Three-Legged Stool: Building Accountability Through Responsibility, Authority, and Consequences

[00:00:01] You're listening to the HR Mixtape, a podcast for leaders who want to understand people, strengthen culture, and navigate change with clarity. Today's conversation starts now.

[00:00:16] Joining me today is Caroline Quiet, Principal at Quiet Consulting, LLC. Caroline helps leaders solve performance issues with clearer accountability, roles, and practical leadership systems. Caroline, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with me today. Caroline Quiet, Principal at Quiet Consulting, LLC Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:39] Jessica Morrison, Principal at Quiet Consulting, LLC So we are going to spend a lot of time talking about a three-legged stool during our chat today, but I'd like to start here. You know, when you walk into organizations and you start to sense that, like, people chaos, what is kind of the thing that triggers you to notice it first? And what made you really passionate about, you know, going down this road to help companies untangle it? Caroline Quiet, Principal at Quiet Consulting, LLC

[00:01:04] Yeah, I think in most organizations, I see this show up, sort of that people chaos usually manifests itself as a lack of communication and a lack of trust within organizations. So whether that's teams not trusting each other and not communicating, whether that's managers not trusting your teams, and that shows up in everything that we do, because communication and trust is always the core of how we work together.

[00:01:28] So that shows up in the data, it shows up in high turnover, in with deadlines, in declining revenue, losing clients, not retaining not only your clients, but also your employees as well. But that's usually where that shows up.

[00:01:43] What got me interested in solving that people chaos and really diving into this is I genuinely love solving problems. I'm a very curious person by nature, and I'm very curious about people. And I think approaching human recourses and leadership work, just from a perspective of curiosity, to help solve problems is something that I genuinely love, love doing. I'm so happy I get to do this. It's my job. It's amazing.

[00:02:09] I love that. It's always amazing hearing passion come from people in our profession, because sometimes we get into it with that excitement, and we don't necessarily stay in that excitement throughout our career. So it's always refreshing to hear that. All right, let's dig into the three-legged stool. What is it? The three-legged stool is a concept that I built kind of based on something an old mentor helped me build and create.

[00:02:34] The three-legged stool is a concept that I use to help people think through expectations and expectation setting with their employees, peers, or otherwise. The three-legged stool, put simply, is responsibility, authority, and consequence. Responsibility is what am I doing? Authority is can I do or how I do? And consequences, what do I get, either positive or negative, from accomplishing or not accomplishing those responsibilities?

[00:03:00] I love the responsibility at the end there, or the consequences at the end there. It's something that, you know, I raise my own children with that idea, is that life has consequences, good and bad. Absolutely. And bringing them into the workplace is just a natural flow of that. Where do you see organizations have the most, like, what's the leg that is missing most when you walk into organizations?

[00:03:24] Well, I think the leg that's probably missing most of the time is, I'd probably say consequences. A lot of, especially positive consequences. A lot of organizations, you'll hear, oh, we have an accountability problem. We have an accountability problem. Who hasn't heard that in an organization or experienced it? If you have an accountability problem, you have a consequences problem, is really what you have at the end of the day. Whether that's positive or negative, people aren't getting the recognition they deserve.

[00:03:52] I can walk into any workplace and I'm sure you'd find an employee who feels underappreciated or undervalued, right? So I think that's something that people miss a lot. I think also with the authority piece, I think people misunderstand that quite a bit.

[00:04:07] And I feel a lot of the time, you know, managers will either try to give an employee too much authority and give them too much space and too much distance in their boundaries that they're setting the employee up for failure or they are too close and they micromanage the employee because they want to get it right.

[00:04:24] And if you don't give the employee that right amount of distance, those right boundaries, then you're setting them up for failure regardless because they are not able to actually execute and own on the responsibilities themselves. So I think the middle stool is definitely one that is misunderstood in a lot of places as well. When you mention responsibility, I want to dive in a little bit to expectations. And we train managers all the time on this, right? It's kind of like in your manager 101, right?

[00:04:54] Here's your job description. During onboarding, set the expectations. And I think during onboarding, they do it pretty well. Like they set the stage for what success looks like in the role pretty well. Then you get into the work, you get into the flow of stuff. And sometimes those expectations fall to the wayside or their priorities change, the business changes, you know, and we don't go back and revisit.

[00:05:20] Here's the expectation and link that to the performance conversations we're actually having. It's like that concept of, you know, when you've gotten a performance review and it's like be strategic. And you're like, what is that? What does that even mean? Yes, exactly. Exactly. So how have you really helped paint the picture differently for that group when you're talking about setting expectations? Yeah.

