Changing your behavior is hard to do by yourself. An accountability partner keeps you focused and holds up a mirror.
I was sitting in a packed workshop audience two years ago listening to Marshall Goldsmith, ranked the No. 1 leadership thinker and executive coach in the world. He was, not surprisingly, talking about how to be a successful leader. What was surprising–shocking, even–was the bomb he dropped in the middle of his talk: “I’m too cowardly and undisciplined to do this work by myself. I have a person who calls me on the phone every day. She reads me questions I wrote for myself and I answer them. Why? Because I need help and it’s OK.”
Wow. If Marshall Goldsmith needs this kind of help–and gets that kind of return on his time–I was pretty certain I did too. He was talking about accountability partnerships.
