Accountability Starts When You Define The Standard

We break down what a real culture of accountability looks like and why the best organizations make expectations so clear that people can hold themselves to the standard. We share stories and practical tools to help leaders build clear values, defined behaviors, and teams that own the mission instead of blaming each other. 
• using top customer experience brands as culture models 
• treating accountability as a byproduct of shared vision and values 
• defining what “great” looks like in plain language 
• connecting every role to the mission and outcome 
• giving tough feedback with the goal of growth 
• modeling accountability by owning mistakes first as leaders 
• building culture fit through better hiring and onboarding 
• setting clear duties while still helping across the team 
• rejecting the “not my job” mindset as a career limiter 
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Transcript

Welcome And What Culture Means

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Welcome to the Leader Mentality Show with Rob Clemens and Nick Stef D Stefano's back. I got so excited, almost said Steve Defano. Steve DeFano. D Stefano. Amen. Well, hey, welcome back. Thanks for coming back to the show with us. Of course. Thanks for having me. We um in our quest, in our quest, a life vision of seeing people raising their own personal bars and trying to raise the bars of other around us, we have this show. I, you know, I did the leader mentality with what separates a leadership mentality from non-leadership mentality. Um, and to me, sometimes that could be, are you selfish or not? You know, and and how far does selfishness take us? I uh we could go down a whole show about that, but today I'm really interested in company culture and uh accountability culture. You know, I'm I have a relatively young company, uh Nick, you know, Carolina Bays, it's relatively young. We we've grown very nicely, we have a lot of accolades, and um, and it's been great, but you know, as you're building your culture, uh, one question I would ask of everybody who starts a company, what what is your culture? What's it supposed to look like? What is it? Do you even know what culture is, or are you just doing stuff? Yeah, are you just doing stuff? So as we unpack today, I think really our goal is gonna be if you're gonna do a culture of accountability, what would that look like and how do you do it? That's so good. But as we usually start, I I'm I'm gonna kind of get into something here. Think about the greatest companies in America. Carolina Bays. Well, Carolina Bays is probably number one on your list. Uh, you know, hey, I need a home builder and all that good stuff. Go to Carolina Base. But but, you know, honestly, I'll be serious. I like to model my company after the big dogs. As true. Hey, I might not sell, I might not sell, you know, 20 billion chicken sandwiches like Chick-fil-A, but I want to act like they do. They're on to something, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, I love that you said that. I think what you're where you're going is like you don't just act like what they do, but you have similar values, right? Values, correct. Similar standards. Yeah. That's what defines a culture. So when you think about the best of the best, that's why shouldn't we try and do the same thing? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I want to have the same metaphorical experience when you're dealing with Carolina Bay's as as I have when I go over and I buy a chicken sandwich over at Chick-fil-A, and they're like, thank you so much for your order. I'm like, well, they really do like my business here. Like, I I feel different here. I want them to feel that here. But but we get into that top three, top four American consumer index companies, and you're gonna find Chick-fil-A, you're gonna find Lexus. Lexus is is up there, man. Do some research on Lexus and the way they treat their their uh customers when they come in. And of course, you have Trader Joe's, man.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Oh, hey, I love it. Right around the corner, I'm gonna go there after the show. I'm telling you, let's go hit Trader Joe's afterwards. But but listen, Nick, you should do a live show for him.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

We should just right there like eating uh natural foods and stuff. But uh but I'll tell you what about Trader Joe's? I mean, here's the thing when you go in there, you know they value

