Trust Physics: The Accountability Sequence

What if the hardest part of accountability isn't the confrontation, but everything you skipped before it? It's actually easier to get curious right away, the moment something feels off, than to wait until it becomes a problem worth dreading.

In the Season 2 finale of Inside Conscience-Driven Leadership, Hanna Miller and Julie Euber close out Trust Physics with the framework that pulls the whole season together: the accountability sequence. It's the throughline Hanna has been developing across all of her work on trust and conscience-driven leadership, a repeatable order of operations for staying whole in your relationships while still holding people to what matters. Rather than explore the entire sequence, they focus on where the real work lives: the first two steps almost everyone skips, curiosity and clarity, and why skipping them is exactly why accountability breaks down.

🔢 The Accountability Sequence: Not a random set of tools you can use out of order. It's a sequence, and curiosity has to come first. Do one step well and you won't reach the next nearly as often; do that one well and you almost never get to the third.

🔍 Curiosity (Step One): It happens the moment there's any gap between what you expected and what happened, the tiniest gap, before anyone's in trouble. Lead with what and how, never why. "Why did you do that" triggers defense; "I'm curious what you were thinking" opens a door.

🎯 Clarifying (Step Two): For when it happens again. You get back on the same page and name what happens if the pattern continues, so the next conversation, if there is one, is never a surprise.

⚠️ The Surprise Problem: The biggest rupture in accountability is surprising each other. Staying quiet to avoid hurting someone only guarantees the hurt lands later, all at once.

For leaders who've been taught that holding someone accountable makes them the bad guy, this episode shows where accountability actually begins, long before the confrontation.

0:00 Intro
0:21 Catching Up
1:38 The Last Episode of Season Two
2:15 What Is Conscience-Driven Leadership
2:50 Today: The Accountability Sequence
3:20 Why Accountability Fails
5:44 The Problem With Surprises
8:15 Safety Comes First
8:51 Step One: Curiosity
10:13 What and How, Not Why
13:15 The Easter Story
16:20 Step Two: Clarifying
18:09 Toward a Shared Solution
19:30 Making the Agreement
21:19 The Princess and the Pea
25:05 Closing

💡 Learn more about the work:
https://consciencedrivenleadership.com

🔔 Subscribe for future episodes exploring intuition, conscience, and leadership:
   / @consciencedrivenleadership 

🔗 Stay connected with #CDLPodcast:
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✉️ Contact:
podcast@conscience-driven-leadership.com

#ConscienceDrivenLeadership #IntuitiveLeadership #LeadershipPodcast

Inside Conscience-Driven Leadership explores leadership rooted in intuition, responsibility, and a deep commitment to building systems that serve people. Hosted by Hanna Miller and Julie Euber.

Learn more at consciencedrivenleadership.com

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

The accountability sequence isn't a random set set of tools that you can use out of order, it's a sequence, and curiosity has to come first. And it really ideally happens the moment there is any gap between what you expect and what happened. Hi Julie, how are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I'm good. How are you, Hannah?

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Wonderful. It's good to see you. How hot is Arizona right now?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Too hot. But you know, I'm okay with it because they say that when it's hot, it's more likely to rain. And I just have my fingers and toes crossed for a good monsoon this year. I need the rain in my life.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

The monsoon is the the anticipation for it is so palpable among everybody.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yes, you feel it in your bones. What's it like in Spain right now?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

There's a heat zone over Europe, but I am not experiencing much of it. Like it is hot here, but it's only, it's it's not 90 degrees. But the humidity is like 100%, which is so sweaty.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

That is very sweaty. I grew up in the humid land of humidity, and it is no joke.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

I like crave the oven of the desert a little bit. I'm like, oh my God, just a blast of hot, dry air would be so nice right now. I'd be more than happy to just send it all to you. I got this amazing, like, I'm a I got a fan that's battery powered and it like extends. And so I just I call in my boy fans and I carry him around the house. My husband's very accepting of my second relationship with a fan that comes with me everywhere. Amazing. Oh, goody. Well, I am super excited today. This is our last episode of season two. For those of you who don't know, we're here on Inside Conscience Driven Leadership, the podcast. I am your host, Hannah Miller.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

And I am Julie Uber, co-conspirator and book lover.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yay!

