The Ladder of Accountability
Libby shares one of her favorite tools for owning your ish when you mess up with someone you care about.
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Transcript
So have you ever accidentally double booked a partner with another partner or with a friend or with some other obligation that you have and that's totally gotten you in a lot of trouble with the people in your life? Has that ever happened to you or has it ever happened to you that you've forgotten something really, really important to one of your partners? maybe you've forgotten to mention something that they might have really wanted to know, or maybe they asked you to do something and you forgot to do it and you didn't take care of it and made them feel really un cared for. Or maybe, you know, there's something relationally that they've asked you to do or not do that then you have done. And that's really upsetting. Like an example might be, you know, I really don't want you to use my towel, and I want you to use your own towel.
Or when you have a partner coming over, uh, I really want you to give me a certain amount of notice or something. Something like that, right? So it could be even like a broken agreement or an agreed to request that then you didn't follow through on. And I've talked about in previous episodes how to maybe arrive at doable requests, how to follow through on things, how, maybe not to mess up on things, but like what happens if you just totally fucked up with someone that you love and now you have to talk about it with them and maybe they already know about it and maybe they're already pissed, and you could tell the they're pissed and you're starting to feel defensive about it and you're feeling knots in your stomach. And maybe you go into an avoidance dance, or maybe you go into a defensive dance where you're like, Hey, it's not that bad.
Hey, cut me some slack. I need some grace here. Or maybe you're just gonna try to avoid them until they cool down. I wanna offer you a tool that you can use with someone when you have been the one to mess up that I find to be incredibly powerful in making people feel better. It's called the Ladder of Accountability. And before I tell you the steps to go through to the rungs of the ladder to climb in accountability, I wanna tell you why this works and then what is really, what you really need to make sure that you do to use this tool well. So first of all, why it works. So the ladder of accountability, just spoiler alert, it is a series of rungs of expressing accountability that you can do with your partner. So different things that you can say to your partner or loved.
One, to let them know how you've messed up the scope of the mess up, the scope of your awareness of the mess up, giving them room to say anything that they might need to say about the mess up, and then how you wanna make it better, both in the short term and in the long term. Why this works is if you are the one who are saying to your person or people, Hey, I know what I did and I know how much it upsets you, and I know that I've done it before, and, you know I really do wanna make it right and here are my thoughts about that. And then what do you think what you're doing is you're really taking the load off of the other person to let you know what you did and how they're feeling about it.
And you know, there might be a place where there's some discrepancy there where you start expressing your accountability and the person you're speaking to is like no, wait a minute. That's not why I'm upset. This is why I'm upset. And then you can use something like the feedback wheel, which I've talked about before in previous episodes, which is when you have feedback to give somebody about what they have done, and you want them to know how you're feeling about it and how to make it better. And I think using a feedback wheel is great, but the thing about the feedback wheel is when you're the person giving the feedback, the instructions are to stay specific and not generalize, right? And with the ladder of accountability, actually one of the cool things about it is you do generalize. And do you know why? You can generalize in the, ladder of accountability because you're talking about you.
Someone else isn't projecting onto you, someone else isn't characterizing you, you are characterizing yourself. And I just can't even tell you how transformative it is when you say something like, yes, I double booked on my calendar and I have definitely done that to you before, and I know how that makes you feel. And I want you to know that it's not my intention to make you feel uncared for or make you feel, like I'm not managing my time well on our behalf. But it is definitely a flaw that I have. Like, sometimes I don't look at my calendar when I should, or sometimes I get overwhelmed and shut down and I see that that's a habit that I have. And then, you know, sometimes when I notice I've messed up, sometimes I even put it off and I kind of hide from it instead of addressing it right away, which makes the problem worse.
And I hate that I do that when you are the one saying that to another person instead of them feeling like they need to say it to you, but they can't because they know you're gonna get defensive or you might get hurt, or it might be really hard to hear, or they don't wanna be too hard on you or whatever might be going on for that. But instead, if you are the one saying it, the relief that usually will come over the other person, that you understand where they're coming from and that you understand your own flaws, your own challenges, and the impact that has on other people. It just calms everything down. It is such a fantastic deescalation tool when it's used well, and I wanna go over it with you, but I first wanna also tell you how to use it well and the way that you can, the only way that you can use it, well, in my view, in my humble opinion, is if you are in a regulated and integrated state in your own self and your own body and your own mind, which means if you are using the ladder of accountability as a way of trying to get your partner to not be upset with you if you're then, then you're not using that from a regulated state, you're using that from, a very particular woosh known as fix.
