Join the next Your Brain at Work Live as Senior Director of Research, Dr. Emma Sarro and Global Head of Culture and Leadership, Matt Summers walk us through the current state of accountability, why it needs to be a priority for organizations to foster and NLI’s research-backed behavioral framework that supports each of the three essential habits of proactive accountability. They’ll describe the critical behaviors through the lens of the latest research and how it directly applies to the workplace.
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Erin Wickham: Hello, everybody, and welcome to your brain at work. Live! I will give us all a minute or 2 to get out of the waiting room and into the session. But thank you for being here today as you join. If you want to share where you're calling in from in the chat. That's always a nice thing to know. It is a very gloomy day in New York City today where I am. We have some Californians here. Hello! More New Yorkers so excited to see you all I know.
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Erin Wickham: Colorado, Canada! Nice, so
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Erin Wickham: warm! Welcome to everybody, and welcome back to another week of your brain at work, live. I'll be your host today. I'm Erin Wickham, senior director of Client insights at the Neuro Leadership Institute. If you're a regular here, we're happy to have you back. But if you're new welcome for the 1st time and we're excited, you would join us today in today's episode. We'll walk through the current state of accountability. Why, it needs to be a priority for organizations and the critical behaviors that can foster it through the lens of the latest research, and how it directly applies to the workforce.
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Erin Wickham: As I quickly share some housekeeping notes. Continue to share where you're calling in from into the chat.
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Erin Wickham: We do suggest, you put your phone on. Do not disturb and quit any email or messaging apps that you may have open so you can get the most out of today's session, and we do love interaction. So feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, questions in the chat, and we'll reply to them throughout today's session.
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Erin Wickham: As for our speakers today, our 1st guest, if you're a return joiner, will know her well. She holds a Phd. In neuroscience from the New York University. She leads the research team at the Neuro Leadership Institute, where she focuses on translating cognitive and social neuroscience into actionable solutions for organizations, a warm welcome to the Senior Director of Research at Neuroleadership Institute. Dr. Emma Saro.
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Erin Wickham: Hi. Emma
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Emma Sarro: Hi!
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Emma Sarro: Excited to be here!
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Erin Wickham: Excited to have you back. And we have a new face today. Matt Summers is our head of leadership and culture at the Neuro Leadership Institute. Matt has 20 years of organizational transformation, culture, change and leadership, consulting experience. He's also a lecturer at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches the neuroscience of business management to 4th year. Business students. Hey, Matt, how are you doing
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Matt Summers: Hey, Aaron, great to be, and thanks for having us
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Erin Wickham: Good to have you, and I think I'm passing it over to you. So take over
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Matt Summers: Yeah, you bet. Thank you so much. And good morning. Good afternoon, or good evening to all of you that are joining us from around the globe. It is our distinct pleasure to have you join us for this session of your brain at work as we dig into the deeper neuroscience of what we're terming
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Matt Summers: proactive accountability, Emma, we're going to have some really rich discussions today, and I know that in the last 6 months you and I have spent a considerable amount of time looking at conversations we've had with Chros, Ceos, executive leaders alike to better understand what are the conditions that leaders and employees are facing in the workplace that are contributing to this breakdown or lack of accountability.
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Matt Summers: And what's the culture that we're seeing in organizations currently in 2025.
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Matt Summers: That's building that uncertainty for leaders in how to build real proactive accountability.
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Matt Summers: Now, the question is, what is proactive accountability? And how's that different to the regular term of accountability we see in here in the workplace. So we're going to unpack a lot of that. And, Emma, I'm certainly looking forward to our discussions. Now, folks, for those of you that are listening. Our goal today is to be very generative in nature, meaning that we're going to be talking with you, not at you. And what I mean by that is, we're going to ask you to please dig into
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Matt Summers: the chat box. We want to hear your voices, your insights, your experiences as we share insights, and as we know, the neuroscience tells us that when we share our insights in the chat box with others. It helps to accelerate the insights in others brains. So we're going to invite all of you to do that on a regular basis. Thank you.
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Matt Summers: So as I look at the chat box, Emma, we have hundreds of people joining us today. Clearly a very hot topic, something that you know we've been talking about at length. We've published a lot of academic papers in the last recent months on this topic. So we're going to hear about some of this from us today.
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Matt Summers: But, Emma, why don't we dig in and and get started
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Emma Sarro: Sounds good
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Matt Summers: Enjoy it.
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Matt Summers: So folks. What we would like to do is we want to engage you, and we want to hear about your experiences. First, st as we level, set and dig into this real experience in 2025 for all of you in the workplace
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Matt Summers: on screen. Here, you can see posted a question.
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Matt Summers: And that question is asking you, how many people do you know at work? Who you can? 100% count on to do exactly what they say they will do.
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Matt Summers: So let us know. In the chat box. Is it many, is it few? Is it? You know a lot? What does that look like? So let us know in the chat box. That's how we're going to be engaging today.
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Matt Summers: So let's see what kind of themes and patterns are showing up here.
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Matt Summers: and, Emma, as we shift our attention to the chat box, it's quite clear that I'm getting only a few. Some are saying one or 2, some are saying 1.5. So an interesting trend there
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of you are lucky, and I think that's great. You probably created a great culture for it. And that's, you know, hopefully, you can share with us what's working for you as well. But it's clearly something that is a struggle. We all want people to do what they say they're going to do to follow through and not blame somebody else. Right? And that feels good when someone, you know holds themselves accountable right, drives you to want to be accountable for them as well
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Matt Summers: Yeah. And I guess the real question on everyone's mind, Emma is, you know, what's driving this these lower numbers that we're seeing in these responses. Why is this so common? And why is this so predictable in human behavior?
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Matt Summers: When we think about, you know industrial psychology, we think about neuroscience and their intersection. When we show up with certain habits and behaviors that we don't show up as being accountable.
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Matt Summers: I don't think you know the distance bias shows up for me here, Emma, right when I think about some of the science here, right when you think about March of 2020. And you know when the pandemic hits and everybody felt so much further away from each other. I think that distance bias, and that brain's preference for valuing things that are closer in both space and time.
