Gretchen Rubin Obliger Tendency: Choose an accountability buddy that'll REALLY hold you accountable!
Hi Muses. Welcome back to my channel. If you struggle with never really getting around to putting time and effort into your goals and dreams, and worry that you're too lazy to accomplish anything, the missing link might not be your inability to develop discipline on your own.
You may simply be what Gretchen Rubin calls an Obliger in her book "The Four Tendencies." An Obliger is simply someone who needs external accountability in order to take action, and one way to get external accountability is by having an accountability partner. And in this video, I'm going to teach you exactly what to look for in an accountability buddy so you're never left hanging again, and you can finally start following through on your goals and dreams.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
This video is the third in a four-part series I'm doing this month to help set you up for success in 2021. The playlist with the previous videos is linked here, and just make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss next week's video, which will be the last in the series.
So who am I to tell you what makes a good accountability buddy? Well, my coaching business is called Accountability Muse and you can say accountability is kind of my thing.
Having a good accountability partner can change your life, but in order to find one, you need to understand the three qualities that make up an excellent accountability partner. Those are:
Investment
Skill
Capacity
Let's start by talking about investment. This is a crucial, yet often overlooked quality of an accountability partner. Because if your accountability partner isn't as invested in you and your goal as you are, their heart likely won't be in it. They won't have an innate desire to hold you accountable. And because of that, they'll be more inclined over time to drop the ball and leave you hanging, leaving you without external accountability. It doesn't matter how good their intentions are or how compassionate they are; if they don't believe in you and want your dream to come true as much as you do, they're not the accountability partner for you.
Now let's talk about skill. Being an excellent accountability partner often requires more skills than one might think. An excellent accountability partner needs:
Organizational Skills
Productivity Skills
Project Management Skills
Time Management Skills
Coaching Skills
Communication Skills
Empathy
Compassion
And those are just the broad strokes of the skills that an excellent accountability partner requires. If your accountability partner is lacking in any of these skills, this means that they won't be able to help you when you need them most. And therefore they're not the right accountability partner for you.
Even though an excellent accountability partner needs most of those skills, comment below and tell me which skill you would value the most in your accountability partner.
Now let's talk about the third and final quality found in excellent accountability partners, and that is capacity. And this one's a Whopper. Our lives cost us time. They cost us cognitive energy. They cost us emotional energy. And they cost us physical energy. And in this day and age, we are socialized to be busy, to be productive, to be doing, doing, doing, and never stop. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
And for those of us with limited usable hours each day (like I talked about in last week's video), managing our time and energy effectively so that we're actually living our lives instead of merely surviving is super important.
Think of your own life right now. Do you have the capacity right now to consistently support someone else and hold them accountable to their goals and dreams? I'm betting the answer is no.
So the next time you ask someone to be your accountability partner, make sure to ask them if they have the capacity to do that for you. Which means that even if they agree to be your accountability partner, at some point, they're guaranteed to drop the ball on you and leave you hanging, meaning they're not the accountability partner for you.
Now let's take a look at these three qualities (investment, skill, and capacity) in relationship to one another, so you can see why it is so important for your accountability partner to have all three qualities.
If someone is both invested in you and has the skill to hold you accountable, but doesn't have the capacity to do so, they simply won't have the time or energy to hold you accountable consistently, which is so important in an accountability partner. Therefore, this person isn't the right partner for you.
If someone has both the skill and the capacity to hold you accountable, but they're not as invested in you or your goal as you are, they're going to struggle to prioritize you and holding you accountable in their own life, which means that they just won't be there for you consistently enough to make a difference. And therefore, they're not a good enough accountability buddy for you.
And finally, if someone is both invested in you and your goal, and has the capacity to hold you accountable, but they simply don't have the skillset to do so properly, they're going to struggle to provide you the support you need in those times when you need something more than a simple direct message saying, "Hey! Did you do the thing yet?" Because being an excellent accountability partner involves so much more than simply texting your buddy and asking them if they've done the thing yet.
So the next time you're looking for a really good accountability partner, remember to take into account all three qualities of an excellent accountability partner:
They're invested in you and your goal
They have the skills to be a good accountability partner
They have the capacity to provide that for you
Now you know exactly what qualities to look for in a good accountability partner, but you may be wondering: how do you even go about finding one in the first place?
I'm opening the doors to my coaching membership Accountability Muse at the end of this month for a short time, and holding you accountable and helping you make consistent progress toward your goals is my primary objective in this coaching program.
Yes, you could go out and look for an accountability partner all by yourself, and through time and effort and perseverance eventually find one that's a perfect fit for you. But if you're like me, you would like an easy button for this situation, and that's why I have my coaching program.
So if you want to know exactly when the doors open so you don't miss the window, all you have to do is sign up for my mailing list at this link. And when you sign up, you'll get access to my free Masterclass, where I teach you how to overcome procrastination and resistance without an accountability partner. It's a really cool technique.
I'll be back next week with the fourth and final video in this series to help set you up for success in 2021. I'm going to be going through a step-by-step process to help take you from stuck to unstoppable in an actually sustainable way. (Instead of the way where you go at a goal too hard and too fast and end up hitting a wall, burning out, and rebounding back to even further back than when you started. And then you just lie in fallow for days and days, and weeks, and months, if not years.)
That's what I'm going to be tackling next week, so subscribe so you don't miss it. If you liked this video, please hit that like button and share it with someone who you think could use a good accountability partner. I'll see you next week. Bye.