Building Trust and Accountability in Teams

Great teams don’t just work together—they challenge each other, support each other, and hold each other accountable. In this episode of Relationships at Work, Kyle McDowell explains how embracing challenge and setting clear expectations builds deeper trust, stronger team bonds, and long-term alignment. From confronting resistance to leading by example, this is a masterclass in principle-based team leadership.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: How do we keep ourselves, back to the accountability question. How do we keep ourselves accountable to this? Because a lot of leaders, and I, I don't mean to crap on leaders. Leaders have a lot of challenges and a lot of lack of training that they're, which is the whole, it is exceptionally hard, and they're kind of left out to go learn how to swim.

I'm gonna throw you in the deepest water I can find. Go figure it out. And that's, leaders need leaders and that's a huge challenge for them as well. So it makes me come back to the thought of accountability, because we talk about responsibility a lot. Responsibility is your job description.

Responsibility is, but accountability is so rare. I bring up the example of if you see a bad leader. We are like, okay, we need to address the bad leader. I'm like, great. Do we ever talk about the leader that hired them? Do we talk about the leader that was accountable to train them to be a better leader, to have regular performance and blah, blah, blah?

No, we only focus on the bad leader. So I'm thinking of this going, okay, we've got principles, whether they're the 10 WEs or not. How do we keep them to be accountable or, and consistent because it also is that other blind spot of the too busy, right? I, I don't, this is a checkbox exercise, but Kyle, I told them what the 10 principles were. I'll come back in six months and see how we did, because they're onto the 17th meeting today. How do we break through that wall? Crack that nut as it were.

Kyle McDowell: Well, there's no substitution for care. There's no substitution. So if you don't care, you can't lead and out of care comes, theoretically, if you really and sincerely, genuinely care about those that you lead and you wanna develop those around you and as I've mentioned, have an impact and a, a legacy, it is a decision that must be made every single day and almost every single interaction and letting go of the ego that comes with the business card you hold.

And that was a challenge for me, man, when I created the principles. One of the principles is we challenge each other, followed by, we embrace challenge. As the leader of a team, or more broadly an organization, you really don't have to embrace challenges from those on your team. Your business card says you don't have to, but that's where the disconnect comes and that's where the alienation comes, and that's where the apathy is born.

When I have a standard that you don't follow and, and vice versa, so I can't make someone care. I get this question a lot, a similar question. It's like, well, okay, we've, we've quote unquote implemented the principles. Everybody has the book. You gave a great keynote. So how long until we have this culture of excellence that you talk about?

My answer is, I don't know. I don't know because I can't assess your level of care and commitment to these things. But what I can tell you, and I can guarantee it, because I've lived it firsthand and I've seen it in dozens of organizations at this point since the book's been out. If you make the conspicuous decision and those around you, again, it's our foundation for system of beliefs.

If those around you make that same commitment, I say subscribe. You subscribe to these principles. We're all gonna live them. We're not just gonna live them, we're gonna talk about 'em, and they're gonna be conspicuous in our everyday actions. Russel, I still wear a 10 WE bracelet everywhere I go. It never comes off unless it gets cruddy and then I have to take it off.

I cannot make you care, but I can guarantee if you, if you approach this because you want something better and you're open to being held accountable to those and by those that you lead and you're gonna do the same. Hold them accountable. This magnetism begins and you start, and the beau, the beautiful thing to me that I witnessed firsthand is once the principles were established, as I mentioned, I pulled away. I go visit a site every month to go to a different location every month, and each month thereafter, I would start to see new signage. I would see coffee mugs, I would see desktop wallpaper. None of this I commissioned. I didn't force any of this and I was always struggling, man, candidly, is this a bit of brown nosing for the new boss or is this the real deal?

And it took me over a year to really become comfortable that it was resonating, they were resonating. So I that, you know, that's, that's, that's no substitution for care. State them, gain alignment around them. This foundational set of beliefs or our system of behavior, live them every day and be comfortable being called out when you don't, because you won't. Nobody's gonna be perfect at it. So we allow that grace as well.

Russel Lolacher: There's so many leaders that don't have the influence they want to have, which is I, I can influence my team of 10, 20, but the larger organization, they're not getting it. So from your experience, from working with clients and stuff, what is the best approach? 'cause truthfully, you can go to the CEO and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that.

But there are passionate, passionate middle management leaders who are basically going, oh, this I can control. This is great for my team. This is motivating for my team. We see the vision and mission 'cause they're on the poster, but really this is where, this is where the rubber hits the road, right? So how do you approach an organization? Because sometimes organizationally they're not ready, but they are at a subculture level.

Kyle McDowell: You are so spot on, dude. I go through a bit of a vetting process personally. So my, I have a very small team. We've got a team of five people and before committing to doing a keynote, before committing to doing any type of coaching or, or leadership summits where we, we lead a multi-day, multi-hour session, usually five weeks of really deep dive into the principles of the book.