Why Top Brands Feel Different

SPEAKER_02 3:25

your your your customer uh as being a customer. And the thing that sets all these apart is there's an intentional behavior towards accountability. So why is that happening with them? Why can't why is this so hard for others to master?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yeah, I so I think accountability is what leads to excellence. Yeah, right? And we've talked about it even just on our some of our recent shows that there has to be some standards. There has to be, and we talk about values and a vision, a common vision we've talked about. When we have those, when we have a culture of accountability, it's because of those things. Accountability doesn't have accountability, I think of it as a byproduct of everybody buying into, believing, and literally, if we say we believe it, we better be living it out. It's literally in the word. Okay, look, like believe means to be live, right? Be living it out. So if we say we believe in these things, you say that that's what your organization values, well then the accountability is when the byproduct, right, of everybody being on board with that. And everybody, you know, they say everyone's in the boat rowing in the same direction. If I'm rowing in the opposite direction, I'm not very accountable at that point, and everybody's gonna know it if we know this is where we're going. But if it's like, I don't know if we're supposed to be going left or right, well, then I don't know which way I'm supposed to row because no one's ever told me what the standard is or where we're going. I mean, so many places don't have that. Those top companies do. You know what their goal is, they know everyone knows what it is, and it makes it easy to kind of fall into that accountability.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

To play out what you're saying a little bit, I I'll go, I'll go there. You know, I think that the natural life cycle of a young business is you you start off and you don't all your goal is is to make money. You're you're honestly, you're just survive. If I don't make money, I'm not it's like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it's for a business, right? If I don't have any money, I can't survive, right? So every customer is a good customer. Everything that you do that makes money is a good thing. And but you start building momentum, you start hiring people, and then you start saying, Now, have I conveyed to everybody properly what's really important to us and who we are?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Uh that that story you're telling about what is our common goal, and and and really that's how we're gonna be accountable. Are we getting towards our common goal? Here's the way I see it. Do this sometime. If you're at home right now,

Define The Standard Customers Feel

SPEAKER_02 5:45

do this. Shout out to Trader Joe's. I appreciate them letting, well, they don't really let me do this, but I appreciate them understanding that I'm using them as the gold standard. Go to their website and they will tell you what is important to them. I read this on the Trader Joe's website one time. They said, here is the experience, and I'm I'm paraphrasing, but they said, This is what we want our customers to feel like when they come to Trader Joe's. Wow, I'm really glad I came here today. And again, I'm paraphrasing a little bit. But the point is, they not only went to the point, Nick, of saying, oh, we want our customers to have a good experience, they went to the point of saying, we want our customers to feel like this when we get here. So you want to talk about how do we create a culture of accountability? Well, did the customer feel like that when they left or not? Absolutely. If they didn't, let's have the accountability to say, why didn't they? And there's accountability, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

And I think if everyone buys into that, right? If I understand that this is what we want our customers to feel like, then I have to show up every day as an employee, regardless of what my role is, regardless of what my title is, right? You can be the person that signs the paycheck or the person that cleans the bathroom. Yeah. You have to understand how what you do and your people, if you're listening to this, need to understand that they are accountable to us achieving that goal. There's a story about um JFK when they were looking to uh put a man on the moon, going to NASA, and he found a janitor that was sweeping the floors, and he asked him, What's your what's your goal? What are you doing? What's your job? And he said, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. He understood how his actions, his job, played into how he was accountable for us achieving that mission. And you know, if we're looking at the boat, like we might all be rowing the same way, but at the same time, we also still have different strengths of how strong we're pulling it. Like, if you're the strongest person, you can't put your oar in there and pull as hard as you can because you're still gonna make the boat go the opposite way because you're stronger than everybody else. You have to be accountable for where we're going and know how you fit into that. I think that person, and that's what I think when I think about the best cultures of accountability and excellence, everyone is personally accountable for their actions and how they impact other people. And I don't think we often do that. I think sometimes we we like to kind of point the fingers at people and say, you know, this thing happened, and like who's responsible for this instead of saying, okay, this went wrong, how can I fix it?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

I hate to say it, but I but I I mean I'm going to say there there is a hard, tough love

