12.08.14Tacit Accountability Part II
Posted on Friday about the topic of Tacit Accountability after several really productive days reflecting on developing coaches (and other teachers) with folks from the US Soccer Federation and affiliated organizations. The idea is that in developing people–coaches, teachers, students, players–we want to build a culture where the expectation is that feedback gets used and where people feel accountable for employing it, reflecting on it, using it- mostly because that’s the best way to make them better.
At the end of one of the US Soccer sessions in Bradenton where we discussed making people better I took my own advice and gave an Exit Ticket. I asked people to define Tacit Accountability on a note card and hand it to me before they left. The answers i got were fascinating. I took some of the responses and put them on this PPT slide. The next day I put them up on the screen and said (something like): “These are examples of some of the things you said when I asked you to define Tacit Accountability. There’s a lot of valuable insight here and there are some things missing from some of these definitions.” Then I asked people to note one definition they learned something important from and one they thought they could improve because the author had left something important out or misunderstood something. What people said and the conversation that improved was great and i thought I’d try to share it as best I can remember.
First here are the responses. Below I’ve commented on each one.
1) Loved this short and pithy summary. That’s the “Tacit” in the term–you want it to be embedded int he culture that people use, wrestle with, try, reflect on the feedback they get. They can of course use it and then decide the feedback doesn’t work or needs adapting but that, to me, comes after one has tried to apply and use feedback, not before. One participant noted, however, that it would be stronger if it added something like “and what happens to it afterwards” or “and how it gets used.” Good clarifications.
2) Loved the fact that this one got at the double-layered-ness of developing coaches and teachers. We want the adults to feel tacitly accountable and to build cultures where there students do as well. We want that tacit accountability to be warm and supportive and positive in couched in a culture of “it’s my goal to help you become the coach/teacher/player/student you want to be” but we want it to be a constant nudge: As my colleague Harry Fletcher-Wood puts it “perceived accountability is [often] what makes us act responsibly.” I also liked that this one noted that tacit accountability applies not just to feedback but to “information” in other words what we teach as well.
3) This one was really rich too in that it got at the idea of “partnership” in tacit accountability. And the summary is precise and useful. Someone noted that the language of “require” felt a bot strong- contractual was the word they used and that some forms were not about requiring but acculturating.
4) The group liked that this one discussed the types of feedback that were useful to people–it’s hard to be tacitly accountable for feedback that isn’t concrete and focused on solutions. It’s also really clear on the need to follow-up after the initial giving of feedback. If feedback is a one time event–we “give it and leave it” it’s destined to fail. The group felt like this one could be clearer on what it meant to follow up and on the notion that there needed to be a cultural element where you felt expected to take action on feedback. Good points.
5) We liked again that this one got at a key aspect of the kind of feedback that made people better–replacing critique with correction; being concrete and actionable. But two things are missing here. First, it’s not just giving people a way to fix it but then circling back to discuss how it went (and making sure it was applied). Second, while replacing critique (“here’s what i thought you should have done” with correction “Can we try that again and have you do it this way?”) there are lots of other forms of Tacit Accountability… asking for reflection afterwards or using aligned feedback to underscore, etc.
6) This is a good framing of the culture we have to build around tacit accountability. It’s the “why” statement that might go into an initial framing of “I’m about to give you some feedback and because we are involved in the process of getting better–both of us, love the mutuality there–I’ll want to know and talk about what you do with it. But it probably doesn’t go far enough into the specifics of what it looks like on the ground when such a culture exists. You could understand those things and still not feel accountable for feedback afterwards.
7) This again is a good bit of advice for giving useful feedback within a culture of Tacit Accountability but again better feedback is not sufficient to build a culture of tacit accountability. Actions to use, reflect on, apply and assess the feedback after it’s given as part of an on going conversation are the key elements of Tacit accountability.
The conversation wrapped up with a great question from Mark Berson, who’s the head Men’s Soccer coach at the University of South Carolina. “How is Tacit Accountability different from just ‘accountability?'” Mark asked. “Why not just call it that?” It was a great question to be honest. And the answer is that you probably could. In some ways what we’re doing is just trying to be intentional about the accountability that comes afterwards. And if a word is unnecessary, we should cut it for sure. There are two reasons though to use the term “tacit” i think- first i think it sets it off as different. Mark’s right that really what we’re talking about here is just accountability, but accountability is a much-used, possibly over used term that everyone defines differently and believes they ‘know.’ Giving it a specific and discrete name makes it easier to talk to people about “this type” of accountability as distinguished from all the others that may or may not get at the core concepts here. I also think it’s important to use the word “tacit” because over time i want the notion that what happens after feedback is given being as important as the feedback itself to be built into the culture so that after a while it no longer needs to be explained. it just is. You get feedback and you try it, you wrestle with it, you report back on it and you adapt it to and embed it within your practice. When that’s a part of an organizational culture that happens automatically and without prompting, your organization is likely to win at getting people better.
