Vulnerability and The Peer Accountability Exercise
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"Vulnerability is a willingness to admit when you've made a mistake or you don't know how to do something. It's a willingness to give and receive honest feedback without fear of retribution."
— Mike Goldman
The Role of Vulnerability in Effective Leadership and Teamwork
Vulnerability, as a leader, means admitting mistakes and acknowledging when you don't know something.
It involves giving and receiving honest feedback without fear of retribution, fostering psychological safety.
Vulnerability occurs when one person trusts another enough to share something uncomfortable or uncertain.
This act of vulnerability encourages reciprocal trust and open, honest communication within the team.
Without vulnerability, teams may hide mistakes, withhold feedback, and hinder their overall effectiveness.
The Peer Accountability Exercise
The peer accountability involves giving and receiving feedback from each team member about what they are doing right and wrong.
The exercise helps the team by identifying behaviors that support or hinder its success.
The exercise is ideally conducted at least once a year or every six months.
The first step of the exercise involves writing down the names of everyone on the team.
The process begins with taking notes on what to thank each person for and what needs improvement.
Two columns are created on the sheet of paper
The first column is for noting what each person does well, something for which they should be thanked.
This column highlights the strengths and contributions that benefit the team.
The focus is on expressing gratitude for one specific thing, not creating a long list.
The second column is for providing feedback on something you want the person to work on or stop doing because it negatively affects the team.
Giving feedback is a responsibility owed to everyone on the team.
Create a setting where the team sits in a circle without any obstacles between them, such as a conference room table.
Start the feedback-sharing process with the CEO, as they should model how to accept feedback.
Begin the feedback round clockwise, with each person taking turns to express gratitude and mention what the person does well.
After sharing positive feedback, go around the circle again to provide constructive feedback, mentioning specific behaviors that need improvement.
Use examples of how certain actions, like interrupting or quick frustration, hinder team productivity.
Encourage individuals to work on the areas mentioned for improvement.
The TWO Responses To Feedback
There are two responses to feedback: "Thank you" and asking for clarification questions if needed.
"Thank you" is a response to express gratitude for the feedback, regardless of whether you agree with it or not.
If you don't understand the feedback, you can ask for further explanations or examples without debating or arguing.
It is important to say "thank you" before moving on to the next person to ensure a comfortable feedback environment.
Agreeing with every feedback can be seen as insincere, so it's better to ask for clarification if needed and then express gratitude; don’t agree or disagree.
The Value of Specific Commitments for Accountability
Each person commits to one or two specific behaviors or actions they will change or improve over the next 30 days.
The commitments are shared with the team, and it is beneficial for the team to write them down to hold each other accountable.
It encourages the willingness to admit mistakes, seek improvement, and prioritize the team's needs over individual needs.
The exercise develops the vulnerability muscles - helping individuals become more comfortable giving and receiving feedback in the future.
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This episode, I wanna talk a little bit more about culture, but one specific aspect of culture. And you might have heard if you've listened to other episodes, and I hope you have. Thank you. If you haven't, welcome to your first episode. When I talk about culture, I like to talk about the three Vs of culture, values, vision, vulnerability.
Now, on other episodes, I've talked about values. You can go look for an episode on core values. I've talked about building a compelling vision, but I haven't talked much about vulnerability yet. So I wanna talk about that third V, that third aspect of culture that I call vulnerability.
If you look up vulnerability on dictionary.com, you get an interesting definition. The definition is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. Ouch. That is not a definition I like. That's the definition. I don't want to be vulnerable, so I wanna change that definition.
I like the word vulnerability. I wanna change the definition as it relates to you as a leader within your organization. And here's what I would, what I would suggest. We think about when we think about vulnerability. Vulnerability is a willingness to admit when you've made a mistake or you don't know how to do something, willingness to admit when you've made a mistake or you don't know how to do something.
It's a willingness to give and receive honest feedback without fear of retribution. So it's about that psychological safety. It's a willingness to subvert your needs to the needs of the team. Those are definitions of vulnerability that I think are really, really important. And in fact, if you read a great book called The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, and it's a book you ought to go read.
One of the things he talks about is what he calls the vulnerability loop. And the vulnerability loop very simply says that if I decide to trust you, trust you enough to share something with you that I'm uncomfortable about. And I say to you, you know, this project we've got going on, I've never done it before.
I've never done this kind of work before. And I'm just not sure how to move forward. And the other person hears that. Here's that vulnerability. He knows that I'm trusting, you know, that I'm trusting you. So you decide, well, you could now trust me, and you might say, hey, I get that, and I could probably help you with that.
You know, by the way, I had a similar problem at a project last year I was working on, and here's what I did about it. So you trust me, you're vulnerable with me. Now I feel like I could be more vulnerable with you. And we get that vulnerability loop. And now we could be open and honest with each other.