I have to do a bit of vetting. Is this a check the box process that you're going through? Perhaps the CEO is told the next level of leadership change the culture. So I have to, I have to weigh how serious this is and, and this is where some, and I've turned down business more than once to say, this feels like an initiative and not a way of life.

So I, I, you know, we've got to, you're so right, that middle layer of management is thirsty. They're so hungry for a different way, a better way, but it feels as if it feels almost impossible because they're just not seeing the same level of effort and energy around the same topics above them. Air quotes on the org chart.

So, you know, I just I want, I want, I wanna make sure that folks understand, your audience understands, I recognize if you're in a place where the, the toxicity or dysfunction in and, you know, in the org specifically above you and maybe even around you is so great. That you're not able to make the change that, that you wanna make.

I, I get it. And if you, and if you choose to keep your head down and continue down that less impactful path, I got nothing but love for you. We got commitments, we got bills. You know, it's not easy to sometimes take a step back to go two or three steps forward. And that's a decision all of us have to make.

But if you care enough and you are committed enough to a different way and you wanna find that fulfillment, I all but guarantee that one step backward is almost always worth the 2, 3, 4 steps forward, that will result in leading differently.

Russel Lolacher: I wanna just to get a little bit more granular with those managers that are trying to implement this. Diversity comes up for me a lot when we talk about general, like 10 principles. I know we've already established that these don't need to be your principles. They just need to be there to maybe inspire what works for you.

But even looking at one of your principles, which is we challenge each other diplomatically. I hear that and I also hear, I know so many people that being challenged means something completely different from person to person. You could have the softest touch and that person's like, I've had so many horrible leaders to date that I am, like the walls go up.

Or others that, more neuro, neuro divergent who see being challenged differently in how they want to be challenged. So how do we adjust principles to better connect with those that we're responsible for when they may see things quite differently?

Kyle McDowell: Well, there's a rule. First of all, we challenge each other. As a rule, every challenge must be grounded in either data or experience.

Russel Lolacher: Okay.

Kyle McDowell: Not opinion. Not opinion. So part of the adoption or subscribing to these principles involves understanding the, the nuances underneath them. If you have an issue with anything we're doing.

Bring me the data. Show me how, and it could be experiential data. It could be your, it could be something that you've lived in a former organization. Pretend we have this new marketing approach that's about to launch, and someone on the team has had a sim or, or took a similar approach with another firm before they joined our team and they saw it fail miserably.

We must listen to that challenge. We must be open to hearing that. It's when we come and say, you know. I don't, I don't like those glasses, Russel. Like, that's not helpful. Your opinion is not, your opinion is, is wanted and heard, but it's not part of the challenge process. And I'll tell a really quick story.

So I, I introduced these principles back in 2017, and as I mentioned, the acceptance or response was mixed. Largely favorable, but not entirely. The, one of the people, a direct report of mine inside this subgroup of those that were pretty obstinate. Her name's Julia. She knows I tell this story, so it's, it's all good 'cause there's a great ending to it.

Julia was difficult to, to me at nearly every turn, you know. Nearly 10 years later, she doesn't quite remember it the way I do. My, my, my, my recollection is nearly every ask I had of her was met with some type of pushback. And I am, I am far from the brightest guy in the room, dude. But when I introduced these principles, I was so passionate about the adoption and wanting them to take place without me forcing it. I recognized that these were challenges she was giving me, and if I didn't embrace them, if I didn't take my own medicine, the whole thing is dead on arrival. So here's this guy that's just evangelizing all these things, and one of them is. We must embrace challenge, and the first time somebody pushes back on him, he bangs his fist on the desk and uses his business card to say, no, no, no. Here's what we're doing, because I said so. Well, I, I knew my, the best example is Julia sent, I asked for a workbook. I wanted to do some analysis, personal analysis of this new organization. So she had all this data. She, I said, send me the workbook. She sent me a screenshot. Not helpful. I said, please send me the workbook.

She sends me a single tab of a workbook. At this point, I'm fuming, but I just couldn't react the way I wanted to. I behind the scenes probably to my wife or something I did. Let's fast forward nearly a decade later. She's one of my closest colleagues we haven't worked together in, in six years. We still have almost regular one-on-ones every four to six weeks we check in with each other.

She ultimately assumed the role that I had after I left that firm. So I, there are people that you must walk the walk a lot longer than you talk the talk. And she was one of them. And, and she's one of my, I, I, I would say best confidants as well. We, we talk, she helped name the book. So I just, you know, the example that I share there is so important, and I think it's similar or in line with the question that you asked, is it's easy to not embrace challenge when you don't have to.

But the flip side of that is when you do embrace challenge as the leader, the results and the alignment and the bond that comes is really hard to break once it's there.