Mission Ownership And Tough Feedback

SPEAKER_02 8:10

part of accountability. Absolutely sure. And because we we're always taking it from the leader angle, whether you're the manager leader or whether you're a leader as in a leader of uh similar peers. And that comes down to like, look, at the end of the day, uh, I'll give you an example. We were on um we did Dragon Boat. Shout out to Dragon Boat, too, by the way. Uh Ground Zero here at Middle Beach. They do such a great job, and they do this this dragon boat, uh, also raising money for youth who you know need a great place to go and and and do quality activity with each other. Just a great, great mission there. But they have dragon boats coming up in actually next weekend, I believe. Uh um depending on when the show airs, it might be over. It was great when it happened, anyway. But you guys get the idea. The the thing is, is I've been on many a dragon boat, and I've seen the good and I've seen the bad. I'll give you a quick story. I love telling the story. It was so fun. We had a year where I was on this boat with a bunch of muscle-bound guys, including myself. Anyway, yeah, you know, anyway. Hey, uh, you know, whatever. Um, yeah, yeah. We're hilarious today. But but no, but we were on this boat and we did. We were all the guys who like to work out at the gym, you know, and and we got through our first race and and we barely won. And when I say barely won, I mean it's it's a it's a knockout tournament. Oh, yeah. So we we barely won. And we beat a group that didn't look like they would beat us, but we barely beat them. And we had uh they rotate coaches out there. So we had another coach come in and he said, Hey, look, I watched your last race. He said, I watched, I watched it, and he goes, I'm gonna tell you something. You guys are not in sync with each other. And he said, You think this is about strength and determination? He said, It's about being in sync with each other. And so he gave us a couple of great tips. He said things like, put your oar down in the water. We're gonna do it like this. You're gonna watch the man in front of you, and you're gonna do it like this. We're all accountable for what this goal is. And I'm gonna tell you something. We raced that next race and we beat everybody in the next round up, and the in the next round where other people had already been knocked out, we beat them by a boat length. It was that much for the same exact group of people we were dominating. How did that happen? Well, it comes down to what's the common vision, and the accountability came into when we pulled up the video and we were watching what happened in the first race. Hey, look at the guy whose paddle isn't even getting in the water.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Look at the guy whose paddle is hitting the other guy every time. And that's where the tough love of accountability comes in. I do believe sometimes we have to we have to say, hey, here's where you're you're not going right. Maybe you can do this in a in a growth way.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

But I think to do that, you have to take accountability for the conversation to start. So I have to be willing to say, hey, what what can I do to help you like realize that this is what's going wrong? Like, and that sounds, might sound like a silly way of saying it, but I think that there is more accountability on a team when everyone is willing to take the personal accountability first. It makes me think, I think a lot about one of my favorite books of all time is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willis. Oh, yeah. And I think if everybody took that extreme ownership of I'm willing to take on like whatever the problem is, and he talks about it in his book as if it's the leader's responsibility, and it should be. Oh yeah. However, imagine if everybody took that on. And like instead of the coach having to say, hey, your your oar was this way or your ore was that way, if I'm a person in front of you and I say, Hey man, your ore's hitting me every single time, like, what can I do to help you make sure you stay in sync? Do you want to count together? Like, what can we work on together to do this? It's the tough love of like, hey, you're kind of screwing us up right now, but like, I'm not just gonna tell you you suck and tell you to fix it. I'm gonna say, what can we do about this together? And it's because I should think about what I can do to improve it, like that personal accountability I gotta take first. And I don't think many people do that. We usually find the issue when it's like, like, well, who messed this thing up? Like, who, like, who didn't do this?

