When you frame expectations as personal favors (‘I need this by Friday’), your team becomes accountable to you rather than to their job, and accountability falls apart. Lia’s fix is simple: remove ‘I’ and ‘me’ from how you set expectations and replace them with role-based language that connects the task to the job, the deadline, and the team’s results. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who keep hitting resistance on recurring tasks like status reports or deadlines.
This episode is part of the Accountability & Follow-Through series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…when things are late and you just like boom, change the date in a spreadsheet over and over and over, what are you reinforcing? That we don’t have deadlines. That deadlines don’t matter.”
“High performers, they don’t like that. They wanna know. They wanna drive towards something. They wanna have a sense of completion.”
“When we’re not checking in on things that did not happen and people know that, why would they follow through?”
“The conversation comes first. Talking about this happened, so what are we gonna do about it for next time? This is going to be game-changing.”
“…you’re reinforcing behaviors by not following up and avoiding. You’re actually reinforcing the behaviors that actually only the folks that don’t care about the kind of way the job comes across.”
Episode highlights
The moment Lia realized she was the problem
Lia opens with a story most leaders will recognize instantly. She had a team member who came to every meeting loaded with excuses, always blaming someone else, never owning anything. Lia’s response? She’d sit down and brainstorm solutions herself, offering idea after idea while the team member nodded along. Same problem the next week. Same problem the week after that.
The insight: Lia was accidentally training dependency. When the leader provides all the ideas, the team member never has to develop the muscle to think, plan, or own outcomes.
You’re not skipping accountability, you’re skipping follow-up
Most leaders nail step one (set goals) and step two (check on progress). Steps three and four are where everything falls apart.
– Step 3: When something is missed, have an actual follow-up conversation. Not about excuses, not about the past. About what happens next. – Step 4: Give specific feedback. State what you want to see. Then follow up again.
It’s a loop, not a one-time conversation. Set expectations, get people moving, check in, and when something breaks down, that is exactly where the leadership is happening.
What you reinforce by saying nothing
When a deadline slips and you just change the date in a spreadsheet, you’re sending a message: deadlines don’t matter here. Lia makes the point that this dynamic doesn’t just frustrate you, it actively drives away your best people. High performers want to drive toward something. They want a sense of completion. The teammates who benefit from zero accountability are the ones who were never going to push themselves anyway.
The culture of your team is built by what you let slide.
Post-mortems and 1:1s as accountability tools
Lia isn’t talking about confrontations or ultimatums. She’s talking about structured forums where accountability becomes normal:
– Post-mortems or retrospectives after a project wraps, looking at what went right, what went wrong, and what each person will do differently. – 1:1s where the team member leaves with a specific commitment, not a vague “I’ll try that.” – Process reviews to check whether a system, tool, or workflow made the breakdown easier to avoid.
The key shift is directional. When the conversation stays in the past (“this client was difficult, the weather was bad, that person dropped the ball”), nobody owns the future. Flip it: what is one thing you are going to do differently? How will you do it? When will we check in? How will you know it’s working?
Asking your team to own the plan
Lia works with a lot of owners running med spas, gyms, and service businesses where a provider misses their numbers every single month with a new excuse. Her approach: stop accepting the excuse as the end of the conversation.
“You tell me, you’re the expert. I’d love to hear what you think.”
If February is always slow because of cold weather, what is the plan to get ahead of that? What promos can run? What referral programs are in play? What happens during every visit to maximize it? Asking the team member to come back with the plan does two things: it signals that excuses are not an answer, and it builds the problem-solving habit over time.
If someone consistently stares back with a blank look and genuinely cannot generate a single idea, that is useful information too.
Clarity is not cruelty
Lia closes with a reframe for anyone who feels like these conversations are too harsh. In a moment of so much chaos and change, the more clarity you give your team, the more stability they actually feel. People want to know what success looks like. They want to be told when something isn’t working. Many will rise to meet the expectation the moment they realize it is real.
