5 Tips For An Effective Accountability Partnership

Of all the methods you can use to help you achieve your goals, one of the most effective is to form an accountability partnership. Just as the name implies, in an accountability partnership you and a partner hold each other accountable for staying on task to complete specific tasks. Beyond that basic requirement, there are very few limits on how you form your partnership and with who. For example, although I've been involved for the past year in an accountability partnership with Dan Weedin, we have yet to meet each other face-to-face. Regardless, I've found our weekly discussions to be extremely important in keeping me focused on achieving my goals (and I'm confident that Dan feels the same).

While that lack of limitations makes it very easy to form an accountability partnership, there are some steps you can take to make your partnership as effective as possible. Beyond joining forces with someone who you believe will be a good 'fit' as a disciplined and supportive partner, here are five tips for forming an effective accountability partnership:

1. Set a specific day of the week and time of day to talk. This will make it easier to develop the habit of talking on a regular basis as well as provide some needed predictability.
2. Use a strictly enforced agenda for your discussions. If either of you needs to discuss something outside the agenda schedule a separate call/meeting. Your accountability calls/meetings are strictly for accountability discussions.
3. Adhere to a 1/2 hour time limit for your calls/meetings. Anything less makes it difficult to accomplish a full accounting while anything more can encourage wandering off-topic.
4. Send 'read-ahead' information to each other whenever possible. If one of your goals for the week was to complete a written document promise to send it to your partner. Not only does that provide an even more tangible deadline, your partner may notice something (spelling/grammar/etc) that you missed.
5. Be brutally honest with each other when it comes to what you have and haven't accomplished - and why. This is the cornerstone principle of using an accountability partnership to its best advantage.

While I consider these 5 tips to be the most important to forming an effective and productive accountability partnership there are no doubt others that warrant consideration. If you have any tips that you think are equally important I'd love to hear about them in the comments.