[00:05:46] So the three-legged stool concept in general, I call it that three-legged stool because when one of those pieces is missing, the stool falls over and nothing works, right? If you have a single leg of that missing, you're not setting clear expectations no matter how hard you think you're trying at this. I think something that managers get caught up on, and I want to highlight something you said. I think we do a good job in onboarding. I think we do a good job with job descriptions.

[00:06:10] Application setting is so much more than just job posting, onboarding, job description. I mean, in any role I've ever had and any person I've ever – I have yet to find a single person that says, oh, yeah, my job description 100% accurately reflects what I do every day. It doesn't. And it's not really meant to.

[00:06:32] It's meant to be a document and a framework that we can refer to, but it's not meant to be all-encompassing because they'd be 117 pages long, and who's going to read that, right? So when it comes to expectation setting, it's not just these two big pillars. It's an everyday conversation.

[00:06:49] It's these microtransactions that you have with your employees on a daily basis setting expectations for this specific project, this specific conversation, this specific interaction, this presentation. We need to be incorporating this with much more clarity on a day-to-day basis. And if Brene Brown says clear at times, right?

[00:07:13] When we're talking about expectations and we are clear in that communication, we're able to set our employees up for much more success than we would have if we were just talking about that. Oh, okay, the annual time to update your job description. What do you do again? And, oh, yes, your annual performance review. I forgot I have to fill out this paperwork.

[00:07:33] So when we have expectations, it also automatically creates a catalyst for productive coaching conversation more frequently. One of the big issues, again, in highlighting that only focusing on the job description, only focusing on the performance review, only focusing on the onboarding approach, is that you're only touching what the employee should be doing and how they're doing once, twice a year.

[00:08:01] You're interacting with your employees every single day. They're producing things every single day. And not to say you have to give that feedback and communication over every single solitary thing. But using this three-legged stool as a way of clarity and saying, okay, was I clear on what this person needs to be doing? Am I giving them the space to do it? And am I giving them the right praise or feedback based on how they did those things? It's a really simple concept to work into the everyday.

[00:08:29] What do you say to that leader who the employee is not performing as they expect? And you go in and you talk to a leader and they're like, yeah, well, it's common sense what they should be doing. Because I've heard that before. And it always... Massive eye roll. Yes. It always puts me pause because I'm like, well, if it was common sense, then maybe the person would be doing it. Exactly. Yes.

[00:08:55] So what do you say to that leader who clearly thinks that they're actually doing the job of communicating expectations? Because they actually need some coaching on a different approach. And granted, I'm not... The employee's not off the hook in that conversation either. But we're focusing on management right now. Right. Absolutely. So I think in this conversation, the first thing I ask that leader that says, well, they should know what to do with common sense. And my response always is, how? How do we tell them?

[00:09:24] Well, they should just know. Okay. How do we reaffirm that for them? How did we tell them? Something I say a lot in performance management conversations is it's the leader's and organization's responsibility to take away the excuses from the employee. And I frame it in that way to say the leader and the organization has an obligation to the employee to make things as clear as possible and to control all the factors the organization can control with incredible clarity and discipline.

[00:09:53] So that if the employee is underperforming, we can confidently say, okay, we did everything we could in this situation. I think a lot of times managers, if they're frustrated, they're overwhelmed, maybe they haven't been trained. There's a whole lot of factors that go into this. But I think they can sometimes dive in and, again, just sort of stress out and be like, well, they're not doing that. It's common sense. They should be doing it.

[00:10:18] We need to always take that step back, take that pause and say, okay, how did we make this clear to the employee? Have we written it? If it's a job description question, if it's a fundamental functional part of the position, if it's a specific project, how do we set this employee up for success in delivering the expectations of the project? If they were supposed to, you know, my old boss used to say, and I love it all the time, and I will speak to it all the time.

[00:10:47] It's what game are we playing, right? If we want the employee to be playing hockey on a tightrope in the middle of a hurricane, okay, great. We just need to tell them those rules so they can work within those parameters. Sometimes it's not as clear cut, but we need to give them some kind of expectation, some kind of boundary to what they're actually meant to produce.

[00:11:09] Because if we don't do that, then it's our fault and we can't fault the employee for producing something that they thought met expectations that were not clear from the organization. I think a good example of this is, and I'm curious if you've gone through this in your career, but, you know, I worked in organizations where the products coming out of HR needed to be perfect. Buttoned up, delivered in a bow package.