If you are in a you know flight, freeze fix, if you're in the fixed state or you're in the fight state, or you're in the flee state and you're using the ladder of accountability, it won't work. Just please trust me on this, it won't work. Because what you're gonna be trying to do is you're trying to control your partner's feelings or loved one's feelings and reactions. And that, is not what it's for. What it's for is for you to stand in your own accountability so that your partner doesn't have to do that work and then give them a lot of room to feel whatever they're feeling because you've already done your own self-examination and your own self-understanding, and you're very clear on what you wanna be accountable for, and you communicate that and then you let it go. Okay?
So first thing to do is to be regulated, which means you might need a little bit of time to deal with if you're feeling ashamed, if you're feeling defensive, if you're feeling scared, you might have to deal with those feelings first before you try using the ladder of accountability to speak to someone about why they might be upset with you. The other thing you need to do is to reflect a little bit on if you haven't already, on what you really do feel that you want to be accountable for. And this is why when you're doing a ladder of accountability, it really is about you. It's not actually about the other person, like you are trying to help them out and let them know where you're at and what you're thinking about and what you feel bad about and what you wanna do better.
But those really need to not be you trying to elicit some response from the other person. It's really about you thinking about yourself. And it is actually a way to support you having a healthy boundary with the person you're speaking to so that if there is a discrepancy in what they feel like you did wrong, which cuz you know, sometimes that happens, right? Sometimes someone's really mad at us and they're projecting their stuff on us. Sometimes someone's really mad at us and they're telling us what our intent was when we know different. And all of that is a reasonable thing to happen when there is a rupture in a relationship where you can go really sideways is start fighting about that instead of, you know, just dealing with the pain in front of you and supporting each other and feeling better. So one of the ways that you can do that is if you do that self-reflection of, you know, okay, as an example, like, I double booked myself.
What was going on with me? Why did I do that? What do I know about myself? And what do I know about how much I care? What do I know about my efforts in this direction? What do I know about my flaws? Like what do I wanna own about this for myself? What that does is then when your partner, like let's say your partner comes to you and says, you double booked me with so-and-so that what I feel about that is that you don't care about me and that I'm not important to you, enough, important enough to you. And like again, if you've got into a fight about, well, no, yes, you are important to me, and no, then you're fighting about your other person's story and what their reality is. And if you're able to instead be clear, Hey, I know that I love my partner, I know that I care about them and I know that my up here has nothing to do with my lack of care.
So then you don't have to fight about it with them. That can just be their reality because you're really clear on your own reality. You're really clear on where you messed up and where you didn't mess up. And then you can kind of hold space and allow the person to say, well, it made me feel really unloved. Wow, okay, I see that's that intent versus impact, which I did an episode about a while back. But like this tool really helps you stay in and also help you be with the impact that whatever you did or whatever the person made up about what you did, the impact that it had on them and not have to fight about those two things. So here's the ladder of accountability. In total, there's five steps to the ladder. Although really there's the previous two, which is calm down, make sure that you're in a regulated and grounded and integrated state, and, do some self-reflection about what you really would wanna say here when you do this ladder.
But then there are five rungs. So the first rung is just similar to the feedback wheel. Here's what happened. And yes, I did this. So if I was gonna use the double booking example, I would say, yes, I double booked. And that is something that I did and I'm not blaming anybody else for it. I'm taking responsibility that that is something that I did. So then rung number two, if you've done it before, name that, like say, and this is not the first time that I've done this. I've done this before and you've had this experience before. And so I know that it's something that you don't like and is something that's happened again. And if it's a pattern, if it's something that has happened repeatedly and here's yet just another step in the pattern, you can say that.
Like, I know that I have a pattern of overbooking. I know that I have a pattern of really fucking up my schedule and I know that that has a negative impact on you and I know that we're working on it, but I know that in this instance, having this experience maybe is, you know, giving you some concern that this is gonna be how it always is. Again, name the pattern, name the impact, and then the third rung is actually broadening it more, generalizing more. So in this case, what you're gonna say is if there is something about what you did that is bigger than just a pattern, bigger than just something you've done before, but if it's actually like part of your personality or if it's a flaw that you have or it's a habit that you've gotten into due to a previous relationship or previous dynamic or a childhood wound or something that you know about yourself or could be like a neuro divergence thing.