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Matt Summers: Right? I think that that bias is starting now, as people are starting to return back to work, we're starting to see a bit of that. But we're going to unpack a lot of that today. We're going to dig into that. Yeah. So then, based on people's responses here, Emma, why don't we take this a level further? And let's look at this next step in your experiences.
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Matt Summers: So if a lot of you in the chat box as we're hearing and seeing are declaring that you only have a few that you can fully depend on for being 100% accountable.
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Matt Summers: So if they don't? Will they apologize and find a way to fix it? Or on the other side of the coin? Do they shift blame? Do they point fingers at others. So let's hear from you in the chat box. What is that experience like for you in your workplace? What does that culture look like
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Emma Sarro: Definitely definitely a difficult thing to do. For sure, it requires certain kinds of environments in place, right for an individual to feel that they can, you know, share and apologize, and it kind of works both ways. Are you able to apologize? But also, you know, when something goes well, are you able to kind of own up to it and say this was, you know we did this, and I was a part of it. So it kind of works both ways.
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Emma Sarro: And I will say it's interesting that this is such a challenge right now, because looking in the literature, accountability is something that we naturally
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Emma Sarro: want to form in social groups. We want to count on each other. And when we feel a sense of team we want to show up for them. So it's interesting that in the last few years that this has been a bit eroded, so something has kind of changed in the workplace that's made it more difficult, and we'll talk about those things. But it isn't that. We, you know, don't naturally want to do that. It is something we do naturally form, but something's, you know, making it more challenging now.
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Matt Summers: Yeah. And I think the environment is contributing to that challenge. Right? I think we're seeing trends, especially this year in 2025, you know, with with where the market is politics, economy, right? So there's these external environmental influences on organizations and culture that influence the internal environment too. Right? And we know that leaders play that central role in being able to shift and role model accountability.
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Matt Summers: But I think that's where the sticky point is, Emma. This is where I think leaders sometimes are feeling stuck.
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Matt Summers: They're feeling torn on on how to build accountability and still trying to manage in all the the chaos, the uncertainty and the complexity of the daily workplace. And so, you know our conversation today, one of our goals for all of you that are listening is to help you think about.
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Matt Summers: how do you set up leaders for success so that they can cut through the noise right so they can create clear signal out of all that complexity. Right?
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Matt Summers: Alright. So with that being said, folks, what are we actually talking about? You know, of course, this is what accountability looks like and what it is really in 2025,
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Matt Summers: we've heard from all of you. Your voices are the market right and in the market and in the organizational context.
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Matt Summers: we're seeing that there are gaps, and there are real opportunities for us to learn new language behaviors and potential habits at scale in organizations to support both leaders and employees, to take ownership to really lean into accountability. Right?
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Matt Summers: But you know, it's interesting, Emma. Accountability has been around for decades. Right as a leadership skill set, something that leadership classrooms have been trying to build. I mean, I know it's something that I talk about to my 4th year. Business students at the university. I teach
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Matt Summers: and students go. Yes, Matt, we get it like we need to be accountable.
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Matt Summers: But we have to peel back the onion and really understand, what does that look like, you know? I think, from a trend perspective, from a behavior perspective and from a cognitive perspective.
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Matt Summers: But really this is, you know, it seems to be a really hot topic right now. There's a bright light being shown on, you know. Accountability. Why don't we dig into some of the trends that are showing up that that's bringing this, this concept, this leadership concept of accountability back into the forefront?
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Matt Summers: So the question for all of us folks, and and I want you to kind of think about this as we get deep in our discussion.
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Matt Summers: And the question is why the increased focused and accountability, you know, Emma and I've talked about the environment, etc. But let's get a little bit more granular. Let's get specific. So we can sink our teeth into some of these hot topics.
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Matt Summers: So when we think about this increased focus, this bright light that's being shown on the lack of accountability, and how accountability is actually showing up for most of us in the workplace, and how we need to shift it.
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Matt Summers: Emma, the 1st piece here that that kind of shut down stands out for me.
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Matt Summers: And we've spoken about this. We've written about this, and that's this notion of upended work conditions, right? So you know, a good example of this is what we're seeing in the workplace is, you know. Where are we working now? This massive return back to work policy that we're seeing for 100% of the workforce being 100% 5 days a week back into the workplace. You know, I think about a client I spoke to just 2 weeks ago. You know they're struggling with.
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Matt Summers: you know, the return back to work behavior right? And then how leaders be able to build accountability in this space. So where are people working? How are they working differently now? And why we work has really been upended? Maybe, Emma, this is a great place for us to start our dialogue. Can you tell us a little bit about what we're seeing in the neuroscience? The research that's really recent. That helps to explain some of this conditions of upended work
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is definitely one of the reasons why, maybe we're actually noticing how challenging it can be is when we look at the research on accountability. There is this term called felt accountability, which is the belief that someone has that they will be accountable for, or there will be a response to the work that they do in some way. And there's this clear expectation.
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Emma Sarro: And a lot of those systems were built in formally in organizations, and they were all based on the way that we had been working in these very rigid systems. How we work! Why, we work! All of that seemed to upend a few years ago. Right? And so those systems didn't work in the same way. And when you build very rigid systems they can't adjust as well to the changing environment. And so now I think
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Emma Sarro: organizations are having a hard time. There's not this matching of this is the way that things. This is my felt sense that I will be held accountable, or my team is held accountable for these things. And there's a mismatch, and sometimes there's a mismatch between teams and leaders to individuals. All of that creates this missed expectation or a reset of expectation. So you know what
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Emma Sarro: whatever I do here doesn't matter, or, you know, like people that work at home or work in in the office, there's there's a difference of expectations to all of that. So I think organizations are having trouble, rebuilding that formal system to match what individuals feel or teams feel.
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Emma Sarro: And I would suggest that going forward as we talk about how to build, that it's building something in a way that can be flexible because because of the underlying pace of change. Right? Things will change in the next 10 years. So we need to be able to build formal structures, formal systems that match the changing in the workplace. So that's 1 of the biggest things is this mismatch between? Do I feel? Do I believe that
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Emma Sarro: what I do will have repercussions or rewards? Right? It's both of those things right. You see, individuals being rewarded or not rewarded when reaching goals, and vice versa.
