Sound Wisdom Blog
Building an Accountable Workplace Culture by Sam Silverstein
To build an accountable workplace culture, you first design it. How do you design your workplace culture? Through your values. Your values are the house rules. Values must be consciously chosen and they must be authentic to your organization. They should not be cut and pasted from some other organization’s values. They should be yours. Your values must say to everyone in the organization, “This is how we do it here.” Everyone in leadership must model the values that leadership chooses to live and evangelize.
Accountability Is the Answer to the Great Resignation by Sam Silverstein
The Great Resignation is in full swing. People are quitting their jobs. It is rampant. But it is important to understand that people, for the most part, are not retiring. People are resigning from companies where they do not feel like they belong. They are resigning where they do not feel valued. They are resigning where they do not connect to the organization’s mission. They are resigning when they are not connected to a group of peers. They are resigning when they do not feel like they are being developed and grown for future opportunities. People are resigning when they cannot work remotely or build their work life into their lifestyle.
Achieve Everything You Want by Sam Silverstein
What if I told you that accountability was at the center of achieving everything you ever wanted? Does accountability really seem that powerful?
Here’s the thing—what happens to us is based on the actions we take. Those actions are determined by what we believe. What we believe about people will determine the level of accountability that we have. And what we believe is at the very heart of determining what we achieve. Let’s discuss.
Build an Organization Good Enough to Attract and Retain the Best People by Sam Silverstein
Are you having attraction and retention problems? Do you constantly struggle to hire and keep the right people? Are there always unfilled job openings in your company? Does your door feel like a turnstile at times? If you can’t find enough good people, then maybe you haven’t built a company good enough to attract those people.
Your Source of Excellence by Sam Silverstein
Usually, when we run into a challenge, we focus most of our effort on changing what we do…and we make little or no effort to change the way we think. Yet the power of thinking far outstrips the effects of doing. It is only when we change the way we think that we change what we do in a sustainable way. This is a key principle of accountable leadership: Action always follows belief.
Accountable Leaders Live in the Mindset of Abundance by Sam Silverstein
There is something special that happens when you give—and give freely. If you operate from the position that you are looking for opportunities to give without remorse, without feeling coerced, if you truly give from your heart, something opens up inside of you, and new possibilities present themselves in support of the generosity you have initiated.
Mastering Accountability by Sam Silverstein
Accountability is not a way of doing. It is a way of thinking. Plenty of leaders talk about “holding people accountable” for certain narrowly defined outcomes: getting a report done on time, hitting a performance target, taking out the trash, whatever. What they do not grasp is that these are transactional commitments. They are items people can put onto their to-do list and then check off. When we focus on the to-do list items, we overlook the relationship.
Building an Accountable Workplace Culture by Sam Silverstein
One of the most common questions I hear from leaders is: How do we build an accountable workplace culture?
The answer is simple…but it is not easy. In fact, the answer to this question gives us a textbook example of why simple principles often take immense amounts of time, energy, and effort to implement. The simple answer is as follows.
Accountability Is Impossible Without the Truth by Sam Silverstein
If you are a leader, you are either fulfilling your personal commitment to tell someone who is counting on you the truth, or you aren’t fulfilling that commitment. If you aren’t, then accountability within the relationship and the organization you lead is impossible, because you’ve already failed to be accountable to your team coming out of the gate.
Transforming the Diversity Conversation…the Accountable Thing to Do by Sam Silverstein
Viewing people differently because of race, religion, gender, sexuality, physical attributes, ability, or personal style choices means you will always miss out on seeing their true potential. When leaders do this and/or enable others to do this, they not only make the workplace feel unsafe; they rob the people they lead of a more promising future…and they rob their organization of talent, ideas, and a better-looking bottom line. A leader can never lead a person to their true potential if that leader sees only superficial differences and false limitations.
Know Your Purpose; Know Your Mission by Sam Silverstein
What is your Purpose in life? What is your Mission? They are not the same. It is quite common for people (and teams and even entire organizations) to get a little confused about what a Purpose is and how it differs from a Mission. This confusion does not exist for accountable leaders and the team members who report to them.
Accountable Leaders Learn to Spot Cultural Drift by Sam Silverstein
Then he asked the big question that I’ve noticed truly accountable leaders always make a point of asking me when I use this term in a conversation for the first time. He said: “How do you define cultural drift…and how do I deal with it?”
The Accountability PhD by Sam Silverstein
How do you earn a PhD in accountability? What sets you at the peak of the mountaintop when it comes to being accountable individually and building an accountable organizational culture? I believe there are seven core requirements.
Accountability—“It’s All of Us”—in the Pandemic Era by Sam Silverstein
Accountability is all about commitment, and commitment is all about relationships. Values connect us and strengthen us in deeper and deeper relationships, relationships that keep us moving forward when times are good—and also when times are not so good. Through relationships, we can accomplish a wondrous multitude of things. Never has this been more obvious than now, when our nation and the world is struggling with a global pandemic that has left so many feeling disoriented, alone, and unsupported.
The Root Cause of Burnout: Letting Other People Set Your Purpose by Sam Silverstein
Do you sometimes feel stressed out, off track, spread too thin, or simply lost in a vast maze of urgent priorities? Do you ever wonder where you are headed, personally or professionally…and then find yourself wondering whether maybe, just maybe, you may be drifting toward a destination you never chose, a destination called “burnout”?
Living the Values: The Key to Accountability in Trying Times by Sam Silverstein
As 2020 draws to a close, many leaders find themselves facing a challenge they are not used to addressing: team members who get sidetracked by intense disagreements about social and political matters having little or nothing to do with the team’s goals and objectives. What is the accountable leader’s response to this situation?
Accountability and the Ballot Box by Sam Silverstein
As an American, I am lucky enough to live in a country whose culture is one that has been consciously designed. Our culture is one in which we hold as self-evident the truth that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is the culture we aspire to. That is America. But as Aaron Sorkin points out in the passage I quoted at the top of this post, America is not easy. This designed culture of ours, beautiful as it looks when written down on a sheet of paper, isn’t something we can just read passively and assume will exist for us without effort. We have to live it. And we have to defend it.
Who Are You? Are You Accountable? by Sam Silverstein
You and I are living through a strange time, a time that will be written about in history books for decades and centuries to come. We are living through a time when the pressures and challenges we face are causing many among us to choose to perpetuate cycles of fear, anger, and greed. Yet this is also a time when others around us are just as prominently motivated by choices that sustain love, compassion, and generosity in their lives and the lives of those around them.
Make no mistake: These are not easy times in which we find ourselves. These are times when our character is being tested. These are times that produce extreme responses. And each of our responses is the answer to a critical question: Who are you and what do you believe?
Accountability: It’s Personal by Sam Silverstein
One powerful lesson that accountable leaders can take from the last few extraordinary months is that personal commitments matter.