The real reason you keep repeating yourself is not unclear expectations, it is a lack of accountability. Lia walks through three concrete moves: working out of your task tracking system publicly, following up every single time, and communicating the “why” behind every process so your team actually buys in. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who feel like nothing sticks no matter how clearly they explain things.
This episode is part of the Accountability & Follow-Through series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…managing a team is the hardest thing about running a business.”
“…that’s not enough of a reason for me to do this thing that feels like a tax that I don’t really see the value in.”
“We want people to feel personally accountable when they feel personally accountable, when they see actually it’s part of my job.”
“…doing something that makes your job easier isn’t necessarily, probably in most cases, not an expectation of their job.”
“…take a look at how you are framing the conversation.”
Episode highlights
The two words quietly undermining your team
If your team members are inconsistently following through on things you’ve asked for, the problem may not be attitude or capacity. It may be two words you’re using without thinking: ‘I’ and ‘me.’ Lia opens with a simple scenario: a leader asking their team to submit a weekly status report by framing it as ‘I need to know what’s going on’ or ‘this helps me do my job.’ The moment you use that framing, you’ve handed the accountability ball to yourself.
Why ‘I need’ creates a favor, not an expectation
When you say ‘I need this,’ you are implicitly asking your team member to do something for you, almost as a courtesy. Whether they follow through then depends entirely on how much they like you or how much bandwidth they have. That is a fragile foundation. If they are busy, stressed, or indifferent, ‘because you need it’ is not a strong enough reason. Lia is direct: that is not enough of a reason for someone to do something that already feels like a tax they do not see the value in.
The reframe: job expectation, not personal request
The shift Lia recommends is moving from personal language to role-based language. Instead of ‘I need this status report by Friday,’ the framing becomes: this is a core expectation of your role, and here is why it matters. Knowing where things stand allows the team to plan, ensures your work is recognized, surfaces any resourcing needs, and keeps the business moving forward. The deadline exists so the team can prepare for next week, not so the leader can feel informed.
Notice what is missing from that version: the word ‘I’ does not appear as the reason. The expectation belongs to the job, not to the relationship.
What this unlocks beyond compliance
Once you frame something as a job expectation rather than a personal ask, two things change. First, your team member has a real reason to do it that connects to their own performance and pay. Second, if they do not do it, you now have a legitimate performance conversation on your hands, not an awkward moment where you have to defend why your personal preference was not honored. The feedback conversation shifts from ‘you did not help me out’ to ‘this is a gap in your job responsibilities.’
How to put it into practice
Lia’s practical test is to look at how you are currently framing recurring asks. If you hear yourself saying ‘I need,’ ‘it helps me,’ or ‘can you send me,’ pause and rewrite it. Shift to language like ‘this needs to be done by this time for this reason, and it is an expectation of the role.’ More passive, yes, but far more effective when it comes to building genuine accountability. The goal is to show team members what is in it for them and why the expectation exists, not just that the leader wants it done.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 216: Why your team isn’t following through (and how to actually fix it). When your team keeps missing deadlines and nothing changes, you don’t have an accountability problem, you have a follow-up problem. Lia breaks down the four-step loop of setting expectations, checking in, addressing misses, and giving feedback so that real ownership replaces passive agreement. This episode is essential for founders, owners, and managers who are tired of having the same conversation every single week.
- Ep 183: How to build a culture of accountability without micromanaging. Accountability is not blame or punishment. It is ownership, and when team members feel like owners they show up proactively, hit deadlines, and stop reopening decisions. Lia walks through a three-part framework covering the ownership mindset shift, clear expectations with psychological safety, and continual learning from missed targets. This episode is essential for any leader watching deadlines slip and conversations repeat with no resolution.
- Ep 151: The most important step of accountability you are probably skipping. Most leaders set clear expectations and stop there, but accountability lives in the follow-through, not the ask. Lia’s move is to flip who owns the reporting: instead of handing team members their numbers, require them to present the report and bring a plan. This episode is essential for any owner or manager frustrated that people agree to things and then quietly let them slide.