SPEAKER_00 1:55

We need your book loving so much. Oh my gosh. I wish it was raining and I was reading in a cozy chair. And but I'm also very happy to be here with you, Hannah. That wasn't a dig. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

We're not doing a podcast. Julie's gonna go turn on rain noise and read in the corner. Sorry, I saw a book and I must read it now. Apologies. So conscience-driven leadership is a leadership framework that I've created for leaders who are driven by a need to clear obstacles for other people so that the people around them can really do their best work and reach their full potential. And instead of leaders who are driven by ambition or climbing a corporate ladder.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yes. And this season is really focused on trust physics, which is a really key aspect of CDL, as we call it. It's a way to stay whole in your relationships by holding people accountable in a way that drives relationships forward.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Today we're gonna be talking about the accountability sequence. And I actually, and we didn't talk about this in advance, so sorry to bring this on you, Julie. I actually don't want to go through the whole sequence because there's the first part of the sequence, which is what people don't usually do, and then there's the second part of the sequence, which is what people usually do. So we'll touch on it, but I think I want to spend most of our time really digging into the first two steps in the accountability sequence, which is curiosity and clarity or clarifying.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So to kind of kick us off with this, Hannah, uh, why does accountability fail? And how do you know when intervention is needed?

SPEAKER_02 3:27

So I think accountability fails mostly because people skip those first two steps. I think the way we think of accountability and the way we're taught accountability works in the world is that we wait until something has identified as a real problem. And then we come to someone and say, there is a problem and I am going to hold you accountable. And there's an undercurrent there. What I find really interesting is on Trust Physics Live, which is a monthly call I have with anybody who wants to drop in and talk about trust physics, we were talking about accountability last month. And when I asked people how accountable accountability showed up in their lives, everyone talked about how they hold themselves accountable. No one brought up holding other people accountable. And I was like, that I think that is an interesting thing that conscience-driven leaders are more likely to think of accountability as something that's their responsibility to bring for themselves and not something that they need to bring out and that they need to do with the people in their lives. And I think the reason we're afraid to hold other people accountable is for the exact same reason. We think accountability is something that is a character, uh is a part of our character, and not being accountable is a character flaw. And so that means if I say to you, Julie, hey Julie, I need to have an accountability conversation with you because I had an expectation and you didn't meet it, on some level, I think we think that the undercurrent of that message is me saying, hey, Julie, I think you're a crappy person and you have this character flaw.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, no, I and I think that we avoid those two because we're trying to keep the peace. Um, and we're avoiding honesty because of the emotional hurt that could come from that. Uh so and I think we see that a lot in our early relationships too, to take it from more of a personal approach. I think we all kind of look back to a cringy early relationship when we are just absolute puppies and so blinded by the love that we uh we we first of all don't know our boundaries and and what we need. Um, but we also feel like this is this is the ride or die. Like we have to mold ourselves to this relationship in a way that doesn't consider accountability.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

I think we don't want to say to the person, to anyone we care about, I think you're a bad person. We're terrified that if we say something that is about holding them accountable, they are gonna hear, I think you're a terrible person. I remember like kind of a tangent, but I was just, I was, I drove Luke to the airport. He's in Norway visiting his family right now. And we were listening to one of our favorite bands, which is Donna the Buffalo. And I had this memory of when we were babies, like we got together, we met on my 20th birthday, and by my 21st birthday, we lived together. Um, and we went, we were at a steak and shake in Altamont, Florida. And that tells me that it was in the first couple years of our relationship because I haven't had a steak and shake burger forever. Um, but we were at a drive-thru at a steak and shake, and there was, and it was raining to bring in your rain, and there's a Donna the Buffalo song about, I can't even remember it off the top of my head, but it's like, it's about the rain, and it's about how when it rains, I think of you, and it's really, really sweet. And it came on, and I told Luke, I'm like, this song always makes me think of you. And he had never heard the lyrics, or he interpreted the lyrics as like, when I think of you, it rains. And he was so hurt in that moment. He was just like, How dare you? Like, why would you say something like that to me? And I was like, What are you talking about? This is the nicest song I can think of. I was trying to be sweet. And so, like, we're terrified of that moment of misunderstanding. And so instead, we keep quiet. And the the bitch of it is, and I'm gonna have to mark up on the thing that I swear on the podcast again. The bitch of it is that when we don't tell someone something, when it's nothing to say anything, when we right, we're afraid we're gonna hurt their feelings, so we don't say anything, and therefore we guarantee we're gonna hurt their feelings when we do tell them about it, because we're gonna say something when it's been three times. And then I'm saying to you at that point, you missed all the signals. And it's because I didn't tell you what the signals were, right? I let you, I I I failed to signal you. And so, of course, you failed to know that it was a problem because I didn't say anything. So I think I think that's why accountability fails most of the time. There's also a piece where some people don't want to be held accountable, and so they will gaslight the crap out of you when you hold them accountable, and that is a different episode.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

