Welcome to the third week of Month 3 in your “Success in 12 Months” program. This month, we’ve been tackling the topic of accountability and your weekly exercises have been focusing on accountability partners. For the first two weeks, your task was to make a list of partners and then decide who you wanted to partner with, and why.

Now that you have your accountability partner, let’s talk more about the partnership you are creating. Use the following template to create a “deal” with your partner, one that should help keep you both working towards your goal.

I, ____________________   and my partner __________________ will provide each other accountability by agreeing to a quick chat on _____________ (day) of each week.

That little blurb doesn’t seem like much, but filling that out (and following through) is a solid step towards accountability.

Just to give you an example, I have my own accountability partners. One I check in with by phone for 30 minutes every week (as we live in different states); the other I check in with once a week in person at our local Starbucks or Panera Bread (we are there for some time—a couple of times, the staff has come to our table to inform us they were closing!).

In each of these partnerships, we discuss our goals, and the things we each committed to doing to further those goals the week prior. If we did those things, we celebrate. If we did not, then we have a conversation about what happened in our lives over that week that kept us from getting those things accomplished. While my accountability partners lovingly hold space for me when I don’t get things done, they don’t hold my hand. Accountability is not hand-holding; if you want your hand held, talk to a friend. Don’t put that expectation on your accountability partner. That’s not what the relationship is designed for; its purpose is to keep you motivated and moving toward the goal you established in Month 1.

In the next installment of this series, you’ll get the next part of this exercise to help you with being accountable. In the meantime, I invite you to share with me your progress throughout your program. Share your thoughts, insights, inspirations and results with me in the comments section below, or you can shoot me an e-mail and let me know what’s going on. Let’s get a conversation started!

Your partner in accountability,

James