SPEAKER_02 11:56

But great, but let me tell you, but and and I know what you're saying, but let me tell you what I've learned from years of being in positions where I had to maybe be in in the lead position of a group. Here's what I've learned about people. Some people naturally have an understanding of who they are, they're reflective, they understand how they affect other people, and it's almost like a gift that some people just start off with more of it. And you can train people to understand it, but some people are just naturally gonna more intuitively be like, you know what, I gotta do better. I'm not doing it. Some people, you as and you, and this is part of our job in management, I believe. Sometimes you gotta go to people and say, hey, look, I know you you feel like you're doing something and and you're mad at everybody here, but let me show you something that that's going on. And that's kind of what I'm referencing, right? It's like sometimes you you need to be accountable, but you don't know when you're needing to be accountable.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Certain people have a natural capability, a natural ability to even just hold themselves accountable or recognize that they need to grow and improve. I you know, I think we did a show a while ago about growth mindset and the mindset that people have, and I think if you have a fixed mindset, it's really easy to not take any accountability because it's like, oh, I'm just I'm just not good at this. Like, so how am I ever gonna get better? Um, but when you have a growth mindset and you're willing to like recognize how you grow. So I think in a culture of accountability, like in the organizations and anyone that's listening, I would think about what are you doing to help your people grow, help your people develop? What are you doing to encourage them? Um, and not just tell them that they're not accountable. Because I want, as your manager, to hold you accountable to whatever we set as a standard, and this is the values. We have these values, and this is how we want our customers to feel. And when you did this, that didn't live up to our values. And so, how can I help you to learn and grow so that this doesn't happen again? Not just you didn't do this, and I'm holding you accountable, and this is the punishment. Because I I think that's what a lot of times when people think of accountability, you think about like you get you get pulled over like you're held accountable for breaking the law, right? We are, and that's there's like some command and some control, and even go back to influence versus authority, like you have authority over me, you can tell me this is the reaction, the result or consequence of me not doing it. But what if we did that and then we also helped him grow? I guess here's my culture.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Here's my point, you know. Here's my point of this, right? I do have a point. And my point is sometimes we're like, just you know, be accountable, you know, guys, just go out and be accountable. Like, that's the key to life. And I'm saying his impression of me right now. Right. I'm being NYX. You know, no, no, no, no. But in all in all reality, it's like, it's like, so you know, yes, I have to hire better. I gotta get people who are more like conscientious, and all that's fine. But here's an example. I'll give you another example. I'm full of examples, but uh, I was on rifle team back in in high school, and I don't mean rifle team like pow pow rifle. I don't really shoot person, but we mean like spinning and flipping the way and the first time I went over to some uh I was I was practicing this on my own, and I was literally taking pretend a little fake gun, and I'm like just handing it myself. I'm doing trying to do what we call twirling, you know. I'm I'm doing like this, and I show it to somebody, I think I'm doing well, I'm accountable. Hey man, I'm accountable, I'm doing, I'm doing this, I'm gonna win this thing. And I showed it to one of the people, and they not the greatest leadership, they kind of laughed at me and they went, no, that's not it. Let me show you something. And they started doing it, and then they they put me on video and I was doing it, and I saw it and I was like, oh boy, I am like I thought I was actually doing something that I wasn't really doing. And so I think that when it comes to the accountability side, it's like it was on that day that I realized, like, wait a minute, for me to truly like embrace what I need to do, I have to understand what it looks like in the first place, and I can't just go out and just do what so yeah, you're right. You know,

Leaders Model Mistakes And Standards

SPEAKER_02 15:50

so I think that as we're going through this, I I'd like to hit you up with a different question. Let me let me throw this out. So I want to build a culture of accountability at my company. I I've you know, let's say you're you're three or four years in, you've started to hire employees. What's a good way for a company to create accountability, short of saying, hey, everybody, be accountable? Like, what's a good way to like create a um create that within your culture?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