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Emma Sarro: Right? So and absolutely psychological safety and accountability we'll talk about this are super intertwined. You can't have really one without the other.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely
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Matt Summers: Yeah. And I'm noticing a lot of comments about Amy Evanson's work and about psychological safety and folks for those of you listening. Of course, you know, we partner with Amy, as you know, from Harvard and her, you know, 25 years of deep research in that space, and how to build effective habits for building psych safety in the workplace. Emma, you know, as we still talk about, I want to stay on this topic for a second.
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Matt Summers: This reminds me of a conversation I had a few months ago with a Chro
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Matt Summers: in healthcare, and her question to me was, Matt. This unmet expectations that you're talking about here, Emma, you know, she said, now that we have everybody returning back to work, you know, in the coming months, she said, what we're seeing from some of the teams that are already returning back to work. 5 days a week.
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Matt Summers: They all, she said. They're noticing a pattern. It's almost like they have to reform new neural connections in their brains for how to be social, for how to behave differently, for how to set up new processes, you know. So you know, I'm wondering. Maybe you can speak to a little bit of that neuroscience or neurobiology that neuroplasticity is that something that we need to be aware of. As we start to see the workforce returning back to work
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, things are. Your whole experience has changed. You've adjusted to working at home. You've adjusted to the way and the how that you work. And now.
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Emma Sarro: as things change, there is an adjustment phase you're learning to reset. This is the way the system's working here. I'm resetting my expectations. All of that takes time. And so really important for organizations to be super consistent. I think the word consistency came up in the chat. That is how we learn and kind of adjust our behavior to the systems in the workplace. So leaders have to be consistent with their language and
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Emma Sarro: and how they show up and be accountable for others, so that that is so important for building a sense of accountability is that consistency
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Matt Summers: In the year. Yeah.
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Matt Summers: Yeah. So that same cr in healthcare told me. You know the story she's starting to tell in the workplace is, you know. Think about, you know, when Tiger Woods, midway through his career, had to learn how to literally relearn his swim right of his golf club.
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Matt Summers: right and total rewire his brain, the motor cortex, all the muscle memory. He had to rebuild all that. And I think that's a great metaphor for what we're seeing for leadership, you know, as we think about, you know, work from home. What's that dynamic? Maybe it's a 3 days at work 2 days from home, whatever it is, but just finding that balance. And then how do leaders playing that that sticky space? Right?
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Matt Summers: And I think there's a kind of a creative tension there that leaders need to kind of find a way to play in fantastic Emma. Let's move into the second reason why there's this increased on accountability. And the second piece is this increased pressure.
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Matt Summers: Now, we're going to talk about this, you know, in a couple of slides. But as we kind of build on this folks for those of you listening. You know you can all relate to this human experience, this workplace experience of, you know, feeling pulled in multiple.
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Matt Summers: no directions. This the weight that we carry on our shoulders on a daily basis, not just every now and again. And this is because of things like financial and performance pressures that that we face in organizations. Emma, you know we we talk about this with our clients frequently.
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Matt Summers: But what's the neuroscience that you're seeing. That's that's recently showing up that kind of speaks to this this leadership reality that they face
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Emma Sarro: Well increased pressure. I mean, that can come, and from several directions, but ultimately it just overloads your cognitive load right and provides maybe a sense of underlying threat changes the way we focus on what we're doing. But one of the things that comes up when it comes to accountability is that it impacts how we prioritize what we're going to do. And a result of increased pressure is probably
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Emma Sarro: mixed and dual priorities or competing priorities. And this was something that you found in when you were when you were talking to leaders is one of the reasons why accountability is so hard. Is there is
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Emma Sarro: their competing priorities like, what do you prioritize? And when we talk about the behaviors of creating accountability, one of the things is making sure you're prioritizing the thing you need to complete every day, and if you're not sure where to go, then you're going to be stuck, and you might not get anything done
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Matt Summers: Yeah, that's easy to say, and really hard to do, Emma, you know, when you think everything's important and everything's a priority, right? And so you know, folks, what we would recommend you do is really just to think about what are some new structures or processes or systems you can put into place.
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Matt Summers: That can emit some new habits around prioritization. And so
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Matt Summers: I'm reminded of, you know, some leadership groups that we've been coaching and working closely with around how they do that effectively.
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Matt Summers: And there are some best practices in this space, right? And one of them is not dive straight into emails as soon as you sit in your chair at your desk in the office every day. Right? That's a predictable pattern that we all fall into, myself included. And so I break that pattern. I tell my students this all the time, like when you start in the workplace next year after you finish school, you know. Don't fall into this trap right of closing your door in your office and spend the 1st 30 min on your email right? Really? Just spend the first, st I would say, spend the 1st 20 min just prioritizing the day
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Matt Summers: right around what is the most important thing, and pay attention to that, and then check in with people right? So check in with your line, manager the person you report to, and just make sure that you're aligned right? So, meeting going back to those expectations, you know, just meeting those expectations around. What are our agreed upon priorities. Unfortunately, in the human brain, Emma, as you said, you know, when we are in a threat state, everything seems urgent and important. Right? And so just notice those patterns in our thinking. That's really important.
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Matt Summers: Okay, let's move into this 3rd trend we're seeing Emma, and this one is around the pace of change. Right? There's a statement that our CEO, Dr. David Rock, and many of you here, who've attended our other. Your brain at work. Sessions and podcasts would have heard him say this and that is, that you know change has
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Matt Summers: never been this fast as it is today, and it'll never be this slow right again. And so what we're seeing in recent data just in the last 6 months, and I've been telling leadership groups and board members frequently to remind themselves that you know, just in the last 6 months the data tells us that the increased rapid rate of change has increased by 1, 83% since 2019, and up by 33%, just in the last 12 months.
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Matt Summers: I mean, Emma, that that those numbers are staggering
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Matt Summers: right? So when we think about the rapid pace of change in in our workspace, when we see how technology, artificial intelligence, insertion, right?