The conversation has to come first. What happened, and what are we going to do about it next time? If you are already having these conversations and still not gaining traction, dig deeper into the levers: is it about growth? Leadership opportunity? Something else under the surface? But you cannot get there without starting the conversation.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 183: How to build a culture of accountability without micromanaging. Accountability is not blame or punishment. It is ownership, and when team members feel like owners they show up proactively, hit deadlines, and stop reopening decisions. Lia walks through a three-part framework covering the ownership mindset shift, clear expectations with psychological safety, and continual learning from missed targets. This episode is essential for any leader watching deadlines slip and conversations repeat with no resolution.
- Ep 151: The most important step of accountability you are probably skipping. Most leaders set clear expectations and stop there, but accountability lives in the follow-through, not the ask. Lia’s move is to flip who owns the reporting: instead of handing team members their numbers, require them to present the report and bring a plan. This episode is essential for any owner or manager frustrated that people agree to things and then quietly let them slide.
- Ep 135: How to stop repeating yourself and start holding your team accountable. The real reason you keep repeating yourself is not unclear expectations, it is a lack of accountability. Lia walks through three concrete moves: working out of your task tracking system publicly, following up every single time, and communicating the “why” behind every process so your team actually buys in. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who feel like nothing sticks no matter how clearly they explain things.
- Ep 119: Why saying ‘I need’ is killing your team’s accountability (and what to say instead). When you frame expectations as personal favors (‘I need this by Friday’), your team becomes accountable to you rather than to their job, and accountability falls apart. Lia’s fix is simple: remove ‘I’ and ‘me’ from how you set expectations and replace them with role-based language that connects the task to the job, the deadline, and the team’s results. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who keep hitting resistance on recurring tasks like status reports or deadlines.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
When someone doesn’t hit their deadlines, when project delays keep happening, when things go over budget, what conversations are you having? Are you talking about what needs to be refined? Are you going through plans, asking the person to come up with new ideas? Or are you listening to excuses and hearing the same conversation over and over and over? I’ve been there. I had a team member that every single time we’d meet, it was, yeah, this thing’s delayed, but it was because this other person, and it was deflect, defend, deflect, nothing to see or hear, folks.
It was all excuses over and over. And so in our meetings, I would sit down with her and go, okay, let’s figure this out. Have you tried this or that or this? Or what about this? And we would spend session after session talking about ideas and possible things to try. I was giving all the ideas. She was nodding along and saying, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that. And then next week it was the same thing. And the week after, the same thing.
Didn’t get better. It wasn’t fixed. Things were still late. There were still excuses. And I realized, okay, I got to do something really differently. And if that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Because this feeling of accountability of like, why isn’t someone taking this on and running with it? Isn’t that their job? That is missing in every single role. Yes, there’s diamonds in the rough. And I feel very fortunate to work with a lot of them as business owners and a lot of the managers that I coach in all different places.
But a lot of people out there, they would rather skirt accountability like that if they can get away with it. Because we don’t really want to have our butt on the line. We don’t really want more responsibility. Maybe we’re tired. We’re not really motivated. We don’t love our job. And if no one’s chasing after us, why would we do something differently? That might not be you. Because if you’re running a business or you started a company or you’re a leader or you’re overseeing people’s incapacity, maybe you do have that drive to kind of say, okay, I’m going to figure this out.
But if you’re dealing with folks that are on the other side of that, that are thinking, well, if I don’t have to do anything differently, why should I? Then you’re like 99% of the rest of us that are figuring out what the heck to do in this situation. And that’s where we talk about the show. I’m Leah Garvin, and this is the new manager playbook where I’m on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job.
And it is so fricking hard when you are the one that has to come up with all of the ideas, when you’re the only one that’s paying attention to deadlines and deliverables and budgets and growing the business and hitting the OKRs and whatever you’re doing. It’s way harder when your teams aren’t feeling accountable to that. But why are they not feeling accountable? Because you set some goals and maybe you have a conversation of checking on progress.