So I think the best thing a leader can do if you're responsible for other people, if you are responsible for a company, even if you've only got like two or three new people that just started with you, is that you have to be accountable yourself first, and you have to and you can't just be accountable in the sense of like you do all the things and you you show everyone that, but like you also you own your mistakes. Okay, you and I think so many of us as leaders are really bad at that. We're afraid, like, I can't show any weakness or let these people know that I screwed this thing up. But like, if I want you to do that, then I better dang well be willing to do it as well and say, Hey Rob, listen, I was supposed to get this to you. I promised you guys I would do this, and I didn't. I messed up. Here's what happened. Let me make that up to you, let me fix that. And if I say that to you as your leader, then when you make the mistake, I would rather you come to me and say, Hey, Nick, like I'm I messed this up. Yeah, I'm sorry this didn't fit our values. Because a culture of accountability is everyone understands it and does it and falls in line with it, versus the leader saying, You weren't accountable and you weren't accountable and you didn't do this thing and you didn't do that. And meanwhile, they're never willing to look in the mirror and go, oh wait, like I don't know how to twirl my rifle in the first place. I should be looking at myself first. So I think that's a massive piece of it is being willing to own your own mistakes as a leader first, but none of that matters if there's no standard or vision or values or where you're going because there has to be some standards of behavior and performance. Like when I think about what we do at McLeod, like we have 10 behavioral standards. We talk about one of them is professionalism, and it's like wearing the appropriate uniform to work and wearing your name tag in the right place. And it's like it is simple, easy things that you should be able to do so that when you don't do it, I don't, even if I'm not your leader, I don't have to hold you accountable. You can do it. You're someone else is a coworker could say, Hey, like uh, you're not supposed to wear Cambo scrubs, that's not one of the colors.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

I I dig that. Can I jump in right there? I want to jump in. I I agree with you completely. I think it's too easy sometimes. We we try to make things too easy. Yeah, sure. And we simply not me and you, I'm saying in general, it's like a human nature thing. We all do. Here's what companies do, and I I've seen it all the time, and they become almost like marketing slogans more than what you actually do. Hey, we're professional. Okay, Nick, go out and be professional. Like, what does that even mean? And you you'll make your own definition of professional. Uh-huh. And your definition might be well, I wear my pants backwards every day. And by the way, I'm not just sure. No, I said pants specifically for a reason. Right, there's a reasonable reason. But but um, but but no, you you may have your own thing, whatever, but we say no, no, this is what professional means to us being on time, sure.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Um, uh, you know, keeping your your your uh your uniform clean, choosing the appropriate language and not, you know, speaking inappropriately, you know, cursing around uh customers.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

So therefore, if we don't have that, yeah, it is impossible to tell people to be accountable when they don't even know what to be accountable for.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

100%. And it's and so I think that gets to the point of even like, and I would ask any organization that has values, is it just a word, or is it say we do this thing because we care about people? Like we care about excellence, so we do all of these different things because otherwise you're like, oh, we value quality, and it's like great, what the heck does that mean? And how do I do that? Yeah, I don't know what that like my version of quality might look very different than your version of quality versus the person from Long Island versus the person from UCLA. It's different for all of us. We don't standardize it enough. You know what I think is gonna be interesting.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

All right, right. For those out of the area, we have UCLA, but it's not the college. I don't know. You have to know where Conway and

Culture Fit Hiring And Shared Values

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Ayner is, and then I drew through upper and lower. Um but but to go back, I I I think there's an important thing that we kind of glossed over a little bit, and you and you just made me think of it. It's that, first of all, there's your culture, your true company culture, and I believe this. I I've said this many times. This is a Rob Clemens, maybe original, maybe somebody else has said it, but I know I've said it, I never heard anybody say it. I believe that your internal culture needs to match the culture of the company you go to. And that is so spot on. Now, now, and and let me let me let me tell you where I'm going with this. We're not talking about good companies versus bad companies, we're not talking about cool companies versus nerdy companies. That's it. Forget all that. What I'm talking about is you could have a company where your culture is thievery. Now, I'm not suggesting anybody goes out and makes a culture that's based on thievery. I don't want to go work for a company that's scamming people. And this is my point. This is my point for my dear listener out there. You're going out there and you're thinking, where do I want to go? Who, and most people do this, and believe me, Nick, I've done a lot of interviewing. Uh, who pays the most, who has the most time off, who has the most um, you know, coolest uniforms, whatever. And then you never ask the question, does my internal culture meet the culture of the place I'm at? Am I a really more straight-laced person, but I'm going to a fraternity type of an atmosphere? Not that it's saying there's anything wrong with a fraternity atmosphere, but if you don't match your culture, you might have a problem.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

