POSITIVE ACCOUNTABILITY—The Book
It’s official. You can change the future!
“Royce does a brilliant job of clearly defining the true power of using Positive Accountability to get to your definition of success. He provides step-by-step instructions to take you from where you are to where you want to be. After reading this book, there’s no way you cann~ Melissa West, Xtreme Results
About “Positive Accountability”
You can’t change the past, but you can change the present to affect the future! If you know someone who can’t get started, doesn’t know how to finish things, not sure where to begin, procrastinates a little – or a lot – but who wants to succeed, then buy this book.
Negative accountability – do this or else. It’s a major part of life. It’s what drives us in almost everything from a necessity perspective. In fact, a recent Zogby poll shows that a majority of those surveyed feel that accountability is something negative that happens to them – usually when things go wrong, rather than something they utilize to ensure success. But what about from a positive perspective? (order from here).
In almost everything we are accountable to an outside force. It’s a negative influence for good. We drive the speed limit for fear of getting a ticket. We pay our taxes on time for fear of the government hauling us away. We keep our weight down and in shape when we aren’t in a relationship for fear of not attracting a mate. We at least put on the appearance of work at our job for fear of being fired. The list goes on and on and on… fill in the blanks, write your own list. Even so, we do just enough to get by. We push the speed limit by 5-10 mph because that’s the most we can push it and not get stopped. We pay our taxes on time though 41% of us pay within the last 30 days and 27% in the last 15 days. We may keep our weight down when pursuing the catch, but we put on the “freshmen 15” after we’re caught.
You can become 10 times more effective then you are now – in anything. Today. This book will not only show you how to use Positive Accountability to get almost anything done, it will walk with you all along the way. I’m not here to throw something at you and walk away. I’m here to add value, help you stay on target, and accomplish – to get you to where you want to go. One of my mentors, John Maxwell, says, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” I want to go one more step to help you along the way and be there with you when you get there.
I’ve been looking for the formula for getting started most of my life. I am an author and executive coach with the John Maxwell Team, the largest team of leadership trainers in the world. I dig deep with people who want to succeed and get to where they really want to go. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 27 years, and worked corporate America prior to that. I’ve started seven businesses. I love studying people, leadership methodologies, neuro-psychology, and things related to “why we do (or don’t do) things.” This book is about getting to your definition of success. Not just motivating you, not just inspiring you, not even just teaching you methodologies and procedures, but walking with you to get to your why and the success you define.
If you want to stop procrastinating and start accomplishing, read this book. I will walk you through the procedure, which is extremely easy, and you can start succeeding, today. Order from now Amazon. Thanks for the opportunity!
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Table of Contents
Forward
Introduction
Chapter 1. Defining Positive Accountability – A Starting Place
With the enormous amount of ‘negative’ accountability in the world, it gives the word accountability a bad rap. Positive Accountability takes the negative out and starts you on the road to success. So let’s get started!
Chapter 2. How Do YOU Spell Success?
Most people do not define success other than “having enough money to do/have whatever I want.” It takes time and thoughtfulness to create your true idea of success. This helps drive your accountability. It’s the Goldilocks Principle – not too little, not too much, but juuuuust right.
Chapter 3. Self-starter or Self-finisher?
Are you a self-starter? 85% of as are not. So how do we get started so we can get finished? We’ll explore some of the pitfalls we share not being self-starters and discuss what it takes to make it all work.
Chapter 4. Balance – The Wheel of Life
Balance is the key. Investing all your time at work, to the neglect of your family or other life streams, will destroy your life and make all the effort wasted. Conversely, not putting in the time at work will bankrupt you. How do you get a good life balance and keep it?
Chapter 5. Laying the Foundation of Positive Accountability
This chapter lays out how Positive Accountability works, how to get started with it, forms for following the methodology, and definitions and procedures for getting the right accountability partner.
Chapter 6. Accountability and Freedom
In general, we’re free to do what we want. But what do we do when that conflicts with the things we want to accomplish? How do we ensure we are doing the right thing at the right time?
Chapter 7. Staying on Target
Once we’re on target, how do we stay on target? What things can we do to make sure we have a good handle on having tenacity?
Chapter 8. Pay or Play?
We have to give up to go up. What are we willing to give up to make sure we achieve our goal? What is it going to cost us? What are we willing to trade in order to accomplish?
Chapter 9. The Accountability Partnership
How to join an Accountability Partnership to help ensure success. We have them in our churches, in coaching, in organizations of all types. Now there’s a unique one for entrepreneurs and business folks.
Chapter 10. Conclusion / Epilogue
Recap of this book and final wisdom for achieving your goal through Positive Accountability.
Appendix: References, Coaches, Reading List, Blog List, Tools, Links, etc.
