. And if I had have done this, that would have given me probably a better chance of getting a better outcome, right? When I can realize that therein lies my power to actually produce better results for myself. So looking in the mirror in my mind is the act of accountability. It’s saying, hey, I’m owning my part in this problem.

Michael Timms:
I’m not falling on my sword all the time. I mean, for sure, as you pointed out, you know what? When your team makes a mistake and you’re talking to somebody outside your team, you gotta fall on your sword. It’s all you. Right. As you pointed out, Scott. But, you know, one on one, when I’m talking to people or when I’m with, you know, with my team and we’re trying to, you know, talk about a problem, unless it is totally my fault, it’s not. I don’t think it’s helpful to say, oh, this is totally my fault. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Michael Timms:
I’m talking about just owning what is my piece in this. This is something I could have done. This is something I did do that did not help. This is something I could have done that would have helped. Own your piece of it. That is your power. Right? But the other thing it does, in addition to modeling accountability and showing people what they should be doing, it actually makes them safe to do it themselves. And it makes it safe for them to say, oh, well, you know what? It’s okay.

Michael Timms:
I’m seeing Michael as owning this, his part. I guess it’s okay for me to say, yeah, I’m not, hey, I’m not saying this is totally my fault, but I can see how I could have done things differently and that would have been produced a better outcome. I’m more willing to say that now that Michael has gone first or Scott has gone first, right? So it makes it safe for people to do that. But the other thing it does, when you look in the mirror, it actually earns you the moral authority to ask other people how they have contributed to the problem, right? If I launch into a problem and say, hey, Scott, how did you contribute to this problem? You’re probably going to feel a little defensive, right? Well, hey, screw you, buddy. Like, this isn’t all me. But if my immediate reaction when I see a problem is, hey, this is a problem, this is not okay, you know what? This is probably my part in this problem. If nobody else is taking ownership, I have now earned the moral authority to say, okay, hey, you know, Susie, what’s your part in this? Hey, Steve, what’s your part in this? Right? And people are going to be far more willing to allow me to hold them accountable if they have seen me go first. So, number one, as you look in the mirror, it gives you the power to create a better future for yourself.

Michael Timms:
It models accountability. Number two, it makes it more safe for other people to take ownership and take accountability. And then three, shoot, I just lost my train of thought. What was my train of thought. What was number three? I can’t remember.

Scott McCarthy:
Sorry.

Michael Timms:
I just lost my train of thought.

Scott McCarthy:
It’s all good.

Michael Timms:
Those are the. Those are the keys of. That’s why we look in the mirror.

Scott McCarthy:
No, that is gold, absolute gold. And I just love the undertone of accountability, of course, but just taking ownership of what you can then as well. Leading by example is what I really got out of here. By leading by example. That is how we start instilling that in our teams. And then from there, they can go ahead and start, you know, instilling, you know, perhaps in their teams or amongst themselves. So that is definitely something I’m really thoroughly enjoying. Michael, we’ve hit a lot of brown.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, go ahead. Number three.

Michael Timms:
The number three that I just temporarily forgot was. The third thing is it allows us. It gives us the moral authority to hold others accountable.

Scott McCarthy:
So there you go. There we go. Wrap it up. Beautiful. You know, we’ve hit a lot of ground here. I’d love to know, is there something we haven’t touched that you think would be appropriate or important to the audience to hear right now before we wrap this thing up?

Michael Timms:
The most important thing. I mean, and I know you shared that a lot of your audience are people in leadership positions now, and most of us are in a leadership position, whether we’re a parent or a coach or whatever, even if we don’t hold a leadership position at work. I think the key mindset to becoming a better leader is to understand it’s on you. Right. It starts with you. If you are not getting the behavior that you want to see from other people, there’s a good chance it’s because of something you’re doing or not doing. And oftentimes people are responding or reacting to your behavior. So when you’re seeing other people behave in.

Michael Timms:
In ways that you think are counterproductive, number one, look at yourself and say, hey, what. What am I doing here? That’s. That’s perhaps influencing people to do that. But if you can’t figure that out, ask them. They’ll be able to tell you. And that’s one thing, you know, I would say here’s one freebie tip for you. Here’s you. Your leadership superpower that is available to all people in leadership positions.

Michael Timms:
But very few people actually access this superpower is to request feedback. But you want to request feedback in a way that doesn’t make you look like a weenie and a needy person. A lot of times, people know when you’re asking for feedback, when you just want to hear A compliment, right? And people can hear that and that makes you look weak. But the way to ask for feedback is in a way that probably is going to get people to give you good feedback is to, is to ask for specific advice. And I usually frame it like that, like, hey Scott, you know, I really respect your opinion. Can you give me some advice? You know, is there anything that, that you have seen me do or not do that could have produced a better result in this situation? You know, you don’t have to get back to me now, but can I circle back to you tomorrow? You know, maybe if you need more time to think about it. Right. That is how you’re going to get really helpful feedback.

Michael Timms:
Because most people, the people around you know what you need to work on as a leader way better than you do. So ask them. So there’s my final tip for you.

Scott McCarthy:
Absolutely love it. And then final Michael, where can people find you, follow you, be part of your journey. Shameless Plug. I know you got your book, you got your TEDx talk that you wanted to promote. Feel free to let us know and I’ll put the links in the show notes.

Michael Timms:
Yeah, so I think probably the easiest way, if you like what you heard and you want to learn more, I’d suggest you check out my TEDx talk. It’s how to claim your leadership power. All you need to do is just kind of type Google Michael Timms and it’ll probably be the first thing that pops up. But that’s a 11 minute summary really of my book. And if you like that, then if you want to do a deeper dive, check out my book how leaders can inspire accountability and you can follow me on YouTube. Just Google Michael Timms and you will find me.

Scott McCarthy:
Awesome. And as always for you to listener it’s easy. Just go to leaddoboss.com the episode number in digits as in 1, 2, 3 or whatever the episode number is and you’ll find all the links in the show notes easy to grab. Link. Michael, again, thanks for taking time at everybody’s schedule and talk to us about the super important topic. I absolutely love it. Accountability to me is crucial. So thank you so much, sir.

Michael Timms:
My pleasure. Thanks Scott.