That's what I was thinking is it does take a level of safety for that to be true. Yes. Uh, but if you aren't feeling safe in a relationship, that is very much a whole nother thing.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Yeah. And we'll touch on that in season three. There's that that comes up because not everybody is gonna respond well to being held accountable and how we how we handle when someone refuses accountability and communicates to us that they're not interested in a relationship where we get to stay whole, that's that gives us a choice, which is where the accountability sequence ends, right? Like the fifth step is this relationship is not gonna work anymore. We'll we'll circle back to that because ending relationships is heavier than we're ready for, I think, at this point in our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Totally. But when we are in a safe relationship that we really want to keep whole, um, that first step is really curiosity. And I love this because it's something really key to the organization I run, SARS. We talk about it. Um, so basically, what we do is we help students see that they're already amazing scientists and engineers. Uh, this isn't something that we're giving to them. Um, it's something they already have inherent in them because they are curious and they care about their world. And so it's really taking those things and making those connections to science, to engineering, um, so that they have a process that they can take their curiosity to. Uh and we also bring that internally. It's not just the students that we work with, it's also uh the staff. Because any time that instead of saying this person wronged me, instead saying, I'm really curious what happened there, can you talk to me about it? That is such a game changer. Um, and so it's an opportunity to ask questions and be interested before something is really on fire. It's a chance to say, I'm, you know, I'm curious about that. Can we talk about it? And that is such an easier entry point than why did you do this? That was wrong. Well, you don't actually have all the facts to be able to say that yet.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah. One of the things I learned in coaching actually is that what and how questions elicit a way more receptive response than why question. Why did you do this is always going to trigger a defensive response. Whereas I'm curious what you were thinking. I'm curious how you came to this conclusion. So I'm curious sets you up to use a what or how question. And it's why it's the first, it's the first step in the sequence because it's so necessary. If the very first time something happens, so going back to Luke and I in the car in the rain, it's taken shake when he misunderstood what I was saying. I didn't say, why, why do you think I would do that? Like I didn't escalate. Like my nature is to be curious. I'm like, what do you think the song means? Because I meant it as something really nice. Like, can I, you know, would it be okay? What can I can I share the actual lyrics with you and tell you what I was thinking? And then it dissipated rather than escalating and getting into a fight where we're trapped in a car because he misunderstood me. I just got curious about what happened. What happened genuinely? And so the accountability sequence isn't a random set set of tools that you can use out of order. It's a sequence. And curiosity has to come first. And it really ideally happens the moment there is any gap between what you expect and what happened. The first time, the tiniest gap. Because if you express your curiosity in that moment, there is no consequence to it. There, you're right, there's nobody's in trouble. It's like, hey, I noticed the thing. Let's talk about the thing. Because I was a little, you know, I'm interested. That's not what I expected. Walk me through it. Maybe what they're doing makes total sense and you are just missing a piece. Maybe it doesn't make sense. And at that point, it's very easy to guide them, be like, oh, that's I see where you're coming from, but actually, next time can we do it this way? And here's why.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah. And it you may realize actually, you did things just the way you should have in this scenario. And we don't need to change anything. It doesn't mean that you really even have to control that situation. It just might mean better communication is going to help you with that relationship and understand the situation.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Right. And that's why it's curiosity, not question. It's not just ask them what happened. It's be genuinely interested. Like if you can bring genuine interest and curiosity into a situation where there's a gap between expectation and reality, there's no, there's no mustard. There's no, there's no damage to the relationship. It's fine. And you're teaching the other person you're in a relationship with that they can come to you. If they're confused by what you do, asking questions is totally fine. And really, if you do curiosity well, most situations won't ever escalate to the second step in the sequence. And that's how the sequence is intended to be used is that if you do one step well, you won't get to the next one nearly as often. And if you do the next one well, the number of times you get to step three is practically none.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