[00:11:34] I moved into the company I work for now, which is a tech company, which is very much rooted in that agile methodology, which was iteration. And so the expectation is I'm showing you my draft work and then we're iterating. That was a very hard transition for me, having come from an organization that was, you know, no, you don't show them your draft work. Like, you can't give them the peek behind the curtain.

[00:12:00] And it really made me think about your pillar of authority, because in one situation, I didn't have the authority to kind of show you the process along the way. Right. I didn't have that ability because it was like, no, we don't want to see that. We want you to have this completely buttoned up thing and have total ownership for if it fails. But we don't want to give you feedback throughout the whole thing. So all that to be said is I think authority can be thought of as one very specific thing.

[00:12:30] And I don't know that that's always the case. And as you've worked with leaders to help understand that, what are some authority blockers that you see leaders creating that they're just not aware that they're doing it? Yeah, absolutely. I think your example is absolutely perfect, because one of the biggest blockers that I see managers have is they are either way too comfortable with failure or they are completely uncomfortable with failure.

[00:12:59] And that does come back to a lack of trust in your team. But as leaders, we need to get comfy in the mess of it a little bit. Right. The employee is not going to get it perfect every time. I don't get it perfect every time. You don't get it perfect every time. No one does. Human beings are messy and we need to allow some space for that in our environment.

[00:13:23] The two biggest sort of archetypes of authority blockers that I see in my work is it's the manager that has zero trust in their team is, you know, sometimes they can move too fast or super stressed out or whatever the reason it is. They don't give the employee the space to breathe. And they are they're the micromanager. They're the you have to approve everything before. Drew me before you can take a single step.

[00:13:50] It doesn't give the employee space to move or move a project forward or even learn on their own because the manager is just so close to the situation. On the complete other end of that, the in this category, authority blocker, but it's sort of the authority cowboy, the person that is just like, yeah, I'm super I'm a super hands off manager. I love giving learning experiences for my employees.

[00:14:17] And they kind of put a lack of responsibility and their own ownership of their team and they chalk it up to a learning opportunity for their team. But really what they're doing is, you know, here, go ahead and swim in a hurricane. Call me if you need like call me if you need me. And you're like, wait, what? I've never swum before. I don't know what direction I'm going. Where am I in the ocean? Right.

[00:14:39] So those managers are also equally setting their employees up for failure because while they're not hovering over that employee down the helicopter leader, they're still out here like it becomes a wild west. Right. And you're like, what on God's green earth am I supposed to be doing every day? OK, I guess maybe here is the project you wanted. Right. It doesn't feel a lot of confidence from the employee in their leader because they don't have a lot of guidance.

[00:15:09] So a lot of times I'll see that frustration and tension there with the leader that goes, well, it's common sense. They should know that they're supposed to be doing ABC. I'm giving them a learning opportunity. You're just surrendering any responsibility that you have from the employee because either you don't feel like dealing with it or you don't realize you're doing it. So just let it sort of leaving their employees out out to pasture is something that I see quite a bit, actually. So I would say those are the two main types of authority blocking leadership that I see in my work.

[00:15:39] I want to just add something here as you were talking and I was thinking through, you know, how we we train our managers. Maybe this is a bold statement. This is our fault for not training them appropriately. One hundred percent. I agree. We promote people. We don't get them ready for the role. And there's a there's a bunch of reasons for that. They're not nefarious. Like maybe your organization's moving too fast.

[00:16:06] Maybe you like there's all sorts of reasons why you might promote somebody who's not quite ready for the role yet. But that being said, this is why I think every single year when I look at the top trends that are on CHRO's minds for the next year, leadership development is always in the top five. Always. It has been for the last several years. And I don't think that's going away because we haven't figured this out yet.

[00:16:32] And when I think about the newer generation that's going to start taking some of these management positions, that's going to change it up completely again. So we've got to get this right. We've got to get this better for our businesses because this has real business impact financially when we get this wrong. And so I want to get a little positive and talk about some of those positive consequences, because you're absolutely right. We miss these so much.

[00:17:00] And sometimes we only link it to positive consequences is I give you more money. That's that's not necessarily true for everybody. What have you seen? Um, I think I do want to say one thing on on everything you said. Absolutely. It is it is HR and executive leadership responsibility in order to train their employees. I also think, again, to your point before, it's iterative. You're never going to get it right the first time. Human beings are messy. Leading human beings is messy.

[00:17:30] And it changes all the time. You need a dynamic skill set. You need to keep learning and growing. And we need to foster that in the in those employees, that learning mindset in order to create strong leaders for the future. And I think one thing that is overlooked when it comes to positive leadership as part of this whole thing is people do just think it's money. And for example, working at a startup, working at a nonprofit where you're maybe not as flush with cash. Right. You you need to get creative and other options.