And that's what's so important about vulnerability on a team, without vulnerability on a team, we hide things. We hide what we don't know. We hide our mistakes, we don't give people feedback. We're not comfortable receiving feedback. All of those things could really kill a team. So vulnerability's critical, and what I wanna share with you today is, there, there are a number of exercises you can do to increase vulnerability on the team.
Just working together through challenging circumstances is the best thing you can do. But I wanna share with you my favorite exercise. And again, while you can't rely on exercises, you have to work at this every single day. There are certain exercises, things you can do to help. Put the pedal to the metal a little bit to help go from 30 miles an hour to 60 miles an hour, to a hundred miles an hour in your journey to being more vulnerable as a team.
And my favorite exercise is one called the peer accountability. Exercise. Now it's my favorite. It scares the heck out of some people, because the peer accountability exercise, and I'm gonna take you through it step by step, the peer accountability exercise is an exercise where you are going around the room and giving everyone on your team feedback, and they're giving you feedback as well on what you're doing, right.
And it's helping the team and what you're doing wrong and it's hurting the team. I made the mistake once of giving people 90 days notice that we were going to do that exercise. Said, hey, when we meet 90 days from now, we're gonna do peer accountability exercise and you're gonna give each other feedback.
I got calls from five outta seven people on the leadership team saying, just scared to death. I don't want to do that. Let's not do that exercise. Could we wait a while and do that? I mean, people are so fearful of giving and receiving feedback. So what I found is the first time I do this with folks, I surprise them with it cause it doesn't give them enough time to think about it and get scared.
They just do it. And this is an exercise I like to do, at least once a year. I like to do it every six months with a team and let me take you through it, and then when we get through it, you'll better understand what it's all about and why it's so important. But the exercise starts out.
With self work and what I do is I will give everyone on the team a sheet of paper and they've gotta write down the names. And I'm typically working with the CEO and the leadership team. Now, you can do this with any team, but let's assume for now it's CEO and leadership team, and the first step is they're gonna sit down and write the name of everyone else around the room on a piece of paper.
So you're gonna write. All of your peers on that team, the name's on a piece of paper, and then there are two columns. One column says one column is about what they do well, that you want to thank them for. Here's a strength. Here's something you do that helps the team. I want to thank you for it. That's one common, you pick one thing, it's not a list of things.
Here's one thing, when you challenge us to think outside the box and don't let us off the hook. That is great. I hope you keep doing that. That really helps the team. So one column is something you want to thank them for, that helps the team.
The next column is something you want to tell you would like them to work on or stop doing because it hurts the team and for everyone around the table, all of your peers on the team, you are filling out both of those columns. Now the excuse I get is, well, with this person, I don't work with them too much. I don't really have much to say and I call BS on that.
If you are on a team together, you're on that leadership team, you've got some kind of meeting rhythm you probably have together. You know them. And most people who are have a blank on there and they say, I don't know what to put. It's not that they don't know what to put, they have a fear of saying what they truly feel.
And it's important to work and get over that fear. And what I tell people is, if you don't give someone feedback, oh, you're great. I don't have anything negative to say. That's garbage. And what you're doing is by holding back. That thing that you really should be saying, you are hurting that other person.
So you really owe it to everybody around the table to give them feedback. So it starts out with you just taking notes of everyone at the table, what you want to thank them for, and what's something you want them to change or work on or stop doing that hurts the team now. Next step is really important.
Normally this is around a conference room table, but now we have to share and in sharing, and I know this is gonna sound kind of touchy, feely, woo woo, but I don't care. In sharing it, it's really important that you get out from behind the table and I have my teams sit in a circle. With nothing in between them.
So get out from the table, find a way to sit in a circle. There's just something about having a table in between you and the person you're talking to. It's like an obstacle in the way from being totally open. So I like to get everybody sitting in a circle, not sitting on the floor and holding hands. You could sit in a chair, but you're in a circle with nothing in between you.
And I always start, the feedback always starts with the CEO. The CEO is gonna get his or her feedback first, because I want that CEO to be the model of how to accept that feedback. And I'm gonna tell you in a minute how to do that. So what happens is the CEO goes first, which means the CEO is gonna get feedback first.
You're gonna go around clockwise around that table and you're gonna start out where everybody one by one is gonna say, hey, Susan. Here's something you do. You know, when you, share your vision with us, it is always so clear and helpful. I want you to keep sharing that vision with us whenever we get together.
I really want to thank you for that. Everybody goes around the circle, and you're sharing what they do well that you want to thank them for. Now, as you are sharing that, the CEO is taking notes on what everybody is saying. Now, here's the other important thing, and number one, you're gonna go around and share the positive.
