Talking radical accountability with Natalie Dumond

We're constantly facing new challenges as we make our way through life. In our youth, those challenges centred around interactions in school. It was a time where we learned how to get along with others and resolve conflicts. Later in life, these new challenges come from personal relationships, career opportunities and obstacles, and more. 

Regardless of age or accomplishment, we all have room to understand ourselves and learn how to communicate what we need to accomplish our goals. Coaching clients to build their communication skills from good to great is the mission of leadership coach Natalie Dumond. We sat down with Natalie to discuss how remote and hybrid workplaces affect communication, the importance of coaching, and how to build radical accountability in yourself.

Thanks for making time for us! You do both group and individual coaching – do you have a preference? 

I love both! With my one-on-one clients, you get to go into many of the deep areas they need to go into that sometimes you can't get into when you're in a group. With groups, there's so much energy from a group coaching experience – it's electric. You can see those "Aha!" moments happening and the connections forming with each other. They start to see the humanity of each other when somebody starts to share their vulnerability about their experience in the workplace or with a family member. 

With the quick move to remote work and work-from-home, have you seen impacts on how people interact with each other? 

The most significant shift, in the beginning, was the question 'how do I manage people now?'. Everyone was asking how they can trust that their teams are doing their work. But that kind of eased up more as we had to stay remote. 

The shift was people that became more interested in building connections with each other. This connection was happening with everyone seeing people in their homes, seeing people in their environment, and seeing people just being more themselves. So I saw that shift happening as I was coaching and facilitating over the year. 

The other change I'm seeing is that they want their work to have an impact. They want to be more grounded in who they are, and they want to be more authentic. They're doing a lot of reflecting because they have to sit with themselves. When people have to sit with their thoughts, they start to go, oh, what else can I do? I don't want to feel like this anymore. What can I do with my career? How can I make an impact? They are ready for something more and something more impactful.

One of the things you talk about with your clients is the concept of radical accountability. Can you tell us a little about that? 

One of my latest programs is called Conscious Conversations, and it's designed to help you gain a deeper awareness of how you show up in your communication. When I was going around teaching, we were focused on how people are giving and sharing information. 

But the more I went out and taught that, there was also something missing. We can get caught up in asking “how do I say something”, “how did it land”, “how are they going to judge me”. But we also have to take accountability and how we receive things and how we take things in. At the end of the day, all we can control is how we show up.

I can't control you. You can't control me, even though we want to try to. So when you take accountability for yourself and own all your experiences, own your story, own your past, own your thoughts, own your moment. 

There's power in that. When you dare to look at what happened to you, look at what you're thinking about yourself or that person and get curious about it, then you shift how you show up. You take the accountability back. That's what is in my workshops – teaching people that we can worry all day, but that doesn't matter. All you get to own is how you showed up and what you learn from that experience. That's it. And it's really powerful when you start to take that in. That's radical accountability.

Do you see more leaders and emerging leaders understand that? Understanding themselves and their motivations and realizing they're the only ones that can control how they react? 

Slowly and surely, I see it. People are just kind of done with their BS. I do work with a lot of powerful women who sometimes their grounding in themselves isn't solid. Someone comes along and gives them a judgment, or they're worried about someone's perceived judgment. It makes them shrink. What I try to do is help them stand more confidently in who they are. They can see what they want to say. They can set healthy boundaries and say, no, I don't want to do that. 

What are some things that you would encourage emerging leaders to do when understanding themselves and being better leaders?

There are three things that I look for in leaders now. I look for a high level of self-awareness. That's that accountability thing. Next, I look for compassion. When leaders have compassion towards themselves and their own experience, they are more likely to give that to their team. They're more likely to be empathetic, and they're better teachers. Then I look for curiosity. I looked for the leader that's going to ask questions because that makes them a good coach. 

So if you're going into a new leadership role or want to develop as a leader, those would be the three areas that we'd start to hone in on big time. 

There's a different type of leader that's coming out on the other side of this. If you want to be a leader, and if you're an organization that wants to have amazing leaders, you need to be looking at these skill sets. People want to work with people they can connect to. They're done with micromanaging. They're done with egomaniacal leaders. I think you have to look for leaders and start to cultivate this within them.

We loved learning about how Natalie coaches – especially the focus on helping leaders connect with their teams. From our experience, we know that one of the best ways to build connections and trust is through another radical concept – radical generosity. Check out how our subscription gift box programs can help your team connect regardless of where they work.

You can learn more about Natalie's courses on her website.