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Matt Summers: the increased volume. This expectation of do more with less right. All of that is is kind of accelerating that pace of change. And so that exponential acceleration of change is leading to what you know. This, this predictable
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Matt Summers: cognitive response of overwhelm right?
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Matt Summers: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about. You know. What is this pace of change doing to our brains? What's the neuroscience behind this human experience?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, similar to increased pressure. It definitely causes a sense of uncertainty, a sense of threat that's based on that and kind of impacting in a similar way. I mean the response to any kind of like rapid change. Threat will just be kind of avoidance or not knowing what to do next, not being able to focus or make good decisions, all of those
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Emma Sarro: cognitive impacts of threat, so really requiring us to increase our ability to be agile and then kind of bringing me back to the idea that when we're building a culture of accountability, and we'll talk about the different kinds of cultures. And some people have mentioned
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Emma Sarro: this
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Emma Sarro: more punitive culture, which is something that can happen. Organizations can default to because it tends to be a bit easier. But the the need to build systems that are able to be flexible, agile, and adapt over time. And so this is something that I can impress more. And when you're building these systems and creating these expectations for others, make sure that you're checking up on them and allowing them to be agile over time.
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Matt Summers: Yeah, thanks, Emma. I'm getting a few requests for me to repeat that the statistic, that kind of highlights, what's going on in the neuroscience, you emphasize there. So 180% increase rapid rate of change since 2019. And just in the last 12 months, 33%
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Emma Sarro: Thank you.
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Matt Summers: So you know, frightening statistics here, based on what you've just said, Emma. You know I continue to have insights in this space, you know when I think about myself as a leader and the team that I lead at the New Leadership Institute. When I think about the teams that we help through neuroscience to adopt new habits at scale with our clients. That we serve.
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Matt Summers: One of the most frequent things I hear is, I don't know how to regain focus. Right? So how can you hold me? And how can I hold others accountable when I'm just so overwhelmed right cognitively?
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Matt Summers: And you and I've talked about this frequently, Emma. And you know that amygdala hijack right? That emotional hijack that happens in the human brain when we feel this sense of completely overwhelmed, and and we've used the term. You know, years ago there was like the great resignation was the term used during Covid. Right? I think. I think now, what we're using is the term of the great disillusionment. Right?
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Matt Summers: So the great disillusionment is is a trend we're seeing. And you know, that's language that we've formed, based on. You know what we've written in the Harvard Business Review, and what we've seen in other articles, and what others are writing about.
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Matt Summers: then employees and leaders? They feel disillusioned because they're experiencing this sense of feeling torn
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Matt Summers: right and being pulled in multiple directions. And so, you know. Let's talk a bit about that. And and what are the realities that folks are facing?
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Matt Summers: What we know as we think about that torn experience? Is that the importance of accountability is really clear. As we kind of dig into this topic of torn Emma.
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Matt Summers: We know that 91% of employees agree that accountability is really really important. But, Emma, this next statistic is the one that frightens me right, and that is 97% of managers that are pulled in this space.
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Matt Summers: and employees struggle with accountability. Right? So everyone recognizes that it's important for leaders and employees, right? But most importantly, here is that we don't know how to
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Matt Summers: build it, how to role role, model it effectively in the current space in the realities we face. But why, Emma, that's the real question. But before we go into one, just anything on statistics, Emma, that's kind of standing out for you. Just bring you into it
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, the only thing that's coming up is just that we, you know, this is one of the reasons why we we dove in, and we built the framework that we'll be sharing in just a few minutes is like, how do you create it in a way that works right? So I think that's the that's the only thing that that's coming. How do you kind of reverse, engineer? What like what we define as accountability? But do so in a way that doesn't drive you know. Fear of being accountable. You want individuals to kind of want that accountability
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Matt Summers: Yeah. So that fear comes from many places. Emma, you know one. You talked about the threat, right? So that uncertainty that we see
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Matt Summers: and then that activates. Unfortunately, that default mode network in the brain, right part of that limbic system that's like we just then default into the things we've always done which leads to suboptimal thinking, right quality of thinking. It leads to suboptimal accountability because we don't know how to partner effectively and collaborate with others effectively when we're in that. You know. Ongoing threat. State that cortisol state that noradrenaline state that's not healthy for us.
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Matt Summers: that that ultimately, you know, leads to, I guess not only the fear state, but also maybe that proactive accountability we're going to talk about in a moment. Yeah.
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Matt Summers: all right. So that punitive accountability. So all right. So let's talk about the realities like, why is this happening? So folks? What we're seeing based on the research, the data and the conversations we've been having in the marketplace is this model that we were sharing with clients currently knowing that organizations live in, a leaders are operating in a very volatile, a very uncertain right? A complex environment
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Matt Summers: with those realities we're talking about here. What happens is there's this torn experience, and it's an acronym. And the 1st the T of Torn speaks to leaders feeling really tired. Right? So can I. Can I get just a plus one
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Matt Summers: or raised hand for those of you that are here in the session, who who may have a similar experience of feeling, really tired as a leader of having to compromise your values and your standards specifically.
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Matt Summers: Yeah, Emma, look at the look at the comments here in the chat box. You know some of us are giving, plus tens, right? So, folks for those of you who can relate to this, I mean, you can be an informal leader, too. You don't have to necessarily be in a leadership position. But I think, as humans, we can all relate to existing in that Vuca world, right? That volatility, the uncertainty, the complexity we face right, and as a result we are exhausted.
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Matt Summers: Right? I think the other thing here, Emma, that stands out for me is organizations. Talk about work-life balance. They talk about usual benefits. Right? Go get a massage. We support mental health, etc. But unfortunately, there's also the stigma attached, I think, in a lot of organizations where competence. Compulsion shows up, you know, from industrial psychology terms.
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Matt Summers: and to define competence, compulsion. This is this unconscious, unintended drive in all of us as humans to want to show up as being smart and perfect, you know, at everything we do. And as leaders that's impossible as humans, that's impossible. We know that
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Matt Summers: the only way we learn to grow is through making mistakes right and building from those. And so when we're when we're in this environment of uncertainty and complexity and constant change.