Like if I was gonna use this particular example for myself and I was on rung three, which is again like the generalizing about your character, I would say something like, you know, and I have ADHD so I really struggle with time and I also have this thing where I always wanna say yes to people. And so sometimes I say yes before I look at my calendar, and then sometimes I go into a free state when I see that, what I'm hoping to be able to do doesn't match up with my availability, and so I just don't deal with it. And all of that super sucks for anybody who has to try to schedule with me. I'm not speaking from experience at all. I'm totally making this up anyway. So again, really what you're doing here is you're just saying, Hey, I know myself, you don't have to tell me how much I suck right now.
I'm really aware of it and I'm really aware again, of how it, how that is for you. I wouldn't say too much about, in the ladder of accountability about what you think the other person might be feeling. Only say what, you know, you've heard them say in the past about how this impacts them and how it feels. So now we're at rung number four, which is if this is something that you are working on that you've either committed to working on already or that you have committed within yourself to working on, or you are ready to commit to work on, share the work. Like if you have a specific way that you've been working on this, but it hasn't gone well, like, you know, I know that I have this double booking problem and I really tried to make a point of looking at my calendar before I said yes to this request that someone had of me.
And you know, what I fucked up is that like, I actually have two calendars and I didn't look at the second one. And so now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make sure that I put both calendars on the same view on my phone so that I don't miss the second calendar and what's going on there. Like, I figured that out and here's how it's gonna be better. Or you might say, before I say yes to a request for my time, I am actually gonna pause and, I'm gonna like take a little bit of time to just like think about it instead of wanting to say a quick and immediate yes, you know, whatever it might be that you're working on to address the issue. The goal of that is to just let the person know, Hey, I am working on this.
And if you're, if it's something that requires them to feel good at, like if it's something that's not like your own separate work, like here's how I'm gonna manage my schedule better, but like, here's how I'm gonna take better care of you and here's the things that I'm committed to there. You might wanna ask them, Hey, you know, would that work for you? Would that feel good to you? This is what I'm thinking that I might be able to do to make this better in the long run. And so that would be the next step is that's rung four. Rung five is different, but it is still about making it better. And rung five is a question that you ask, which is, what is something I can do right now to make you feel better? And this is more of the making amends, more of how do I show you care in this moment?
In the face of the fact that I have messed up, I've messed up in this way before, it might be something about part of how I work. And so the change might be slow, but how, what would make you feel better right now to help acknowledge that this was a fucked up and that you deserve some extra care, repair, whatever. And then here are the bonus points. If there is a type of help that you can ask for in supporting Rung for in supporting the behavior change that the other person would want from you and that you're working on, you can ask for it. This is known as the relational golden rule. I believe, Terry reco this phrase, the relational golden rule, which is like, help me help you, give you more of what you want from me. And really that can feel really uncomfortable to some people to like ask for help doing better when they've messed up with someone.
But I wanna say that this, I find this to be like really connecting and really supportive sometimes. And your partner might or a loved one might say something like, I don't know how I can help you with this, or I don't wanna be part of helping you with this, or I'm exhausted from already helping you with this, so I really need you to do your own work. But if there are ways that the person can support you, and then I think it's really good to name those and invite them into the conversation around it. The key thing though, when you're asking someone to help you do better with them is to make it, you know that it's help. Not that, it's their fault that you didn't do what they needed you to do because they didn't do the thing that you that you're asking them for help around, if that makes sense.
And the reason not to do that, I mean, you can have that as a separate conversation. That would be more of a feedback conversation of, hey, like, you know, you said you wanted this thing for me, here's how it's getting in your way. And, you know, maybe do a feedback wheel with them. But for the purpose of the ladder of accountability, really the goal is to just let the other person know, Hey, I get it and I see it and I'm owning it and I'm working on it, and I wanna make it better with you. And how can I do that? so to recap, I find that when you have messed up with somebody, one way that you can really just deescalate it, diffuse it and make it better and begin to move into a place of repair, is to use the ladder of accountability, which is very simply, again, name what you did, name that you did it, that's rung one, rung two, if you've done it before, if it's a pattern, name it and own that too, rung number three, if it's a flaw, that's part of who you are, part of your personality, a habit that you have, own that too. Like go from specific to general and be as general as you can and really own everything you can and own the impact that it has. Rung four, if it's something that you're working on or something that you're going to commit to work on, share the specific ways that you are working on it so that your partner can know what the work is that you're doing. And then rung five is, what is something I can do to make you feel better right now? And if there's, if the person is asking for something that's unreasonable, make a counter offer. Don't give what you can't give, but be willing to be generous to make things better. And again, bonus points if you can ask for help supporting the behavior change that you are trying to do. So I hope that you find this tool useful and that you go forth in loving accountability with each other.