We like, we literally, we literally say at orientation, I've heard one of our CEOs say this at McLeod. He says it almost every two weeks, the way of orientation, he says, if you're the type of person that likes to hold the door open for others, if you're the type of person who likes to smile at people in the hallway, if you're the person that doesn't get in the elevator and press the close button when you see someone else coming, then you've come to the right place. Okay. And if you haven't, that's okay. But you probably are not going to feel very comfortable here because that's the standard. That's how we operate. That is our culture. And we want people that are in or as we in our organization as we look at say on the bus, right? Maybe you're in the wrong seat on the bus and we can find another spot, but like. Do you believe in this is where we're going? And does it fit who you are as a person? Because I mean we and we have it happen all the time. We have people that'll come to orientation and they'll say, I came back, I left, and I left two years ago, and they left for that exact reason. I was looking for somewhere where they paid more, where I got more time off. And I went there and then my internal culture didn't fit that, so I came back here.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

And it didn't matter anyway. No, I it it happens time and time again. And that's my message for a lot of young college students who are looking at where they think they're gonna go. And it's okay to make a mistake once in a while, but you'll know it when you get there, it's never gonna work out for you. Um, so unless you're willing to to you know put all the things you value to the side, which you know, I was never that guy.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

And I don't think that's leadership. No, that's not what we aspire to be, and I don't think anyone listening to the show probably feels that same way.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

So so then once we get past like this is who our actual culture is, now the accountability becomes uh the accountability to be as you're supposed to be to match that culture. Um, I think one of the things that we have to do, you you mentioned standards, and I agree with that. Standards are so important, and I could keep getting example upon example of why standards are so important. Well, well, like seriously, I could say I could say be nice to people, and some people's standard of niceness is hey man, you got spinach in your teeth, and your hair looks like some people think that's being nice because what they're saying is I'm being uh nice because I'm preventing you from making a mistake today. But that may not be my definition of nice. And and and again, that's uh I'm using a bad example, but you get the idea.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

No, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

I'm gonna say a way that you create

Clear Roles Without “Not My Job”

SPEAKER_02 23:30

a culture of accountability, and it's it's almost the opposite of what I think that you you and I were talking off the air earlier. But what it is is I believe you have to have a division of duties, and I believe that that division of duties needs to be clear as to whom is is doing what. Now, that doesn't mean like and and let me explain myself because I I know you're probably thinking, like, wow, Rob, you know, come on, don't we want teamwork? And I'm like, yeah, I want teamwork. But at the end of the day, this is this is what I tell people when it comes to work. I'll say, your job, your duty, we'll know you met success if you go get this thing from point A to point B. Now, on that journey of you getting it from point A to point B, then that is your thing. Now, this other person, they're getting something from point A to point B as well. It's a different point. Now, if you get there, I'm gonna hold you like I'm gonna say, you're you're accountable for what you did. We'll know if you succeeded or not by by value up. So I have to give them a duty and make sure they understand that that is the goal of the duty. And I'll juxtaposition that with what you and I were talking about. There is a thing of teamwork and leadership that says, hey, maybe when this person is struggling to get the A to B while I'm getting A to B in my spot, I could say, Hey man, here's something you could do. Hey, hey, if you do this, this might help you. And now, but but I still have my duty, and I think that's an important part of the counter. It is.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