- Ep 135: How to stop repeating yourself and start holding your team accountable. The real reason you keep repeating yourself is not unclear expectations, it is a lack of accountability. Lia walks through three concrete moves: working out of your task tracking system publicly, following up every single time, and communicating the “why” behind every process so your team actually buys in. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who feel like nothing sticks no matter how clearly they explain things.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
What I see in both situations, business owner and team leader in the corporate world is saying, Hey, I need you to submit this every Friday. I need to know what’s going on the team. I need, this helps me do my job well. Now, if I don’t love that manager, do I care that they need something to make their job easier? Maybe not. If I like that manager, but I’m really busy and I’m really spread too thin.
Am I going to do that? Because that’s the reason? No. I’m not right. I hate to say it, but that’s not enough of a reason for me to do this thing that feels like a tax that I don’t really see the value in. Welcome to the managing mid simple podcast. I’m Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant through this show and my signature ops playbook. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time, money, and stress.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager looking to learn the ropes or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between.
Let’s go. Entrepreneurs and business owners listening right now, we all started with big dreams, right? Freedom, impact, bringing our visions to life. But there’s a twist many of us didn’t see coming. That managing a team is the hardest thing about running a business. And the words, because I said, so it doesn’t work with children or our employees drawing on my team operations experience in big tech and with business owners, I realized we often complicate how work gets done more than we need to.
That’s why I wrote the unstoppable team. It’s a playbook for easing the complexities of team management, showing you the how behind the what and why of your vision. This book’s about finding relief amid the chaos, injecting simplicity into tackling hard problems, and turning your team members into profit generating machines, all without burning you or them out. Kind of nice, right? So if you are ready to make this whole managing thing easier while scaling your business, head to LiaGarvin.
com slash the book or Amazon. com and get your copy of the unstoppable team today. Welcome back to the show. So I have answered this question twice in the last 24 hours, which means something is in the air. And when that happens, I pull out my microphone and I record an episode about it because this is something that you are eager to get an answer to. And that question is, how do I get my team members to do something I asked them to do?
And the answer to that is removing two words from your vocabulary. Those words are I and me. Now hear me out. Okay. What I’ve started to find over the years and Absolutely saw as I was doing team operations and program management back in the corporate world was sometimes an effort to be more conversational and build connection with our teams. We’ll say something like, Hey, can you send me that report when it’s done? Or I need this by two o’clock or, and we use this language of I and me.
And it might seem pretty harmless at first, but what happens is we are setting up the situation where our team members are doing something or not because it’s for me, as opposed to for their job or for the company or for their expectations. Now think about it, years ago I was running a project with a design team, I was overseeing a design team and I would say to my team members, Hey guys, you know, I need, I need this to get in by two o’clock.
Like I need to send this over to engineering by, by Friday at four. Can you send this to me when you’re ready? And some people would do that because they liked me or they’re a people pleaser and that worked for them. But other people was like, I don’t need to do this because you asked me. And we had this situation where there was this absence of accountability because I was presenting it as, They’re finishing this work because it’s for me.
I need it. I want it to get done. Now instead, the reality was they were getting that thing done by two o’clock because that was the deadline of the project for them to have done their job successfully, right? And we want to move our teams into doing work because they are accountable to it because it’s their job. It’s the expectation of the role and of the company. And how do we do that? Well, we got to get rid of I and me.
So I have a friend that is running a business and he was sharing, he’s been working to get a team member to fill out a weekly status report. And I’ve had the same thing come up in big teams in the corporate world of having a lot of resistance to filling out a weekly quick updates. You know, what I get done, what am I doing next week? And what I see in both situations, business owner and team leader in the corporate world is saying, Hey, I need you to submit this every Friday.
I need to know what’s going on on the team. I need, this helps me do my job well. Now, if I don’t love that manager, do I care that they need something to make their job easier? Maybe not. If I like that manager, but I’m really busy and I’m really spread too thin, am I going to do that? Because that’s the reason? No, I’m not right. I hate to say it, but that’s not enough of a reason for me to do this thing that feels like a tax that I don’t really see the value in.
So again, this is where the I and the me is getting in the way, especially when paired with I need, okay, is they’re not going to do it necessarily just because we said so. So the framing has to become, Hey, this data support, it’s a core expectation in your job. And here’s why knowing exactly where something’s at allows us to be able to plan and forecast for the next week. It allows us to make sure that your work is being recognized in the right way, that you’re working on the right projects, that I can find a resourcing for you if there, if you need support.