So you’ve done step one, right? Step two, right? But step three and step four are where things fall apart. And that is follow-up. So when they miss a deadline or miss a goal or miss a thing or are off budget or don’t hit their numbers, there’s a follow-up to discuss that. There’s asking them what they’re doing to fix it for the next time. Not excuses, not looking back, moving forward. And then step four, maybe it’s about three, it’s a step three A and B or step three and four, giving feedback.
Here is what I wanna see next time and following up again. It’s a loop. Set the expectations. Get someone off and running. But you gotta check in. And when something isn’t happening, that is where the leadership is happening. And that’s a step we’re all skipping because it can be uncomfortable and because our team members aren’t used to it or they don’t really come up with an idea or they just stare at us with a blank look on their face, which happens a lot of time.
I don’t know how to come up with a plan. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t really know how to do my job is maybe what they’re implying. And this is not about bashing your team members, but it’s holding your team members accountable to know how to do their job, to figure it out. If the plan that you established was to, let’s say you work in a design agency, deliver this brand overhaul or this website redesign or event and in this amount of time under this budget, and they deliver it on time, but it’s 10 times over budget or even 20K over budget.
Did they do the job right? I don’t know. If the budget is critically important, then there’s a conversation on, okay, what went wrong? Where do we have a misstep? What should we do differently next time? And people are owning those follow-ups, not just you because you’re gonna absorb that in your pocket. Or if you’re in a corporate world, not just nobody because money doesn’t count in a lot of companies that we work at until the end of the road when there’s performance valuations and then stuff starts to come through.
When we’re not checking in on things that did not happen and people know that, why would they follow through? We’re all, I said it already, we’re all tired. We’re all over it. There’s so much going on in the world, it’s a lot. You’ve gotta create the conditions. Now, this doesn’t mean that everything is, everyone feels like you’re cracking down and it’s like, oh God, if I’m $1 over budget, I’m gonna get fired. No, but it’s, hey, we wanna be stewards of the budget.
When we go over, we talk about it. We figure out where it went wrong. We’re glad it was only 20K on a million-dollar project, but if it’s 20K on a $50,000 project or a $25,000 project, now you got a problem. So you can’t just decide arbitrarily that something mattered or not. Same thing when things are late. Now, working in big tech, I worked in all different kinds of teams. So in somewhere like Apple, that hardware, that’s not gonna ship late.
That’s the thing that’s gonna be announced in their big presentation on the stage. That thing’s happening. The team was ready no matter what, right? Working in software, somewhere like Google, deadlines were a little bit more flexible, right? So it’s all about what you are reinforcing and the culture of your team and company. If you’re running an events company or managing an events team, the event is not moving. The person’s wedding or the red carpet event or the big conference, this isn’t moving.
We all know everything has to be done on time, but how you get there and if you go over budget and you lose your margins and if it becomes a nightmare, that’s the thing that you and your team are all responsible for. If you work in software, could you push the launch a couple days? Maybe. Does that affect anything? Maybe not. Maybe there’s not a huge ripple effect, but when things are late and you just like boom, change the date in a spreadsheet over and over and over, what are you reinforcing?
That we don’t have deadlines. That deadlines don’t matter. You know what? High performers, they don’t like that. They wanna know. They wanna drive towards something. They wanna have a sense of completion. So you’re reinforcing behaviors by not following up and avoiding. You’re actually reinforcing the behaviors that actually only the folks that don’t care about the kind of way the job comes across, you’re reinforcing it for them. Accountability can feel uncomfortable. Having these follow-up conversations, it can feel uncomfortable.
People can make excuses and point fingers and not wanna come up with an idea. There’s a lot of blaming. There’s a lot of, you know, and maybe you don’t wanna hear that. Maybe you don’t wanna have that conversation. Maybe you don’t wanna give difficult feedback. Sorry, you’re a leader. You’ve hired these people. These people are on your team. It’s part of the job. I’m not saying it’s the favorite part of the job, but we have to do that.