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What Others Are Saying
“Royce White’s new book, Positive Accountability, is a must-read for anyone who struggles with getting started (not a self-starter) and those who get started, but often find themselves side-tracked by procrastination and everyday obstacles that get in the way. The result is that most people (80% of the population) are not self-finishers. Royce offers readers a practical and easily-applicable solution through his clearly-defined method for choosing an accountability partner and two-way accountability. He offers valuable tools to ensure our success through this process.The best part is that Royce delivers valuable, well-researched content that is made distinctively more palatable by his writing style – incorporating wit and humor to make key points. His positive approach is upbeat and encouraging to us 80%ers who regularly struggle to be self-starters or finishers. His argument for adopting Positive Accountability is compelling; ultimately, he leads the reader to a persuasive call-to-action. My recommendation is: run – don’t walk – to pick up this helpful guide on how to overcome procrastination and self-sabotaging habits that hold us back from creating and living the life of our dreams. “
~ Dr. Dorothy Guy Bonvillain, Author, Coach
“Royce White’s Positive Accountability is not just another book to help you be more productive – it WILL help you be more productive. But it is much more than that. It is a comprehensive work on becoming a self-starter. And if you are a self-starter, you will go into overdrive! I read the book in two sittings, and am compelled to take on new goals, and recommit to previous ones with a renewed tenacity. Royce shares his lifetime of successes and failures to anchor the success principles within this book while keeping the reader engaged to the end. He doesn’t simply tell you what to do and how to do it, he gives you access to the tools to achieve your goals, and become a self-starter. The concept of Positive Accountability can be practiced by every reader to become the person you want to be. An excellent work by a passionate leader who lives these lessons!”~ Pete Leckemby, Executive Coach
“There are many books on the market today that want to help you get to the next level. POSITIVE ACCOUNTABILITY, by Royce White, needs to be put on the top of that stack. Royce has put together a guidebook of success that is more than merely facts and figures.”“Positive Accountability is written from the annals of his experience which include being the CEO of a company that was on top of the world and then plunged into hard times. The lessons learned from the experiences gained while helping the people of Guatemala during a leadership training trip with John Maxwell, plus, the personal mentoring by some of the best in the business, clearly enabled Royce to bring forward a book to help you get immediate and specific results. Royce leaves nothing uncovered and even adds some tough love to help you get on and stay on target!”“Positive Accountability, like all good coaching, is an easy read and it draws on your inner ability so you can part with the negative and follow the road map to success that will result in you arriving at your journey’s destination. If you are truly serious about getting started and learning to succeed, I whole-heartedly recommend getting this book and putting its practices to use as fast as you can.”~ Robert DiGiacomo, The Bermuda Bob Leadership Show
“Royce does a brilliant job of clearly defining the true power of using Positive Accountability to get to your definition of success. He provides step-by-step instructions to take you from where you are to where you want to be. After reading this book, there’s no way you cannot feel totally equipped to incorporate positive accountability into your life personally and professionally. It’s a complete guide from educating you on what positive accountability is and why it’s a critical component of your success to full implementation and execution of this methodology. As the leader of an accountability program myself, I only wish I would have had Royce’s book as a resource back when I started the program. It’s a true gem – pick up a copy for you and your team today!”~ Melissa West, Xtreme Results
Introduction from the book…
”Pay what you owe or…”Negative accountability – do this or else. It’s a major part of life. It’s what drives us in almost everything from a necessity perspective… yet the word makes our skin crawl, leaves a bad taste in our mouths, and is compared to having a root canal. In fact, a recent (2014) Zogby poll shows that a majority of those surveyed feel that accountability is something negative that happens to them – usually when things go wrong – rather than something they utilize to ensure success.1
But what if we could shift perspective and achieve accountability from a positive perspective?In almost everything, we are accountable to an outside force. It’s a negative influence for good. We drive the speed limit for fear of getting a ticket. We pay our taxes on time because we fear paying the penalty or the government hauling us away. We keep our weight down and in shape when we aren’t in a relationship for fear of not attracting a mate. We at least put on the appearance of work at our job for fear of being fired. The list goes on and on and on… FILL IN THE BLANKS, write your own list. Even so, for the most part we just do enough to get by. We push the speed limit by 5-10 mph because that’s the most we can push it and not get stopped. We pay our taxes on time, though 41% of us pay within the last 30 days before they’re due – 27% in the last 15 days.2 We keep our weight down when pursuing the catch, but we put on the “freshman 15” after we’re caught.