[00:18:00] But also a lot of the time, I would say 99% of the time I talk to employees, they want really simple things. We as business leaders overcomplicate this. Employees want to be treated like people. Hold on. I want to be recognized. Thank you for delivering this project. Right. I'll go small, positive interaction with your team.

[00:18:25] Recognize people how they want to be recognized, whether that and by that I mean whether an employee wants that public recognition. Recognize them at a team stand up. Recognize them at an all staff meeting. If an employee is not comfortable with that more broad and and out there recognition, you can still say thank you so much. You did an amazing job on this project in that one on one conversation.

[00:18:48] You need to make sure that you are taking the time out of your day every day to tell your team what they're doing well. Because I think a lot of times we use sort of the thick, not the carrot, especially in a business setting, because it's easier for us to understand. It's easier for us to quantify. It's easier for us to write a pip than it is to say, hey, that was really good for ABC reasons. Take five minutes. Think about the project. Think about the presentation. What did you love about it?

[00:19:17] What engaged you about what they were doing? And give them that feedback right away. Doesn't have to be a huge thing. It can be really small. To talk positively about your employees to your employees, I'll also say make sure that you're also talking positively about your employees in the rooms that they're not in. And I think that's one of the most important ways to give positive recognition and positive consequences. One of my favorite things to do is to walk around to other employees and say, oh my gosh,

[00:19:45] your manager told me that you did an amazing job on this project. And you see their face just go, oh my gosh. Like, thank you so much. I didn't know that you, because it had nothing to do with me. But their manager made sure and tell me that the employee did such a great job. And I wanted to, again, tell the employee, we're talking great about you when you're not in the room, right? There's nothing better than that feeling for an employee. And I think we, it's such a simple, simple thing.

[00:20:12] And it costs zero dollars to make sure that you're talking well about your employees to them and in the room. They're at it. So true. And I have found that there is a large portion of employees that don't necessarily want money as the reward. There's also the group that doesn't want public recognition. So knowing your employees is important. So I appreciate that you mentioned the one-on-one comment, because sometimes that's all somebody needs.

[00:20:37] So as we wrap up our conversation, Caroline, and for those listening, and they're like, okay, I want to implement one thing this week, one really quick win this week. To really strengthen one of the legs of this three-legged stool, where do they start? I would say first it starts with a piece of self-reflection.

[00:21:00] That is, okay, if I'm actually analyzing how I interact with my employees or even peer-to-peer and coworkers within this framework with this three-legged stool, what stool do I think is falling over the most? And if you're looking at sort of honing in on responsibility, focusing on clarity and communication, right? Have I made what my expectations are from my leaders, my employees, my peers as clear as I can?

[00:21:27] What questions would I have if I'm looking at this with fresh eyes? When it comes to authority, it's asking and evaluating how much space am I giving my employees for failure and growth? One of the big things, too, is that we learn through failing, right? Like there's that, I think it was a Thomas Edison quote where he failed 99 times to make a light bulb and he said, no, I learned 99 ways not to make a light bulb, right? You need to fail in those things in order to grow.

[00:21:57] And so if as leaders, we're not giving them that opportunity, we're stunting our employees' growth, development, and contributions to the organization. So if you want to examine authority, I would say, how much space am I giving my employees?

[00:22:11] A great way to ask that question to reframe it if you're struggling with it is, if I did not answer my phone today, if my phone was like thrown at a lake, if I had no access to the internet, if I am gone for a day, for a week, for a couple of days, how much would get done without me? Sounds like if people had questions, if people had approval, you know, if you're thinking, man, things wouldn't move forward that far, then you need to give a little bit more distance.

[00:22:39] Or if they need a lot of clarity questions, maybe you need to give a little bit of support. And you can also ask your team about that as well. How much do you think would get done without me when I'm back here if you need that external feedback? And then when it comes to consequences, focusing on how am I recognizing my team this week? How am I recognizing my team today? How can I, you know, in this conversation, in these one-on-ones, in these meetings, challenge myself to remember to say at least one positive thing about a member of my team to their face and in a room they're on in?

[00:23:08] And that's how I would break that out. Simple, simple questions to reevaluate how you take a look at expectations and rewards. Caroline, such a great conversation and really great takeaways for our audience. So thanks for sitting and chatting with me. Thank you so much. I've had a great time today. Thanks for tuning in to the HR Mixtape.

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