Take The 10-Day Accountability Challenge

If you would like a way to get into a great routine, boost your focus and grow your relationship with another person consider doing a 10-Day Accountability Challenge.  This is really simple but difficult to complete.  

Here is how it works:

1) Pick someone you think wants to continue to grow personally and/or

professionally.

2) Agree on the best time of day to connect for 10-15 minutes either by a call or

video chat.

3) Agree on the 5 days of the week that will work best for 2 weeks in a row.

4) Each of you come up with 10 questions you want the other person to ask you on

the calls.

That’s it.  Pretty simple but challenging to complete since other things will compete for your time.  This will be more effective if you make your questions active rather than passive (according to Marshall Goldsmith).  You make questions active by prefacing each one with “On a scale of 1-10 did I do my best today to…"  Here are some example questions:

On a scale of 1-10 did I do my best today to spend time with my family?

  “         “         “         “        “        “       to grow my business?

   “         “         “         “        “        “       to grow my mind through reading?

“         “         “         “        “        “    to reach out to a friend or family?

 “         “         “         “        “        “       to get some good exercise?

 “         “         “         “        “        “       to eat wisely?

“         “         “         “        “        “       to show gratitude to someone?

“         “         “         “        “        “       to watch my language?

 “         “         “         “        “        “       to rise by ___am and sleep by ___pm?

    “         “         “         “        “        “       to develop my spiritual life? 

“         “         “         “        “        “       to wear pants going to the mailbox?

Use questions for areas you want to see improvement.  I found that 9:00pm on Sunday-Thursday nights has worked best for me but select the time that is consistently the best for you and your challenge partner.  

If this works well, you could keep it going or pick someone else to do this with you.  It is a great way to reconnect with an old friend or family member as well as learn more about a coworker, neighbor or new friend.  You will be surprised how quickly you will get to know each other better by daily answering questions about important topics in each of your lives.  If you keep this going, consider dropping any questions where you consistently score 8-10 since that has become a habit.  Or if you keep scoring below 4 on a question, you may need to ask yourself if this is really an area you are committed to improving.  Just add new ones along the way to keep your number to at least 10 questions. Author and coach Marshall Goldsmith pays his coach to ask him 30+ questions every night.

I think you will find that you will begin to make better decisions knowing you will be asked your questions later that day. Feel free to let me know how this goes for you and anything creative you did to make it more effective.  I am always looking for ways to improve the process.  You can email me at Lballinger@Ballingerexecutivecoaching.com.