Many years ago, I attended a live concert of a famous motivational speaker. He was a sought-after speaker and had a great fan following. He spoke with a lot of energy and power. I was really impressed. I got useful insights for my business. I was very much inspired, excited, pumped up.

Next day, with renewed vigour and enthusiasm, I reached office early morning. I started setting my financial goals. I was drawing up plans to create a robust team along with their duties and responsibilities. I got into deep strategic thinking and I felt very good. I felt I finally got some wisdom, I am thinking like a leader and now I will be able to accomplish things which I could not, in the past.

There is no doubt that I was on the right track. I genuinely started implementing many systems, many processes in my office with full conviction. I started to delegate many tasks to my juniors. I felt empowered and a sense of leadership in me.

The energy remained for a few days; the motivation remained for a few weeks. Thereafter I did not know what happened but all the empowering feelings evaporated over a period of time. My intensity diminished with every passing day. Slowly and gradually, I drifted back to my old way of working. My past habits set in and I was back to my original style of functioning. I did not understand what went wrong.

I started to feel distraught, I begun to doubt my ability. Am I on the right track? Am I good enough? I started to question myself and thereby sabotaging my own success by negative thoughts.

For a long time thereafter, I was absolutely clueless as to what happened to all those motivations and why I could not translate those powerful learnings into ground reality, why I was unable to implement that impactful knowledge into actions? While I was still wondering for answers, I came across a powerful learning.

Human beings perform better only under observations. We on our own are not capable of exploiting our own talent to the optimum. We need someone else to make us perform what we are capable of performing. We need someone else to push us to do things we are capable of doing. That someone else is your Accountability Partner.

A study in USA concluded that the probability of completing your goal increases by as high as 95% if you have a specific Accountability Partner. This is startling piece of information. This signifies the importance of having an Accountability Partner if you are really serious about accomplishing your goals in your business. Considering the impact it can have on your performance, it is extremely under-rated and under exploited trait. It has the potential to actually change your business life and substantially enhance performance of the most significant asset in your company, YOU. This certainly is the game changer.

With your accountability partner, set the rules of the game first. Actually, both of you can become accountability partner of each other. Both of you must be clear about your role for each other. You must be comfortable to share your strengths and weaknesses with each other. What are the specific goals that you want to achieve? What is the objective of both of you coming together? What is that you expect from your partner in this association? Understand your role clearly and set the terms of this relationship. It is a long relation and therefore understanding each other is of paramount important.

You got to set your fixed schedule to interact regularly with your partner. I recommend that your interactions must be at least once every week. This can be personal or on call or video call. A fixed time on a fixed day for 30 to 60 minutes should serve the purpose. Both must be available on the set time, every week. The interactions must be very focussed and sharp and to the point.

What do you want to accomplish in the coming one year? The next quarter? month? Or may be in the coming week? Set your goal with your partner as to what exactly you plan to achieve during that time.

The goal could be tied to an outcome or result. For example : you may set your goal of signing three new deals in this month or you will open one more office in the next quarter. The goal may also be tied to the actions that you commit to take during that period. For example: You will meet 10 new prospects in this month or you will hold your own webinar in this quarter.

In the weekly meetings, you got to update your partner on the progress made on your goal. You have to report on the actions taken during that week. Your partner reviews the progress. Are you on track? Are things working well? Or are you falling off the wagon? Are you deviating from your target? If you are not progressing well, as planned every week, it is obvious that eventually you cannot hit your target. Therefore, it is important to take regular review and stay on course on weekly basis.

You are answerable to your partner. This is where the role of you partner is extremely important. Depending upon his assessment of the situation, he may agree with you and inspire you to do better the next week. He may encourage you to cover up for the short comings of the last week.

However, if he feels that your lower performance if on account of your procrastination or just drifting back to your mediocre way of doing things, he may challenge your lame excuses. He may ask you tough probing questions. He may hold you accountable for your diminishing actions. After all, you have given him the role and right of taking you to task. You must be open to be accountable to him and become more responsible towards what you commit and your actions.

The whole idea of having an accountability partner is that as a basic human nature, there is high probability that we will do what we commit to do when we know that someone is going to ask us about what we are supposed to do. We won’t let ourself down in front of another person. We are less likely to procrastinate on what we said we will do. We are more likely to remember things when we commit what we will do to a third person.

Get an Accountability Partner for yourself and experience the change in your personal efficiency, productivity and growth in your business.