And what I honestly struggle with what you're saying because what I think what I think that potentially leads to have happening, and I've I've seen this in organizations, I've seen this on teams that I've been a part of where you're responsible for this task and I'm responsible for that, and then when you struggle to get yours done, right, I watching I'm watching it happen, or maybe I see where you drop the ball, right? And I think this happens. So it's like I think about like a a waiter versus a bus boy at a restaurant, right? If I'm the bus boy, it is not my responsibility and my duty to go over and take your order at the table. Yeah, right. I have a clear responsibility, but if I know that you are responsible for four tables, and I can see that one of your tables is extremely needy, and now you have a table that just sat and they've been sitting there for 10 minutes. Yeah, why can't I go over and say, Hey, do you need some help? Can I get you something to drink? Your server's extra bit, they're tied up right now. Because it what I think can happen is with clear duties and responsibilities, sometimes people can be so in their lane. And so again, it goes back to authority versus influence. If I have the influence, if I know that I can make a difference, then I'm gonna step up and help. Because it's like, what can I actually do about this? Well, I don't think I don't think sometimes people do that because and it depends on that's like a simple example of a bus boy versus a waiter, but I and I use that.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

This is actually one of my one of my premium things I talk about is leadership of the bus boy to say, has anybody helped you yet? But look, but but I'm gonna double down on what I said a minute ago. You see, we have to do a better job hiring. A hundred percent. And and what happens is when you when you hire and you say, This is your duty, this is your duty, this is your successes to get this thing done, whatever it is. Let's say I'm in the back of the let's use the restaurant analogy again. I got one guy, he's cooking, I know it doesn't work like this, but bear with me. One guy's cooking the chicken, another guy's cooking the steak. I I believe that if I'm gonna hold you accountable, if if there needs to be an accountability to did I do my job or not, did I get the chicken cooked or not, I don't think what we're what I'm trying to say is, well, I only do the chicken and therefore we're good. I think that's I think that's a bad leadership. I think what I'm saying though is that if this person's like, and you and I both know this, I've I've seen this in management, if I say, hey, everybody, we gotta get the chicken and the steak ready, like sometimes you you lose a little vision, and it's like, hey, when the chicken didn't get made, who are we actually mad at? Well, I'm mad at the team.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Well, and it's it's like there's the this old saying that's like somebody didn't do what everybody could have done because nobody told anybody that that it didn't get done. It's like so we're all like nobody's actually accountable in it in that point because there is no like roles and responsibilities. What I think with roles and responsibilities being clearly defined, and that's why I push back a little bit, is that those can happen and they should happen because you should be held accountable for your job, but we should also be held accountable for the standards. And if the standard is fans first and you're gonna do everything you can to take care of them, that when you see someone struggling, you don't go, oh well, that's not my responsibility. Because that's like the four words that kill me more than anything in any business is uh it's not my job. I know where that gets you. That drives me up a wall. That's not my patient. I don't care if it's your patient or not. If they need help, go help them if you got the ability.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

But I know that's why I know why that gets to you, because it gets to all managers. That's not my job. But the only way I can word that is number one, we've done a bad job with leadership. Yes, when when people say that, we've done a bad job of hiring, maybe in some cases. But the person who's saying that, here's here's my only note for the person who says that's my job. If you say that's not my job, if you ever say that, here's all I want you to know. And I'm not saying this is a person who manages people, I'm saying this as a human being that wants to look out for the best in people. When you say that's not my job, I say that's true. You'll never get an opportunity to do anything but your job because that's all you're demonstrating ability to do. I'm looking for the person who's saying, let me show you what I can do. That is the magic of how you get promoted.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

And so I think what we need to have truly a culture of accountability of accountability. I need to have accountability for my words today. Yes. So I think what we need truly is we need people that buy into where we're going. They understand the vision and the values and then the set standards and behaviors, but with that have clear responsibilities. And those two things I think have to go together. What I think we're kind of saying, the the both of us is that because we've probably all worked with people or had people on our team that are the lack of accountability and that's not my job type of mentality. Yeah. And you're right, those people won't be promoted, but also those people are not going to help your business create a culture of accountability. Because in that, in that sense, while they're doing their job and their responsibility, they're also not taking accountability at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

