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Brace yourself. This might sting.
- You rate your leadership team as A-players… but at the same time you wouldn’t enthusiastically rehire most of your employees.
- You think you’re holding people accountable… but deep down, you know expectations are vague and accountability is weak.
- You’re frustrated with your team’s performance… but you haven’t clearly defined success for each role.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
The Leadership Accountability Gap
A new client of ours rated their leadership team as A-players—scoring them a 4.8 out of 5.
But when asked, “Would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team?”
They gave it a 1.2.
Let that sink in.
If leadership is so great, why would they rebuild their team from scratch if given the chance?
The answer? Accountability is broken.
The First Obsession of Elite Leaders
At Next Level Growth, we teach that every leader must own their first obsession:
➡ Lead. Manage. Retain. Hold people accountable.
Most leadership teams fail at this because they assume their team knows what success looks like. They don’t.
Here’s how you fix it:
- Clearly communicate what the mission for each seat is. You can do this in one sentence, identifying where the goal line for each seat.
- Define success in one measurable outcome per role. If they don’t know their #1 result, they’re guessing—and so are you. We call this the Most Critical Outcome® or MCO™.
- Clarify the obsessions that drive that outcome. What specifically should they focus on daily? Without clarity, execution crumbles.
- Communicate expectations relentlessly. If you haven’t repeated it ten times, they probably haven’t heard it once.
- Generate agreement. You can’t hold someone accountable for an expectation. You can only hold them accountable if they agree to the expectation.
When you nail this, something powerful happens: Your team starts delivering. And suddenly, that second question—“Would you enthusiastically rehire them?”—gets a different answer.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson says, “Enabling failure is not a noble cause.”
Let’s Fix Your Accountability Problem
Your business will never scale if accountability is soft. At Next Level Growth, we help leadership teams install the systems and clarity they need to finally get results—without the frustration.
If you’re ready to build a high-performance, accountable team, let’s talk.
Next Steps
- Get your copy of the book you cannot afford to miss: Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations on Amazon/Audible.
- Click here to learn more about building an elite organization and the Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations.
- Have a conversation with our founders AI Clone about taking your business, and your life, to the next level
- Start a conversation with one of our Next Level Growth Business Guides about how we can help you achieve your vision for a bigger, bolder future.