Then when you're done, you're gonna go around again and you're gonna share, hey, here's something. You know, when you interrupt in meetings, when you get frustrated in meetings, you tend to get frustrated quickly. That really shuts us up and hurts our ability to be productive as a team, and I'd really like you to work on that.
That's the second round. First round is what you want to thank them for. Second round is what you want them to change. CEO is doing two things. Number one, writing down what everybody says. Here's what's critical as the person getting the feedback.
When you get the feedback, you have one of two responses that you can give. One response is to say, thank you. Thank you. Does not mean you agree with them. Thank you. Means you're thanking them for having the courage, the honesty, the passion about the team. You're thanking them for giving you that feedback. Whether you agree with it or not, you're thanking them. So that's number one.
Thank you. Number two, if you have a question, if somebody gives you feedback and you really don't understand what they're saying, and you could say, hey, I don't understand. Could you say it in a different way? Or Could you give me an example of that? That's fair. Ask that question. You're not debating it, you're not arguing it.
You are not agreeing with it or disagreeing with it. If you have a question you're asking. And then you're saying, thank you. I don't move to the next person when I facilitate this. I don't move to the next person unless I hear a thank you. Now, isn't it okay to say I agree? No. And here's why it's not okay If you're going around the circle and you're saying, yeah, thanks.
I agree. I agree, I agree. And then someone else gives you feedback and you just go, thank you. And you don't agree, that person knows you're calling BS on what they said. They're not gonna feel comfortable giving you feedback the next time. So it is ask a question if you need to ask for an example, if you need to, and then thank you.
So the CEO goes first, the positive, then what you wanna see them change, and then you move on to the next person and you do the same thing. And you go around the circle in that way with everybody taking notes, everybody saying thank you after they get it, and then you go around until you're done. When you're done, and here's the reason you're taking notes.
When you are done with that, the next step when I ask my teams to do is now that you're done, I want you to look at that list. Of feedback that you've got, the stuff they want you to keep doing, the stuff they want you to change or stop doing. And from that, we're gonna go around the circle again. Only this time what we're gonna do is, again, starting with the CEO, you're gonna commit to this team, one or two things.
One about two behaviors you are gonna commit to changing or one or two actions, specific actions that you are gonna take. Over the next 30 days, and you're gonna commit that to the team. It's not a bad idea for the team to then write that down so they can hold you accountable. Part of your job as a team is to hold your peers accountable for the commitments they're making back.
The more specific the commitment, the better. If you say something like, over the next 30 days, I'm gonna commit to improve my communication. That's garbage. How is someone gonna hold you accountable for that? But if someone says, I promise, over the next month I'm gonna do my best not to interrupt people before they're finished speaking, that's specific.
So everybody goes around and commits one or two specific actions they're gonna take now. There's two reasons why I just love this exercise. The first one is the obvious one. When I ask people, why do you think we did this exercise? They'll say, oh, cause we all got great feedback. And by the way, once everybody's done and they've given the feedback, they've received the feedback, they go, that wasn't so bad when you first said it.
It scared me to death, but that wasn't so bad. So the obvious thing. Is everybody's getting great feedback to improve themselves, improve the team. Beautiful. Here's the one that's not so obvious, but it's actually the number one reason I do this, is what this does is it starts building your muscles around giving and receiving feedback around having honest, sometimes brutally honest discussions.
You know when you've got the ability to tell your CEO that he squashes conversations really quickly and it hurts the team. I mean, that's not an easy thing to say. You start building your muscles to be honest like that. Now, you don't have to wait until the next pure accountability exercise. Six months from now, you start getting more comfortable giving folks feedback, good or bad.
You get more comfortable giving folks feedback in the moment you get more comfortable receiving that feedback and reacting to it. That's the reason to do it. It builds those muscles of vulnerability. Remember I said part of vulnerability is a willingness to give and receive honest feedback without fear of retribution.
You know, a willingness to admit you've made a mistake or that you don't know how to do something. This starts building those muscles, a willingness to subvert your needs to the needs of a team. You may have the needs to move really fast and get on with the conversation, but your team needs something else.
You might need to subvert your needs, change your behaviors, so it's so critical to build. Those muscles. Now I have other exercises, which I will probably share on other episodes. You may have some exercises that help build vulnerability, and they're not trust falls. But man, peer accountability is my favorite.
I may share some other ones, but I hope that helps if you buy my book, breakthrough Leadership Team, or you have my book, take a look in there in a chapter on, building vision. There's a whole step by step. For this pure accountability exercise, but you really don't need that now that I've given you.
Go back, rewind, write it down if you need to. I promise you, this is an amazing exercise. Build your vulnerability, build your ability to give and receive honest, open feedback. Go do that exercise. See you or hear you next time. Take care.