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Matt Summers: I think we're exhausted, right? And so I'm going to come back to like organizations. Say, Hey, work-life balance. But
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Matt Summers: the typical pattern is we still default to working 19 HA day. Right? And so we are tired. And so we're compromising to our values and standards. We're tired of physically and cognitive. We're also tired at that values level of, you know, our organization espouses work-life balance. Our values in the organization, espouse inclusion or espouse
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Matt Summers: you know, shared thinking whatever it is, and and and when we don't see that enacted in the workplace, there's that compromise right? And so it's exhausting
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Matt Summers: the second piece to our torn experience and predictable behavior here is overwhelmed. Right? Can I get a plus one, or raise hand?
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Matt Summers: from all of you? Who of you are feeling overwhelmed by competing priorities, demands and capacity across all areas?
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Matt Summers: Yeah. So, Emma, again, a shared experience here, right? I don't think we there's no radio silence here. There's no tumbleweed, you know. It's it's very human for us to say right boom from Amy. Yes, absolutely so. What we're noticing here Emma is, and for those of you listening is these competing priorities, demands and capacity. You know, it's cognitive capacity we're talking about here, but it's also the emotional capacity to Emma. We can't ignore, right
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Matt Summers: as we're connected to. Also that values compromising, that we're that we're seeing. So that, too, is a pull on our energy. And so yes, we're feeling overwhelmed.
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Matt Summers: The 3rd piece here is resigned. So what is resigned represent
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Matt Summers: Emma? We've talked about the reality of leadership where they might feel that there's no path to change. They're resigned to this reality that I won't have enough resources right? I won't have enough people. I won't have enough skill sets. I won't have enough education. I won't have enough money right? So the leadership of path, the leadership pathway,
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Matt Summers: to to improvement to growth, etc. Is feeling
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Matt Summers: is feeling. You know, people almost like give up on it right? And this is not everybody. But there's this, this, there's this part of like feeling I feel resigned to. This is just the reality of leadership, and so I'll just get on with it right?
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Matt Summers: And then the final piece. Here is this notion of feeling neglected, right neglected by those in their organization who have the ability to help but guess what those leaders who have the ability to help are in the exact same environment, operating under the same torn experience as that leader themselves. And so there's this cyclical process, and that this kind of this
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Matt Summers: unfortunate, unintended system that exists right where one leaders feeling torment. Yes, that's a common experience amongst many leaders. And and that's a dangerous place for organizations, a dangerous culture that sits underneath the surface. Right?
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Matt Summers: And so we all say, Yeah, we're all you know. We do. Our surveys, and our engagement surveys are high. And yet people really are having this different experience underneath the waterline. So really interesting, Emma, anything, any comments, anything from you on the torn model and kind of the predictable pieces we see here, or any neuroscience
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, other than what we, you know, covered kind of above. It's just going to lead to just a drastic disengagement with leaders as well as employees, right? Because they're both kind of feeling this, and then just difficulty in the in the like the feeling of authority to actually you know, build accountability. That was kind of kind of coming up in the in the literature, too.
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Matt Summers: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. So so then we, you know, this is kind of exciting for us to dig into. We've done a lot of writing in this space, and you know, and let's share with our listeners what that looks like
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Matt Summers: so recently. You know, we've published in Harvard Business review 3 ways to compassionately hold your team accountable. You know we've we've talked about accountability, Emma, from a number of angles and contexts. We've run a number of sessions and pieces around, you know, accountability specific to financial services. Right? So how do we develop leaderships?
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Matt Summers: Ability to build accountability in financial services? And how do we accelerate leadership performance as we solve for accountability and drive a culture of feedback?
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Matt Summers: Right? So there's that context, we've talked about accountability and increasing human performance and performance management. Emma, I'd love to hear from you because we've recently published
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Matt Summers: one of our Nli journals on organizational accountability which is titled from punitive to proactive accountability.
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Matt Summers: Can you maybe spend some time telling us a little bit about the story of how this this you know, this research came to be? And and then what's behind this paper? Thanks.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about both of them so that we can get into the behaviors. Because that's I think, why people are here. But the punitive piece which we're not going to talk about too much is we really dove into, like the organizational literature on what are the different kinds of cultures of accountability, because accountability does have a have a generally punitive connotation, right? And so what does it mean to create
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Emma Sarro: more of a proactive one where individuals are okay, to take ownership of something and be okay to share that. They made a mistake. Or I'm going to find the solution for it right? So we kind of built that culture described it. What are the things needed? Psychological safety growth, mindset? Both of those are needed, and then we dove into the more recent one, which is.
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Emma Sarro: how do you? What are the what's the framework for proactive accountability? This is what this is, the ideal state. So how do we kind of break down that ideal state? And what are the things that leaders can do to encourage it right? What are the 3, if we, if we had to define 3 major behaviors of this, what are the 3 major behaviors that we could kind of focus on? And what's the underlying science. Why is it difficult?
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Emma Sarro: And then how do you create it? Which is what we're so good at doing is understanding like, why is this a cognitive challenge. But then, how can leaders, you know, pull this out of themselves and of the people that are on their team?
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Emma Sarro: Right? Those critical habits
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Matt Summers: Yeah, it's such a rich resource. And for those of you that are listening, we strongly invite you to look at avenues of how to get access to and read it. Emma, we've seen a lot of questions in the chat box and in the Q&A around. How are you defining accountability, and of course we define it quite clearly in both of these papers. But you know in your own words, how would you define accountability for those that are listening today
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Emma Sarro: Well individuals that are clear on, on what they need to do, and then follow through on what they what they say they'll do, but also
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Emma Sarro: also discuss and and understand the impact of of what they intended to, what they actually do, and then and follow up with not necessarily an apology, but how? They'll fix it right. And that's something that kind of closes the loop on accountability. So it kind of shows up, follows through and then, and then fixes it. If they make a mistake, or holds themselves accountable for the win, when they do
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Matt Summers: Yeah, thanks, Emma. So so, Emma, let's create some frameworks for this. Right? You talked about practical application. So let's get into, you know, some of our deeper work in the space. When we talk about cultures of accountability, right? When we think about accountability at scale and organizations. Emma.