So we know I can move the ball along on other work in the team and company so that we can be bringing in more business. That’s why we need the status report. And so it’s got to be done by Friday at five because that allows us to plan for next week. Okay. Nowhere did I say you’re doing this because I want it to be done or it’s helping me personally become, you know, more effective. And this is how we move this accountability ball that we’ve taken by saying, I need this.
We’re keeping the accountability ball in our court. We’re moving it to our team members court and saying, Hey, this is a responsibility of your job. You got to do it by this deadline. This is what we agreed on. Right. And they’re keeping that. And now they can feel more accountable to not only that, when you’ve set that expectation that this is part of their job. When they don’t do it, now you can have a feedback conversation around gaps around their job performance as opposed to gaps around them not doing something that made something helpful to you.
You know what I’m saying? Because doing something that makes your job easier isn’t necessarily, probably in most cases, not an expectation of their job. That’s not something that they will be getting paid more for, get a better performance review for. Right. This sort of doing this to help me out sort of vein of work is just being a great team player potentially, but that is not enough of an incentive. We want people to feel personally accountable when they feel personally accountable, when they see actually it’s part of my job.
And when I do this, it works in my favor because my performance is better. I am paid for that work and that whole line around connecting expectations and performance. So if you are feeling stuck getting folks to listen, you to do something like a status report, get their deadlines done on time, or whatever is kind of coming up for you in that space, take a look at how you are framing the conversation. And if you’re saying I, me, I need, it helps me.
And you’re framing it in terms of this sort of Personal. This is about you and them. Reframe it. Use a little bit more of that passive language, right? I don’t always recommend it and kind of like personal communication, but in this context saying this needs to be done by this time for this reason, and it’s the expectation of your job that is going to shift the whole conversation dramatically. Okay. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes.
This is a tough one, but this is something that is going to show your team members what’s in it for them. Why it’s an expectation, how it’s not just something you want because you said so. And that is going to drive such better results and save so much more time, save so much anxiety, save so much sort of resentment between you and your team member. So you’re going to want to do this. Let me know how it goes.
See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why won't my team members follow through on things I ask them to do?
The problem is often the framing. When you say 'I need this by Friday' or 'can you send me that report,' you're tying the task to your personal preference, not to their job. Team members who are busy or not especially invested in pleasing you have no real reason to prioritize it. The fix is to reframe the task as an expectation of their role and explain why it matters to the work, not to you personally. That shift moves the accountability from your court into theirs.
How do I get my team to actually fill out weekly status reports without constant reminders?
Stop framing it as something you need and start framing it as a core job expectation with a clear reason behind it. Instead of 'I need to know what's going on,' try explaining that the status report helps plan for the next week, ensures their work gets recognized, flags if they need support, and keeps the broader team moving. Set a firm deadline tied to that purpose, not to your convenience. When team members see it as part of doing their job well, they are far more likely to actually do it.
What words should I stop using when giving my team instructions?
Drop 'I' and 'me' from how you frame tasks and deadlines. Phrases like 'I need this,' 'send it to me,' or 'this helps me do my job' make the work feel like a personal favor rather than a professional responsibility. Instead, use language that connects the task to the team's goals or the company's expectations. Say 'this needs to be done by Friday because it allows us to plan for next week' rather than 'I need it by Friday.' That small shift changes the whole dynamic around accountability.
How do I hold a team member accountable for missing a deadline without it getting personal?
The groundwork has to be laid before the missed deadline. If you originally framed the task as something you personally wanted done, a follow-up conversation feels like a personal conflict. But if you set it up as a clear job expectation with a stated reason, then missing it becomes a performance gap you can address directly and professionally. The conversation shifts from 'you didn't do something I asked' to 'you missed an expectation of your role,' which is much easier to have and much harder to dismiss.
How do I show my team what's in it for them when assigning tasks they resist?
Connect the task to outcomes that benefit them directly. For example, a weekly status report is not just useful to you as a leader. It ensures the team member's contributions are visible, helps flag when they need resources or support, and ties their work to performance that actually gets recognized and rewarded. When people see that doing something consistently is good for their own career and workload, not just for their leader's ease, they are much more motivated to actually follow through.