Communicating with Your Accountability Partner

Are you pursuing accountability to reach your goals? Regularly communicating with your accountability partner will help you fulfill your commitments. Of course, how much you share depends on your level of accountability. It’s important to clarify what you expect from one another and confirm you both can fully commit.

How to Communicate

With accountability software, your activity reports can be delivered through email, instant message, and other means. These reports only capture device activity and may not indicate whether an action was intentional or accidental. For example, popup ads or unrelated suggestions in a video feed may register an alert. If this happens, follow up with your partner to share relevant details of the situation.

Besides meeting in person, conversations can happen over voice or video calls and other platforms. Do you primarily use online communication? Then be sure to schedule a periodic face-to-face meeting if possible to keep the relationship personal and alive.

You could also post your successes on your social media for those who might not be committed accountability partners but who support your goals.

Also, journaling regularly will help you to become more self-aware. Writing about your progress gives the context of a decision while recording milestone victories along the way.

Meeting Schedule

Communicate regularly on a mutually agreeable schedule. This could be daily, weekly, or some other interval, but be committed and consistent.

Set an appointment for everyone involved. Be on time and be prepared. Also, set a time to conclude so you can stay focused and respect one another’s time.

How to Structure Your Conversation

It helps to have a regular structure to the conversation. Here is a possible agenda:

1. Review your goals, including daily, weekly, and other time-based objectives. Are your goals too hard, too easy, or just challenging enough?
2. Report and review your progress, including activity, successes and failures, challenges, and other open action items. Get your partner’s feedback. Identify what tactics worked and what obstacles must be overcome. Learn from failures. Brainstorm solutions and find resources to help.
3. Identify the next items for discussion and action. Commit to moving forward.

Practice good communication techniques such as active listening. Be sure to involve all parties in the conversation. If this is a problem, you may need to keep track of minutes each person speaks and seek to balance the time available.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of your accountability relationship relates directly to the quality of communication you have with your partner. Take care to make the most of your time together to encourage you both to succeed.