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Matt Summers: what do they provide. There are 3 things that we've defined here that provide structure. They provide direction, prediction, right? That our brains crave right. And we know that the key, of course, is to do this with the brain in mind. Any comments here, Emma, as we think about this, and we dig into this as we get into some of the habits here.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I would just say that based on everything we've talked about so far, so far is
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Emma Sarro: Our brains do crave a sense of structure. Whether it's a flexible structure like it can be flexible, which I think is the ideal state. But we do need to be able to predict what's expected of us and what our actions will provide. So if there's no predictability, if there's no structure, it leads to a lack of engagement, right? We don't know what to do, really, and what direction to go. So there is a sense of structure that
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Emma Sarro: all of our brains need. We do need a level of certainty and direction. Doing it in the brain to mind is is where we kind of take the punitive piece out. The fear based structure as opposed to. Let's engage our motivational systems as much as possible, and and drive behavior and intrinsic drive to follow through on what we say. We'll do. So setting the brain and the individual up to
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Emma Sarro: to want to kind of take ownership. And there's a lot of really fascinating science that has been done to understand how individuals engage and initiate action and then are intrinsically driven to follow through on that. So how can you get that person to feel that intrinsic drive, because someone will follow through on things out of fear. But that's not the ideal state, and that won't necessarily lead to the culture that you want
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Matt Summers: Something that you'd shared with me recently, which I think was quite profound, and it was an insight for me as a leader, and that was, how do you build alignment in that space? Right for accountability? So maybe you could talk us through a little bit of how you create accountability through alignment.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. And this leads back to the set expectations of our environment, right? And the you know the rules that are written and the unwritten rules that individuals experience is in in a culture where you want to have, you know, consistent, shared behavior. Someone's experience has to be similar to what's observed. You know, we're we're very attuned to what's observed in our environment, and they also have to align with the systems.
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Emma Sarro: Right? So if you individuals see other teams having a different set of rules or a different, you know, there's reinforcement or consequences that don't match up with your own. You're going to start perceiving the environment has no like set expectations. What I do don't matter right doesn't matter, and what we do doesn't matter, or I don't know what kind of repercussions will will
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Emma Sarro: come from this reaching this goal. So the alignment has to be in place, and that's 1 of the things that was broken right by when we changed kind of the structure of the workplace. So building that back in does satisfy a need in our brain, but also just ensuring that alignment between what we experience, what we observe. I think that leaders sometimes struggle with that
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Matt Summers: Yeah, thanks, Emma, you know, and I'm seeing I'm just tracking some of the comments in the chat box. A lot of folks are really aligning with
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Matt Summers: some of your comments around structure being really helpful in establishing healthy accountability right and doing that at scale, I come back to the return back to work policy. Right? That's a critical new structure set of processes. We need to remind ourselves that may not exist currently, it may not have been in place for the last 4 or 5 years. So how do we think about that, you know, based on
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Matt Summers: current policy or new reality, that employees and leaders are facing. Yeah, Emma, why don't we dig into the habits? This is the part that I'm most excited about in our dialogue today. I'm going to hand it over to you to walk through in sequence. Each of the 3 habits that we built out at the new Leadership Institute that help leaders in a very practical manner.
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Matt Summers: bring in best practices, using science to start to build accountability in themselves and really in others at scale. Why don't we start with the 1st one around sync expectations over to you
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that I think individuals struggle with. So we often kind of when we kind of like reverse engineer the like. What is accountability? You know? What is the 1st challenge that we see? And one of the 1st challenges is, you know, what am I supposed to be doing so. Oftentimes individuals struggle with. I'm not even sure what my goal is, or I'm not sure you know what I'm supposed to be doing, or maybe
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Emma Sarro: I didn't clearly state what I was going to achieve with my leader. So how do we make sure that expectations are super clear? And this all speaks back to the like. The anchor for this whole, for accountability is what our expectations of the environment are, and we know how important in the brain expectations are constantly being set and reset, and so if you expect something and you don't get
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Emma Sarro: that, then you reset your expectations of
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Emma Sarro: what that is, or the person. And this leads to an erosion of trust, whether it's the leader that doesn't follow through, or whether it's the direct report that doesn't follow through. So how can we build a set of like very clear expectations? The 1st is just being clear on what you're going to do or what you're going to tell your direct report to do one of the ways that we suggest doing that is forming like an image of that goal. We call this a perspective memory which is just like an image of what you're going to do.
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Emma Sarro: Research shows it increases the chances of reaching that goal
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Emma Sarro: and then sharing it very clearly in communication that's well understood. And some really interesting research that we found was that when individuals have a shared understanding, their brains actually synchronized. And so like, how do we get to that ideal state? And so how can you communicate very clearly, making sure to ask for understanding
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Emma Sarro: between you and any other stakeholder in that team, whoever it is that matters right now for reaching that goal and so creating clarity to ensure shared understanding. Is that 1st step. So it's I'm going to do this. And these are the steps and sharing that and making sure everyone understands, or.
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Emma Sarro: or, you know, sharing that expectation with your direct report, making sure that's clear. And the neural synchrony research is, it's it's not just applied to accountability. It's for anything, any kind of learning. We know that when individuals have the same understanding, their brains are in sync, and it's pretty cool stuff
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Matt Summers: Yeah, there's 2 situations that stand out through. I've seen this just in the last month, showed Emma. One is with my students when they start new group work right? So when I put them onto a group project and anybody who's done, you know, adult learning hates group projects. But because there's always that one, you know, Skippy, who does nothing. But there's this notion of like, okay. Now we got to work together, and we're a new team for the 1st time.
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Matt Summers: It applies in the workplace, too, Anna, right? We see this often when managers take on new teams or a new team is formed, and the leader now has to bring in this neural synchrony.
