10 Accountability Hacks to Keep You on Track in 2022
Whether it’s hitting a specific earnings target or building a bigger team, Keller Williams agents have lofty goals for 2022. One way to make sure you achieve them is through accountability.
Accountability is taking personal responsibility for what you set out to achieve. It means you’re taking ownership, and you’re 100% committed to accomplishing your goals. All too often, simply setting New Year’s resolutions and goals isn’t enough. With accountability, it’s more likely you’ll follow through and achieve your dreams.
Ready to hold yourself accountable? Three high-performing Keller Williams agents are here to share their top 10 hacks for 2022. Pamela Temple, CEO of The Temple Team in Mooresville, North Carolina, closed around $60 million in volume last year along with her husband, who co-leads the team. Nicole Zuber is the head coach for director of operations coaching at KW MAPS at the Lake Travis market center north of Austin, Texas. And Katie Staples from Keller Williams First Atlanta is an agent and productivity coach.
The accountability hacks they’ve learned have been pulled from Keller Williams training.
Try These Accountability Hacks
1) Prioritize time blocking.
Time blocking is a time management tool where you divide up your day into smaller chunks of time and focus on one task or similar tasks during each block. It’s a planning method that can improve focus.
For Staples, time for self-care, reflection, business planning, and alone and family time come first. Then come her nonnegotiable work-related items, then events she can control, such as listing appointment times.
Zuber shares that, in order to stay organized within her own time blocks, she uses a dry erase board calendar to block off time. First, book your vacation time, she says. That doesn’t mean you need specific plans – just that you have reserved time. “That is your recharge time,” she adds. Next, she blocks off days when her kids are off school, then she goes from there, adding events, training, and more.
Related reading: Five Ways to Start Time Blocking Today
2) Use visual stimuli.
To help her stay on track and hold her accountable, Staples needs a visual of her goal in the form of a positive affirmation. For example, when her goal was to become a BOLD coach, she took the BOLD laws and turned them into a wallpaper for her smartphone.
“And they still are to this day,” she says. “It reminded me, change your thinking, change your world. That was the motivation that I needed.”
Related reading: The BOLD Pivot Effect: More Contacts, More Contracts, More Listings
3) Enlist support by recruiting an accountability partner.
An accountability partner can help encourage you to get where you want to go. After writing down your goals, show someone else your game plan and explain to them why you want to accomplish those goals.
Staples says you can make a variety of people your accountability partner, including a business partner, friend, spouse, or your children. “Get them excited about some reward they get for being your partner in this,” she says. Then, they help motivate you along.
Temple shares an example where an agent told his kids that if he closed a certain number of transactions, he’d take the family to Disney World. “Along the way, they would always hold their dad accountable to make sure he had those closings,” she says.
4) Protect your time.
For Staples, protecting her time has helped her recharge so she can pour herself into her clients, her coaching, and be 100% present during each and every interaction.
In practice, this looks like putting her phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ at 8:00 every day, setting expectations on when clients and friends and family can reach her. “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” she says. “Be sure you’re actively participating in self-care.”
Staples also sets aside time every Sunday evening for business planning. She looks at the calendar for the following week and preps everything in advance: from outfits to meals.
5) Be intentional.
A key to accomplishing your goals is to be organized and intentional in how you set out to achieve them. Staples advises to master one thing at a time.
“Whenever you choose multiple, it’s likely that not any of them will come to fruition,” she says. “So choose one, and then you can always stack it from there.”
Temple says that a positive mindset and attitude are also crucial. Adds Zuber, “it comes down to slowing down and being intentional with your time and really thinking.”
6) Get a coach, or several.
Multiple coaches have helped Staples stay accountable and achieve her goals. At one point, she was working with three MAPS coaches: one for individual agents, a BOLD coach, and also a productivity coach.
“I need to have that accountability and that goal setting and motivation and constant reminders of how to get more efficient and more effective in each of those three areas,” Staples says.
7) Do regular self-check-ins.
Ask yourself what you love about yourself, and how to accept the things you don’t. Agents should also think about what needs to change and where they can improve.
“Know yourself, go back and revisit yourself,” says Zuber. “When you look in the mirror, do you like what you see? Only you can answer that.”
Temple says to “look in the mirror first and see what were the actions I took yesterday that led to today? What were the actions I took last year that led to this year? Our DNA is on everything that happens, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad. And that’s the true sense of accountability.”
8) Surround yourself with cheerleaders.
Enlist people who are genuinely and actively enthusiastic about what you want to accomplish. Staples has two go-to cheerleaders who can give her a mindset boost.
Being around people who are excited about your goals will help you stay accountable to yourself. “If the people around you aren’t supporting the goal where it is, let’s go find some others who can,” says Zuber.
9) Make sure your environment supports your goals.
Similar to surrounding yourself with cheerleaders, make sure you’re in an uplifting environment that’s conducive to achieving your goals.
If you’re not in the right environment, it’s important to remove yourself and get in a better situation. “Sometimes we have to get out of our own environment and go find one that supports our goals and our dreams,” Temple says.
Temple is eager to get back into the marker center, where agents can be in a space with peers that are living the life they desire. “The energy and enthusiasm that leads to productivity is amazing,” she says.
10) Be prepared to pivot.
Above all, a top accountability hack is to always be flexible and ready to pivot if you’ve fallen off track or your current methods just aren’t working.
For example, if in the middle of the month you’re not on course to meet your goals, “are we going to keep doing the same things that we’ve been doing?” says Temple. “Or are we going to change it or add to them?” To hold yourself accountable and be successful, you have to be able to successfully pivot and change course.
Make decisions about how and when to course correct when you’re not in the heat of the moment, she adds. That way, you take the emotion out and make the best, logical decision.
