Did you know the 5 stages of employee accountability follow a similar pattern to the well-known stages of grief (anger, bargaining, etc.)?

If you’ve ever experienced a significant loss or witnessed someone who has, you already know that humans typically don’t find acceptance immediately; instead we journey through a series of emotional stages until we finally arrive at Acceptance.

Well, after years of research with thousands of employees, we’ve discovered that the stages of employee accountability also follow very clear stages (just like the multiple stages of grief).

Think about it: When you’re trying to get your employees or colleagues to become more accountable, it’s not like flipping a switch. There are 5 stages of accountability, and people progress through each one in a logical flow. If you don’t know what stage your employees are in right now, it’s impossible to make them more accountable.

The four stages leading up to Accountability are as follows:

These reactions tend to follow a certain logical flow (i.e. Denial begets Blame, which evolves into Excuses, which is followed by Anxiety). Of course, not everyone evolves through these stages in perfect order. Some people jump back and forth in a roller-coaster ride of reaction. Others may never enter Denial, but spend most of their days in Anxiety or Excuses, and they may even have situational-specific reactions (e.g. certain feedback engenders Blame while other feedback is met with Accountability). But as the illustration above shows, there is a natural logic to the progression of these stages, and it’s absolutely essential for effective leaders to understand.

Get the 4 powerful conversations – including precise scripts for exactly what you should say – to push your employees past the first four stages of accountability and directly into the final stage: complete ownership and accountability. In our upcoming webinar, "Put More Accountability in Your Culture," you’ll learn those 4 conversations and much more. The first 100 registrants get $50 off this live webinar, so hurry to reserve your seat now.

Denial

The opposite of Accountability tends to be Denial. If you’ve ever heard people say, “That rule doesn’t apply to me,” or “My performance was just fine” (even when it wasn’t), you’ve experienced Denial. These are folks who are so defensive and walled-off, or their egos are so fragile, that they’re simply not ready for feedback. They’re in effect saying, “There’s no problem; my performance was absolutely fine. If you don’t like the results, that’s a problem with your judgment, not my performance.”

Blame

Once you’ve pierced the veil of Denial, people often exhibit Blame. Blame is the unspoken acknowledgment that constructive feedback is warranted (i.e. the outcomes were subpar), coupled with an unwillingness to admit any personal fault. You’ll hear things like, “Ok, maybe the results weren’t perfect, but if you want to know where the problem is, go ask Accounting why they didn’t get the right data to my team before the deadline.” Whenever you hear an admission of subpar results, followed by somebody else’s name (or department), you’re hearing Blame. [Note: This example presumes you’re not in, and don’t control, Accounting].

Excuses

After Blame comes Excuses. An excuse is an admission of subpar results plus an admission of fault (insofar as no other person is getting named). But a person who makes Excuses isn’t quite ready for Accountability. The admission of fault is coupled with a host of extenuating factors that no normal human possibly could have overcome. Unlike Blame, it won’t be another person or department that gets thrown under the bus, but your servers, procedures, phone systems, etc. will take a beating. “I didn’t get the message,” or “The server crashed just as I finished the report,” or “We ran out of supplies,” are all variations on Excuses.

Anxiety

After Denial, Blame and Excuses, the final stage before Accountability is often Anxiety. The actual subpar performance and culpability have been fully acknowledged, but the person lacks the readiness to move forward and improve future performance. People in Anxiety say things like, “There’s no way we’ll finish in time,” or “We’ve tried to fix this before and it just didn’t work.” These folks get that they’re the ones who need to improve, but they lack confidence (they’re often freaked out) that they’ll be able to make the required improvements.

There’s a lot of psychology behind why people try and fall back on Denial, Blame and Excuses and Anxiety instead of just doing what’s asked of them. But you don’t need to climb inside your employees’ heads to bring them up to Accountability. You can shut down the denial, blame, excuses and anxiety; with 4 powerful conversations.

Get the 4 powerful conversations – including precise scripts for exactly what you should say – to push your employees past the first four stages of accountability and directly into the final stage: complete ownership and accountability. In our upcoming webinar, "Put More Accountability in Your Culture," you’ll learn those 4 conversations and much more. The first 100 registrants get $50 off this live webinar, so hurry to reserve your seat now.