That is what we’re, it’s part of what we’ve signed up for. If we are a business owner and we wanted to scale our business and our idea, and we’ve had to do that through hiring other people, we have assumed the responsibility of following up when things like this happen. If we’re a manager in the corporate world and we have agreed, whether we were like mandated to become a manager or not, I know a lot of us did not want to be it, right?
So I think only three out of 10 people will wanna be a manager in the corporate world. And so that means seven out of 10 are like, ah. Maybe you’re a manager that was put in that role and they said, hey, this is the next step. You gotta take this, like if you wanna keep being on the team. Let’s just say worst case, that’s your situation. By being there, if you wanna be in the job and you wanna be successful, yeah, then you have implicitly signed up for this.
That is part of it. So the conversations around, hey, we gotta figure this out, that’s part of the job. Now, this doesn’t mean getting in people’s faces and yelling at them and saying, acting in kind of some, like whatever your most scared of situation is to having a hard conversation. No, I’m saying creating forums, post-mortem retrospectives, meetings after something’s been completed, regular feedback, talking about it in your one-on-ones, project team meetings, and having conversation around how are we going to get back on track and fix this for next time?
What is going to happen if we don’t fix this? It doesn’t just mean people get fired. Does this impact bonus pool? Does it impact raises? Does it impact opportunities for leadership potential? I don’t know, like that’s on you to figure out. But there is a way to have accountability conversation without them feeling like threats and ultimatums. What I like to do, I think post-mortems are incredibly valuable. What I like to do, though, is to have a conversation around what we all think happened and then what each person specifically wants to do differently.
That again could be a post-mortem with a group where you all talk together about the whole structure and where things went right and wrong, or it can be a one-on-one. I also like to look back at internal processes. Are there ways that we can simplify this, make this more efficient? Did we track something in a way that made it clunkier? Are we using a tool that’s not helping us? Are we not using a tool at all so we don’t have visibility into how long things take?
I like to look at behaviors and process and systems. I think we can solve things on both ways so that we’re showing, hey, we’re getting thoughtful here, but we will be doing something different next time. When these conversations around what went wrong are all in the past, and they’re saying like, well, this person was rude and the client was really frustrating and someone didn’t deliver on their piece, and it’s all looking back, nobody’s taking any accountability for what’s happening next.
I’m just gonna be really clear. And that’s what happened to me in those team meetings. I would meet with this person and she’d have every excuse in the book about why things didn’t happen on time, but we never really made a plan of her saying, I will do this differently. We said, well, could you have done this? Would you like, what do we wanna try? It was just like fluff in the air. That kind of thing isn’t helpful.
It’s saying, hey, okay, we’ve got a lot of ideas here. What is one thing you’re gonna try? How are you gonna do that? When are we gonna check in about it? How are you gonna know it’s working? These questions are helping someone own the plan and shift things from the future. It is such a frustrating conversation for you to have when you realize, again, the budget’s over, and again, the project’s late, and again, this is happening, and like, no one’s accountable.
I work with a lot of folks that run med spas and spas in general or gyms, and they’re seeing again and again, their providers, their practitioners, or their coaches not hitting their numbers. They have goals, and the person has an excuse and a reason every single month, and they say, well, January’s really slow because post-holiday, or the weather was really bad, so no one came in, or there’s this, this, this, and they’re like, okay, well, fix it for next time.
That’s the conversation. Not with my clients. We got a game plan. We’re going back and then saying, okay, we’re not really looking back. What is your plan to do differently next time? Okay, February’s a cold month in a lot of places. What are we doing to get ahead of the weather? What holidays are coming that we can do promos around? What ways can you be doing referral things? Like, what can we be doing to ensure that everyone, when they’re in our facility, that they’re getting the most of it?
They may be looking at products and service pairings. What are we doing to make the most of that visit? Asking your team member to come back with a plan. What are they doing differently? You tell me, you’re the expert. I’d love to hear what you think. And if the person, again, they have a blank stare and they say, I don’t know. Is that person right for you in the long term? This conversation’s not about firing your team members.