That's great. It what it reminds me of is a more of a personal example. Um, so I'm, I have an amazing step kiddo. Love them very much. Shout out. I know that they listen. Uh and uh when we first kind of came together, um we had our very first Easter. And that's when I really realized just how different people's celebrations are. Uh, because my husband, well, uh boyfriend at the time, where uh and I were preparing for Easter, and you know, we were doing all the things. We thought we were on the same page, and then we get to the night before, and I'm like, oh, great. So did you get this and this? And he's like, no, what are you talking about? And I'm like, that is how you celebrate Easter, is you you come down and the Easter bunny has left you a basket of things that you're excited to open and candy, and it's just great. He's like, no, no, no. You come down and at some point things get hidden in the yard and you find them and you fight with people over them. He didn't say that, but I did learn that that's kind of part of the family tradition. Uh, and we realized we were on completely different pages and we thought we were on the same track and we just weren't. And we could have had an accountability conversation of why didn't you do this right? But it's not like there's a right here. Instead, it was let's actually just sit down and talk through what Easter was to us as kids. And by doing that, we were I f able to find the right hybrid uh and also kind of redefine it for what we wanted, wanted for um for my step kiddo. And so that was amazing. And it became very much ours because we had that pause and we had that moment of curiosity to really sit and say, oh, actually, we need to pull this apart a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Yeah. What does this mean to you? What does this mean to me? Let's lay it all out and look at what we have, like what a bounty we have that we bring different experiences to the table, right? Like that's exciting and interesting. And yeah, curiosity, and I love, you know, of course it's a huge part of your work. And I, but I love that you teach the kids that having curiosity makes you a scientist, makes you an engineer. Just that wondering how it works is where where where everything comes from. Like that is where the generative energy of the universe like exists, is in, is in figuring out what's underneath and being excited about discovery of what you don't know rather than assuming you do know and being upset by what somebody's doing that you don't understand. Because if you think you know the right way and they do something different, then they must know the right way and be intentionally choosing to be oppositional. And who would do that? Like a bad person would do that. So, like then you're like three steps down and it's all like the relationship is so damaged if you skip this step. But if the same thing happens again, right? Like, so next Easter comes around and the things you've agreed on don't happen, right? You've agreed we're gonna do a basket that you come down to, and next year he's like, No, I didn't buy baskets because baskets are stupid, right? Like I can totally agree. Absolutely. It sounds like someone you'd be married to. Or, or just like, no, I thought we decided I thought we decided we weren't gonna do baskets, and you're like, Oh, we did decide to do baskets. That's the moment for clarifying, right? So hang on. We had this conversation before, and somehow we're not on the same page. So I want to take this opportunity to make sure clearly that we're on the same page. Like, I thought the last conversation we had landed with us understanding each other, but evidently I was wrong. So, you know, I do want to understand how you got here, but I also want to make sure we leave this conversation with total clarity about what happens next time. So, because if this were to happen in the future, that would constitute a trend. And that's not what we want. So, the really important part about the clarify step is that you start shadowing what the next conversation is, so that if you get to the next conversation, it's not a surprise. Because the biggest problem in accountability is ultimately when we surprise each other. And I didn't say that when we talked about it before, but I think I it was underneath what I was saying, right? Like when we say to you, hey, you missed all these signals, that's you know, and you are like, I didn't see any signals, then you're surprised. And the trust in the relationship has fractured because we didn't have clarity. So that's why clarify is the second step in the sequence, is because we want there to be no question that we're on the same page. And we want to say, if this continues, if we continue to not be on the same page, if our if we can't stay aligned, then that will constitute a problem in our relationship and we'll have to deal with that differently. I don't anticipate that. No reason we need to, but I want you to know if this doesn't change, you know, if if we keep having this problem, that will be the that will be a more serious conversation.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah, it makes me think about how that shifts things so that we can have a shared solution too. Because if you're really on the same team and you're wanting to work together, then they'll appreciate that clarity too. And thinking about the Easter example again, yeah, a year later, we might both not remember exactly what we agreed to. That actually makes total sense to me. But in year two, it might be the time to actually just kind of write something down or to have something shared so that we can remember it, or maybe we just recognize that it's going to be evolving over the first few before we really have something that we stick to each time. There's it, it doesn't mean the clarity is you did it wrong and I'm right. It is, okay, well, I feel like we had the conversation. It sounds like we need to revisit it. But this isn't a punishment, it's a clarity.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah. How do we agree we're gonna prevent this happening next time? So maybe that agreement is let's put in the calendar next year. When is Easter next year? Let's put a note in the calendar a month beforehand to have a chat about what we're doing for Easter. So we don't have to remember it. Like we could write it down and make Easter rules, or we could just be like, hey, when it's three, three, four weeks before Easter, let's touch base and decide what we're doing. So we're on the same page. Yeah, absolutely. So it doesn't have to be again, neither of the first steps are about it being a big deal. The first two steps are about avoiding someone feeling like they're in trouble. Because as soon as somebody feels like they're in trouble or somebody else feels like they're getting someone else in trouble, the relationship is there's tension at the seams and the relationship is breaking down. Like that's erosion happening in a relationship if you feel like you're in trouble. Because you feel like you're in trouble because you made a mistake that you didn't, you did something wrong and you probably don't know what that was. The biggest thing about the accountability sequence is make sure people know right away when they make a mistake and what a mistake looks like. And if they make the same mistake again, like paint a picture, like draw a doodle, whatever you need to do to like make sure they understand that that mistake, if it keeps happening, is gonna create friction in the relationship that that could turn into a big deal. And then the the rest of the three steps are when things become a bigger deal. They're called course correction, crossroad, and then parting company. And they're in the book if you need them, or we'll we can talk about them in a Trust Physics Live if you're interested. And we'll touch on them in future conversations. But I feel like for the accountability sequence, the biggest thing everybody, I hope you walk away with or you carry away with after listening to this podcast is go ahead and tell somebody. If there's a problem, if there's even the tiniest problem, it's kind of like a princess and the pea thing. If you pee feel a pea under your mattress, if you don't know the princess and the pea story, do you know the princess and the pea story? I of course I do. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