Think of your life and all the things you do because something or someone is holding you accountable. The whole legal system is set up to keep people accountable to social norms. We are inundated with accountability. Without it, we would quickly be led by our selfish nature and lowest level – our “Lord of the Flies,” if you will.3 Without the alarm clock, we will sleep in. Without the “Oil Alert” on our car, we would burn up the engine. Without “Siri” (iPhone) reminding us of this or that meeting, we would be late. If no one enforced our being at work or school, we would not go on days we didn’t feel like going. Without speed limit enforcement, every road would be the Autobahn. (A.D.D. Moment: I love the signs on the Virginia highways that say “Speed Enforced by Aircraft.” Enforced? Does that mean they are going to shoot at us to enforce the speed limit?)At this point, somewhere between 15-24% of you are saying to yourselves, “this is bunk – I do this because it’s what needs to be done.” True. But you are the ~20% of the population that are self-starters. The rest of us have to have a great reason to get started! Even so, I know plenty of self-starters that have this problem from time to time. It just depends upon what we’re dealing with at that time.
One of my mentors, John Maxwell, tells the story of a time when he was speaking to a group, and a young college student came running up to him during a break; and, waving his index finger with intensity, he said to John, “I am rushed for time. Tell me – what is the one thing in leadership I need to know?” Answering the young man with equal intensity and the waving of his index finger, John said, “The one thing you need to know about leadership, is that there is more than one thing to know about leadership!” John’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, 15 Invaluable Laws of (personal) Growth, and The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork prove that point. As a matter of fact, I have no need to write anything on leadership because John covered the general subject so well (as well as Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, and a host of others).
Indeed, to become a good-to-great leader, a study of John’s books will get you well on your way, and eventually to a level 5 leader – IF… you learn AND apply (did I emphasize the AND enough??). But as I worked with entrepreneurs, others on the John Maxwell Team, and people in general, most of them – 80% of them – suffered from what my dad used to define as “the toughest part about getting started, is getting started.”
Everybody is “going to write that book.” (81% of the population say they have a book in them.6) But only .2% do it (that’s point 2!), and all of them are well meaning. Everybody is going to start that company, but only 13% of them do.7 59% say we are overweight. 54% say we are going to lose weight. 25% say we are serious. The average weight we want to lose? 18 pounds. Only about 15% of us do and then most (about 85%) of us put the weight back on. What is going on in our hearts and minds that causes us not to begin and then, if we do, to vacillate so wildly? How can we accomplish that which constantly eludes us?
Accountability. Think about it. What if we took the principle that is so pervasive and invasive in our lives – accountability for legal/necessary things – and applied those principles and feelings to our CHOICES as well – things that we WANT to accomplish. I love and teach John Maxwell’s laws on leadership and personal growth. The hard part for most of my mentees / coaching clients / others, is indeed getting started – and once started, staying on target. Mere planning won’t ensure that they take their goal past the planning stage. Execution of those plans is essential. In my survey and study, only 2% of the population FULLY plans each day and only another 2% follow the specific action items they set up in that plan daily. We plan in order to feel good about the day because we know we should, but we don’t achieve all that we can. Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog8 is a great book to help us understand procrastination and develop a strategy to move ahead. But we need more than a strategy – we need accomplishment – we need the win.
It’s like knowledge. You’ve heard it said that “knowledge is power” or knowledge is the key to success. Not true. If it were true we would all be rich. APPLIED knowledge is power. Yes we need to know how to accomplish. But even more, we need accomplishment to happen – and for that, we need… accountability. We won’t do it without it… guaranteed… unless we’re in that 15% of self starters. Even so…
This book will show you how to best define your success and move past the things you are not doing to get to the success you desire. Not just in business and leadership, but personally. As a matter of fact, it needs to happen in the personal realm first for it to be applied to the business realm.
I have deliberately kept this book short so we can get through it quickly without getting sidetracked. Besides, this isn’t rocket science needing significant math – it’s a pragmatic book of methodologies and procedures. This is not a get-rich-quick book, although practicing Positive Accountability as a life methodology will help you make an order of magnitude more than living in constant procrastination and non-accomplishment. It is not a book about time management, though some aspects of time management are discussed. It is a book for using accountability in a positive, tenacious way to accomplish your goals and desires – to get you where you want to go!
This book is not about procrastination, although that is a part of not self-finishing and I do have solutions throughout the book, and it’s not about 12 things you must do to succeed – it is about the one thing that if put into place first, will naturally and perpetually move you through to a greater success. Will you still need knowledge? Yep. Will you still need 21 laws of this and that? Absolutely. So why do I say it’s the FIRST step to success? Because the key to getting started, the push to learn and do the homework necessary, and the glue keeping you on target, is found in Positive Accountability – and I’m going to show you how to embrace it and use it to the fullest for your success.
Live long and prosper; be accountable and succeed!
Royce White
Warrenton, VA
November 2014
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