There’s a lot of things that we gotta think through in that situation. And as I’ve said, I don’t advise just saying, okay, get rid of them and start over. I don’t advise that. I advise you to hold people accountable. Give feedback, to set expectations, to have these conversations and say, this is what it means to be successful here. This is what it means to grow. This has been a hard topic, I know, for a lot of us to think through.
None of this means you’re a bad leader. None of this means you’ve blown it and you’ve made all these bad hires. I strongly believe that, especially in a moment where there’s so much chaos, so much confusion, so much change, the more clarity you can give in this area, the more you get people to hold onto, actually, the more stability they feel. I think that you will see, and I hope, hope, hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised by your team members that they step up, that they’re eager to have these conversations, that they’re rolling up their sleeves, that they’re saying, okay, all right, let’s see.
What will I do differently? I have this idea and that idea. And you will be even better equipped to coach them and help them generate these bigger ideas and to be going back and saying, okay, well, yeah, here is some infrastructure stuff that I can invest in as the leader of this team to support some of these ideas. But you’re not gonna get there if you’re not having the conversation. The conversation comes first. Talking about this happened, so what are we gonna do about it for next time?
This is going to be game-changing. If you’re not having these conversations, I am so excited because this is where you see everything transform. And if you’re having the conversations and you feel like you are already pulling all this out of people and you’re not getting anywhere, then it’s a question around, okay, are you using the right levers? Are you just talking about pay or advancement? Are there things around leadership? Like looking at, there’s always more to the surface when we peel back the layers.
It’s starting here, and if you’re getting stuck, you’re like, ah, I don’t quite get this, reach out, hello at LeagueArmor.com. We can figure this out together. And this is gonna be what you need to scale your business and scale your team in 2026. Things are just getting harder. They’re getting more competitive. We’ve gotta figure this out. And getting your teams bought in and participating and taking personal responsibility, we’re like, yeah, that’s the reason we have a team, to scale.
See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why does my team keep missing deadlines even after we talk about it?
The problem is usually that the follow-up conversation stops at excuses and never gets to a real plan. If you're meeting with someone, hearing reasons why something went wrong, brainstorming ideas together, and then seeing the same issue the next week, it's because no one actually owns the next step. The fix is shifting the conversation forward: not what went wrong, but what specifically the team member is going to do differently, how they'll do it, and when you'll check back in. Without that, the pattern just repeats.
How do I hold a team member accountable without it feeling like a threat or ultimatum?
Post-mortems and one-on-ones work really well here. The goal is to talk through what happened, look at both behaviors and internal processes, and then have each person name one specific thing they will do differently next time. You're not pointing fingers or warning people about consequences. You're asking: what's your plan? When will we check on it? How will you know it's working? That language puts ownership on the team member without turning the conversation into a confrontation. Accountability feels very different when it's framed around problem-solving rather than punishment.
What do I do when my employee always has an excuse for why something is late or over budget?
Stop generating the ideas yourself. If you're the one suggesting solutions while your team member nods along and nothing changes, you're doing their job for them. Instead, ask them directly: what is one thing you are going to try? How are you going to do that? When can we check in? If they give you a blank stare or say they don't know, that itself is useful information about whether this person is the right fit long term. The goal is for them to come back with a plan, not for you to hand them one every time.
How do I stop my team from just changing a deadline in a spreadsheet and moving on?
When deadlines move without any conversation, you're reinforcing that deadlines don't actually matter. That only works for people who don't care, and it drives away high performers who want to drive toward something and feel a sense of completion. Every time a deadline shifts or a budget goes over, there needs to be a follow-up: what happened, what the team member will do differently, and what accountability looks like going forward. The culture you create around missed targets is the culture your team will work inside of.
What's the most common step leaders skip when trying to get their team to follow through?
Most leaders set expectations and check in on progress, but they skip the follow-up when something goes wrong. When a deadline is missed or a budget goes over, the instinct is to move on or absorb it. But that missing conversation is exactly where real leadership happens. Following up means asking what went wrong, what the team member is going to do differently, and then checking in again to close the loop. Without that step, nothing changes because there's no real consequence or accountability tied to the miss.