I think we can we can wrap the show with that agreement. I think that ultimately we need to get the right kind of people. And I've always said when you're building a culture of your company, the first thing is you need to hire the right people and you need to do what you need to do to do that through testing, through proper interviewing, through whatever. You need to give them the tools that they need to succeed. If you do not give them those, they have no chance. You need to give them a roadmap. You need to give them continuous feedback on are they on the right track or not. And I think that that's that's three of the first steps of really hiring that right person. If we have not done that, we can get mad all we want to, but we've really already kind of felt ourselves and our mission. So I think this is a great thing. Today, we can leave it at with this. We say if you are creating a culture of accountability, uh we you hit some big ones today, standards. You gotta have a standard. What is the standard? You have to know what your culture is at all. Like what do we consider to be? Right? Where are we going? I love that. I say we have to have a division of duties. We have to kind of have some level of duties. Now, that doesn't mean we don't help others. That's not at all it, but we do need to at least understand this is what I'm supposed to do if I don't do that. Um, and and we said it a couple of shows ago, common vision,

Closing Updates And Give Back

SPEAKER_02 30:50

man. Just you if we don't have that common vision, I don't think we'll ever have an ability to have accountability. So very cool stuff. Nick, what what you uh what what you been doing lately, by the way, before we sign off, I I you did the marathon. Did you do the marathon?

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, I did it. I got 55 miles done. Cool. Um, about accountability. It was a good time, yep. A lot of personal accountability, a lot of people helped me out as well. Um, right? A lot of people that had very specific roles to help me get there. Hey, responsibility. Visions of responsibilities. Yeah, so I've been doing that, and then uh get ready for the next one.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Like, uh do you start training for the next one after the first one?

SPEAKER_00 31:24

That's that's the goal is to look for the next one down the road. I took a little bit of time off. Okay. Take a break, take care of the you know, the old noodle. But really, it's for me this month has been all about all autism. It's been everything. April is that that's my that's my month. I did a presentation this morning for my kids' class all about how they could be kind and how they could recognize people that are different. And it was fantastic. That's probably been the highlight of my my uh year so far presenting. I get to talk to all sorts of people, you know that. That's so cool. That was the coolest presentation that I've done so far this year was for a group of like 22 fifth graders.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Yeah, make it making a difference for them. Look, I mean, I'll I'll tell you this. I had a good joke lined up for you two, and you just like you took it out with a really noble thing. I was gonna sign off by being like, and we want to thank David Goggins. I'm D. Stefano. Who's gonna carry the boat? Right, right, right. Anybody ever seen David Goggins? He's famous for doing these crazy, right, right, these crazy workouts and stuff. Someday I'll be done. But but no, but but not even close. No, but well done on that, man. Uh you know, keep keep doing your thing. Big month for you, so you keep doing your thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

How uh how about yourself, Carolina Base? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Well, I'll tell you what, here's the thing with Carolina Base. We continue to grow, but here's what I'm excited about. I'm excited about, you know, uh my community things. Um you know, the the obviously we start off the year, uh the end of last year, giving money to McLeod Hope Foundation that's helping oncology patients every day. Look, you want to talk about caring about people and understanding that was a noble one for us. Um recently we we helped out Habitat for Humanity. Um I believe being in the building industry, I'm I'm committed to having people get their best home. I thought I think it's such an amazing organization that helps people get their first home. And um, and of course, we got one that we're actually helping kids with their confidence. We're gonna be donating to that in um the next quarter and really taking a big part on that. So when you ask me what's that what's exciting to me at Caroline Bays, it's what I'm giving back, not what I'm taking in. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 33:11

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

All right, man. Well, hey, listen, we do want to thank everybody. Make sure to like us and share us on your social media of choice. And we'll see you all next time on the Leader Mentality Show with Rob Clemens and guest host, Nick D Stefano.