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Matt Summers: And and most leaders don't know how to do that effectively. Emma, and we get that feedback from clients is like, what's the 1st or second or 3rd step here
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Matt Summers: to sync my expectations. I just want to talk about this a little bit more you talked about creating a matching picture
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Matt Summers: Like what's going on in the brain there? Can you just give us a little bit more about what's going on in the brain when a leader is effectively able to kind of create matching pictures and clarity. And then what does that lead to?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean. So if you're, you have an idea, mental image, of what you're going to do, it's so much easier for you to reach that goal. You can see where maybe obstacles will happen. And like the environments that you'll engage in that behavior. And and right, you know, it could be anything from expectations of. You know what you need to achieve with also how it will be evaluated. Right? And and what are the steps you know along the way, and who will be involved so it can be any part of that process.
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Emma Sarro: You're actually creating that same image in the individual that you're sharing this with right? We want to create that like, I see what you see or what you're saying. Kind of environment makes it more likely that they're going to understand exactly who's involved and how to get there as well and just. And it also creates a level of a sense of certainty which is a reward, right? Everyone's on the same page, and that's rewarding to have that shared understanding
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Matt Summers: Yeah. Last note on this 1st habit, Emma, you know one of the practices you taught me was, you know, just pause as a leader.
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Matt Summers: And just check in, hey? So I just want to check my assumption right? Or I just want to check in. My picture of this is X, you know, is yours. X. 2. Or is it X and y. Right? And so how do we get them both to match? And so just just checking that intersection, pausing the conversation for a moment in an important, you know, team meeting, or a 1 on one, you know, performance management conversation, and just to say, Hey, what are our expectations here?
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Matt Summers: Because my expectation is X, and I know we'll be on the same page. Yeah, really good. I think you know the experience bias Emma shows up for me as a leader where I'm trying to rush through things.
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Matt Summers: And I don't build in a pause, just for 1 min, just to check my expectations. If you're my manager. Just to see that we're aligned. Yeah, thank you.
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Emma Sarro: Help!
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Matt Summers: All right, let's lean into that second habit. Really great practice here, Emma, once we've got neurosynchrony in place, as you described, and we start to sync expectations effectively with others. The second habit is now leaning into driving with purpose. You know the actions we're going to take. Tell us a bit about this habit and the science behind it.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we all know that so many challenges come up when we're actually going towards our goals, whether it's with ourselves or others is one it could be, you know, individuals just get off track because there's other priorities, and everyone gets, you know, what do I choose to do the others. They get stuck at a problem right? And they can't an impasse or a challenge that they can't overcome, or they just continue to work forward, but they're totally off track.
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Emma Sarro: and you're not able to kind of see that? Or maybe it's I think someone else is going to take this step and unclear of who owns this step right? And so the way that we kind of you know the ideal behavior here is an individual takes initiative and is proactive towards their goals. So how do you drive that? And when we looked into the literature, it's really just about, how do you most deeply engage those motivational networks. So that intrinsic motivation.
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Emma Sarro: this task is always the one that's prioritized, and no one waits for someone else to jump in, because this is my task. And I'm going to do this. I'm responsible for this. And so driving that behavior is, what can you? How can you most deeply engage those parts of the brain, and one of them is with purpose. So making sure to align with like an individual's purpose for this task, and that the research has is kind of overwhelming in the area of purpose which
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Emma Sarro: essentially shows it more likely to reach goals more likely to show resilience and grit in the face of challenges. So having a sense of purpose, if leaders can instill that or find that individual's personal sense of purpose, because a sense of ownership or psychological ownership is also really important here. If you can link both of those, an individual feels a sense of ownership.
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Emma Sarro: you're going to value anything related to that goal over all others. So you're more likely to jump in and take that initiative. This is my task. I'm going to take this next step. I'm responsible for this. You're rewarded for doing those things that are linked with your sense of self and your purpose. So that's kind of where drive with purpose. If you don't know the why behind what you're doing, you're more likely to fall off track and just kind.
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Emma Sarro: So work without any goal
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Matt Summers: Yeah, Emma, we had our CEO David Rock talk about, you know. Start with the Y Circuitry. Start with the Y network in the brain before you start with what and how right?
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Matt Summers: So I think you're right here. This I have to remind myself as a leader, too, and I think for all of us just to make a note of. You know, when we are introducing change, when there's a lot of uncertainty in the system to lift up our level of mental or cognitive control right our level of thinking.
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Matt Summers: And just to ask and remind ourselves as a team or as a group or a project team. Why are we doing this? Why is this important? And then what happens? Neurologically there, Emma, from a neurobiology perspective? It helps us to just get into that manageable threat state in all that uncertainty or into a reward state, so that we can continue to be collaborative and access collaborative circuitry
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Matt Summers: right in the front of the brain. But that means, like, practically, it means that we can be more insight driven. We can be more collaborative in nature. We can problem solve more effectively. And we can drive with purpose. Right? Yeah.
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Matt Summers: lovely Emma, let's move into the 3rd habit. This habit for me was quite profound, you know, when we came up with this in recent months, and it's called owning the impact. So yeah, yes, I mean, obviously, there's a sense of ownership here. But it's really about the own results. Can you tell us a bit about how we came up with this this habit and this neuroscience behind it?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah. So sometimes what happens is that individuals, they complete something, and they say, Well, it's done. When what they did might have not actually been what they intended to. There was a space between that that intent and like what actually happened and who was impacted. So the 1st step is just understanding. You know where you ended up, and comparing that to what your intentional like your intention was right. Taking that perspective. Who was impacted?
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Emma Sarro: Was it what I intended to do. And then there's a huge sense of growth, mindset and and like the need to be solutions focused here. And that's like super like integrated into this habit is is the drive to find solutions and be agile. So I might not have gotten to the impact that I wanted. But I'm going to be driven to find the solution. I'll I'll make sure to follow through and fix it
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Emma Sarro: right. And whether it's you know I made a mistake, and I need to fix it, or you know what I want. I got it. I did exactly what I was supposed to do, and I want to own that win as well. So a growth mindset here is not just about fixing mistakes. It's also about celebrating the wins as well, and so that intent to impact is really like looking at what you did. And then also a bit of. And I know we've talked about apologies before, and it's not really
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Emma Sarro: necessarily the right word, but that's what it's called in the literature. And it's really how you communicate what happened to those other stakeholders. And and there is a way to do that. That kind of satisfies that relationship and maintains that sense of trust and expectation. If you didn't reach your goal.