No, Luke did not know this. I I know it. And I'll I'll tell you why after you explain it. Please go on and then I'll tell you my version of the story.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

No, no, no. I want to hear your version. Go.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

One time in college at my dorm, um, there were bunk beds in the uh dorm room next to me. And my my friend lived there. She was at the top bunk, but her roommate had put a blanket across so you couldn't see what was going on in the bottom bunk. She it just gave her a little more privacy, um, a little more darkness. But she had turned a lamp up to my friend's uh mattress on the top bunk. And the uh mattress started to slowly burn. And my friend was sleeping in the mattress and had no idea. And I was like, Oh, my friend, you really failed the princess and the P test that you did not know that you're Own mattress was on fire while you were sleeping in it. And then we got to watch firefighters pull the mattress down the stairs because there was no elevator and hack it with um axes. And it was quite the adventure. So that's my Princess and the P story. If your mattress is on fire and you don't realize you've failed the test. Yeah. Yeah. Your mattress is on fire and you you realize and you don't do anything about it, that's when you really hit crisis.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

So the Princess and the P is a is a fairy tale. It's very short. I looked it up because Luke had no, I kept referencing it, and Luke thought I was just making something up. I'm like, no, this is a real thing. Where a princess, there's a prince and he lives with his aunties or something, and they're trying to find him a princess to marry, because evidently that's what you do in fairy tales. And some girl comes along and needs a place to stay for the night randomly, and they're like, maybe she's a princess. Let's find out. And so they give her this giant stack of mattresses, like 30 mattresses tall, and they put a little tiny uncooked pee under the bottom mattress. And because a princess would be able to feel the little disruption. And they, you know, she climbs up on the stack of mattresses and goes to sleep. And they ask her in the morning, how did you sleep? And she's like, Oh, terribly. There was just a bump under my mattress. And they're like, Yeah, you're a princess, you can marry our prince. The end. Uh I am a very like fidgety sleeper. So everything has to be just so. So I am the princess in the princess in the P. In the trust physics version of this, she would have climbed down from all the mattresses and said, Excuse me, I'm really having trouble sleeping because there seems to be a lump under my mattress. Could we could you help me look at that? Right? Like, bring up the little complaint instead of just having a bad night's sleep over it. That makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Confront your roommate about the fire they started in your mattress. Yes. And you sleep in it.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Please, my mattress feels awfully warm. Is there anything going on down there when our brains aren't fully cooked yet? But we think they are. Good times, good times. Okay, so a new tradition we're gonna be starting for next season, but I'm gonna tease it this season, is I'm gonna give you a song that is something you can listen to between now and the next episode that's kind of on theme for the next episode. And we will start out season three with me explaining why I chose the song that I did. The song I want to leave you with for to preview season three is a Fiona Apple song from one of her more recent albums, which is phenomenal. And I recommend the whole thing enormously. But the song is called Fetch the Bolt Cutters. So I love that song.

unknown 24:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

So what's what's not to love? So we will put a link to it in the podcast description where you can check out Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and we will talk in season three about how that relates to the new trust physics work that we're gonna be doing.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Fantastic. Well, uh, thank you to everyone who listened and everyone who was involved. Hannah, thank you for including me on this fabulous journey.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Thank you, Julie, for being on this incredible journey. We're definitely making it more incredible. And as always, we want to throw a huge shout out to our phenomenal producer, Anna Miller, who is not me dressed in a raincoat, but actually a different person with no H's in her name.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

It's true, Anna F. Miller here. She's real. And uh don't forget to remind them to subscribe to the channel.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Oh, right. Oh, yeah. Please subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast app or find us on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Excellent. So thank you all for being here, and we are super excited to have you join us for season three. Until next time, listen to your intuition and let your conscience drive you.