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Emma Sarro: and part of that is just claiming ownership, communicating with the individuals, how you'll solve it and then asking for input and this was actually studied in companies actually apologizing to customers for some kind of mix up. And when they did it in this way, when they claimed ownership communicated how they'll fix it, and then asked for input this was the way to kind of maintain customers, which is a really interesting kind of sense of of literature.
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Emma Sarro: But anyways, this would be kind of like how you kind of close up that circle, own the result, share the result, whether it's a win or a loss, and then maintain that those those expectations, that sense of trust, whether it's with your leader, or whether with your team or other stakeholders.
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Matt Summers: you know, I'm reminded of some of the research and in the books written around how navy seals are trained
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Matt Summers: what they call extreme accountability and ownership right?
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Matt Summers: And how do you see yourself? As so the predictable pattern is when people don't take accountability or when they don't meet a deadline, or when they make a mistake, they point the finger outside of themselves. They pointed in other directions. Right?
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Matt Summers: And that's because of proactive. And that's because of punitive accountability. Right? And so the default here, you know, in a lot of our approach here.
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Matt Summers: And we'll talk about this, you know, just in a moment. You know, how do we shift from punitive to proactive accountability? Right? And when people are in proactive accountability, they take ownership in the moments that really matter when making key decisions, when problem solving right, when in crisis, to take ownership, to feel empowered, to be in a reward state, to do their best thinking and to take ownership just like the Navy seals were in those moments. That really matter. Right? That's really important.
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Matt Summers: And so so the shared outcomes and finding a solution in the moments that really matter are where we see the lift in performance in teams. Right?
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Matt Summers: And that's going to be critical. We are going to put out a poll survey in just a moment, folks that actually speaks to the invitation. The opportunity for all of you
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Matt Summers: to to, you know, to speak with us, and we'll do that in just a moment. But you know, Emma, in service of time, what I'd like to do is, I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the concepts you've been mentioning around growth, mindset psychological safety and and how that ties into accountability. And these habits do you maybe want to get our conversation started here, and then we'll run a poll in just a minute.
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Matt Summers: You know a model of Gpa, you know, growth, mindset psychological safety accountability. We've heard you and David and myself talking, you know here in the podcast but also to our clients in our consulting work around how you know, concepts like Gpa need to be considered when we build cultures of accountability in organizations
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, we've been in all of these 3 areas. We recently published papers in all 3 of these areas just looking at the concept for leadership really. And the 3 main things leaders need to build successful cultures. And and the truth is, the research on each of them are so intertwined. I mean, even just looking at accountability growth. Mindset is a part of each of those habits right? Like you need a sense of solutions focused thinking for each one
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Emma Sarro: psychological safety also, just as critical and research, even from Amy Edmondson, showing the link between psychological safety and accountability. So all 3 are critical. I think if there's a gap in any of them, I think leaders will struggle to get the performing teams that they're looking for. So I think when building a foundation of strong leadership. You really need to think about all 3
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Matt Summers: Yeah, fair enough. Thank you. So we promised you the opportunity to engage with us as we start to wrap
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Matt Summers: what you're going to see on the screen right now is an opportunity, a poll. Please to engage with us if you want to hear more about some of these habits, Emma. You know that we've been talking about, and to access more resources, etc, around? How do you? How can we help you? And how do you further think about shifting from cultures of punitive right, which is kind of leading with that carrot and stick. Emma, you know that these concepts we've been talking about.
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Matt Summers: How do we do that in an effective way, in a very practical way, to enable leaders in 2025 for the year ahead, where we get out of punitive and into proactive accountability, leveraging the ability to sync. You know, bold neurosynchrony to sync those expectations right?
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Matt Summers: You know, and to be able to drive results with impact, etc. And as I look at some of these percentages here, what we're seeing here from listeners is as predicted. There, of course, is a strong need and demand in the market. And that's why we're running this session today to do so.
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Matt Summers: So thank you. So thank you for sharing and picking those options for you, Emma, just in our last few minutes. I'm wondering if we can just talk a little bit about what we can look forward to in the near future, knowing that next week we have a break, but I'll hand it over to you to just talk about what the listeners can look forward to in the upcoming your brain at work
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I love to hear any interest in deliver, which is our new solution. But yeah, next week we're actually what we do at Nli is we recognize the need for a little bit of a mental health day, and every year we take a day for us, and that's next week. We call it our tools down day, and so we won't see you next week, and we recommend all of you to have take some time next Friday as well, if you can. But the following week we do have more of a leadership development focus.
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Emma Sarro: We're talking about the needed skills and habits for leaders. We'll bring in Gpa again, because that is the foundation. And this is kind of to continue our leadership now series that we have once a month, so I hope you join us. Matt will be with me again, and we'll have another great session. I hope you all join us for that one as well
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Matt Summers: Yeah, Emma, thank you so much. And and just to pass it back over to Erin just for us to wrap up. But, Emma. Such a rich dialogue today as we think about that important shift from, you know, unintended punitive accountability we see in organizations and from leaders and shifting to, you know, I would say, conscious
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Matt Summers: intention, right shift to accountable
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Matt Summers: proactive accountability. Using some of the habits and science listeners. We hope that this was impactful and meaningful for you and practical in nature. So you can continue to generate your own insights beyond the discussion here today. Erin, over to you to just close us up and say goodbye. Thanks.
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Erin Wickham: Thank you, Matt, and thank you, Emma, both for your conversation today. This is such an illuminating session. I don't have much in terms of closing remarks. But I wanted to remind you that if you enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love, our podcast it's where we put all of our past episodes of your brain at work live. You can find that anywhere you get your podcasts, spotify apple podcasts, etc. But this is where we officially say farewell. And, as Emma mentioned, we won't see you next week, but we look forward to seeing you the week after. See you. Then