CHAPTER 1
The Right Amount of Tension (Accountability)

We've all been on both the giving and receiving end of accountability. Chances are you've had plenty of experiences when "being held accountable" felt lousy. Maybe it was a boss who didn't understand the complexities of your job and blamed you for things outside of your control; maybe it was a justified reality check from someone who needed you to know that you weren't doing your best. As more and more of our professional and personal lives are assessed by algorithms and star ratings, accountability can become more punitive than productive. We have to be able to hold each other to standards, and we have to do so in a way that nourishes our communities, our people, and our relationships.

In this chapter, we make a case for accountability that's as effective as it is compassionate. We talked to an Olympic champion, a coach, and a CEO about practicing accountability in their relationships. Leaders shouldn't become micromanaging pests to create accountable cultures. If they instead focus on understanding the people around them and the situations they face, smart leaders can use accountability to benefit everyone. If we commit to a shared purpose and expect great things from each other, we can exercise accountability as an instrument of communal improvement.

Leadership Is a Choice

Kerri Walsh Jennings is one of the most successful beach volleyball players in history. Over a 20-year professional career, she's won three world championships and four Olympic medals, three of which are gold. That's enough to make her the most decorated beach volleyball Olympian ever, with a level and longevity of success that will be difficult for anyone to match. Only two other Americans-Misty May-Treanor and April Ross-have multiple Olympic medals in beach volleyball, and both of them have teamed up with Kerri in Olympic play. During Kerri's 11-year partnership with May-Treanor, the duo won 21 straight matches in the Olympics, and lost only a single set. It's virtually impossible to do anything better than Kerri Walsh Jennings has played beach volleyball.

Kerri's pairing with May-Treanor also set a new bar for success in a sport still new to the Olympic lineup. The two entered the 2004 Athens Olympics, just the third Games to include beach volleyball, riding a 90-match win streak. They won the gold relatively easily, becoming the first American team to do so. By the time they won their third gold medal together in London eight years later, they'd cemented their legacy not only as seminal figures in beach volleyball, but also as icons of a new American sporting dynasty. Kerri and May-Treanor were untouchable, and Team USA stood at the vanguard of women's beach play.

Kerri's story is not just about accountability; it's about trust, stability, and loyalty, too. Accountability sticks out for several reasons. First and foremost, sustained involvement in elite beach volleyball requires accountability that few other fields can match. Athletes have to exercise constant, profound discipline to develop the skills needed for high-level collegiate volleyball, and then make the significantly more challenging Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) and Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) tours. For those who want to represent their country in the Olympics, they have to achieve an even higher level, and do so with four-year intervals between Olympiads. They have to train and recover without the cushy facilities and functionally unlimited financial resources of similarly successful athletes in sports like basketball, football, baseball, and soccer. And, most distinctly, they have to do so in one-to-one partnership. Although beach volleyball players get coaching, they're always one of two on a team. Their teammate is always the same person. Instead of the complex sociology of a larger group-in which players are always getting traded, signing elsewhere, retiring, or just entering the league as rookies-beach volleyball duos are individual relationships performing at the highest level together from one tour stop to the next. They're world-class athletic relationships stressed and tested as much as humanly possible, and each athlete remains primarily accountable to a single persistent partner.

Given that level of intimacy, accountability isn't solely a tool for promoting high performance. It's also a token of love. Kerri and May-Treanor felt this way as they grew up together on the sand. "There was so much life that was lived along with volleyball. Volleyball is just the sacred space," Kerri says. "Having tough conversations is about being a good friend. It's being a good partner. Selfishly, if I'm seeing my partner do something that rubs me the wrong way and that's hurting our team, I want to call that out because I want to win. That's one element to it. But the deeper element is that I care about this human. And if there are behaviors or a blind spot that I think she has, it's my duty. I love her. I'm willing to put myself out there."1

For Kerri, training the relationship itself became a crucial ingredient to success between the lines. Just as they had to get reps blocking, attacking, digging, and serving, they had to train themselves to engage in uncomfortable conversation if they wanted to stay fit and succeed. "You have to find the right amount of tension. You have to fight, and you have to stay in tune. I realized with 1440 [the company that Kerri founded with her husband, Casey Jennings] and with Misty that the more you engage in those hard, uncomfortable conversations, it does become easier the next time." It's a metaphorical muscle that matters as much in sports as it does in business. "I really believe it's a worthwhile habit to get into. At least you can jump into the deep end of the pool faster, and then you can get to where you want to go faster. It brings you closer to yourself. And it may make some miserable times bearable and worth it. You chose your team for a reason, at least in theory. You should fight for your team."

Kerri and May-Treanor first paired up in their early twenties. Kerri had a few months left of her senior year at Stanford; May-Treanor had graduated a year and a half before and started playing professional beach volleyball, including a trip to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. (Kerri had represented Team USA in Sydney on the indoor volleyball team). Even though they were so young when they formed their team, they'd both already played at the international level and had learned over years of high-level competition to hold themselves accountable at every step of preparation, from training to nutrition to weightlifting to persevering in matches. That shared desire to perform led to a natural accountability. "Misty and I held each other accountable in a subconscious way. Our expressions of 'I need more, I need different, I need you to step up' were all very clear. We mirrored each other," Kerri says. "If I wasn't doing my work emotionally and mentally, my confidence was shaken. We saw that in each other. Just seeing that in the other person is really, really beautiful."

They could hold each other accountable so successfully because they knew that they shared a total commitment to winning, and they knew each other well enough to pick up on those subtle signs of letting up. As they won more and more, their subtle accountability became more important. With more pressure from their opponents, the media, and fans, they had to be able to hold each other to high standards in a way that was both effective and removed from the public gaze. When you're winning titles hand over fist, Kerri says, "you've got a pin on your back, because everyone wants to kill you. No one has a bad day against you because you're the best, and they have nothing to lose. We were very clear about that, and we relished the challenge."

Although they enjoyed unprecedented success as a team, Kerri and May-Treanor were still young adults trying to find their places in the world, and were subject to the pressures of very visible careers that required constant travel, physical stress, and time away from family and friends. Early on, they agreed to handle those pressures behind closed doors and within their relationship. "We rarely pointed the finger at each other, but when we did, we would address it and agree that that's not cool. That's not who we are. We'd squash it right away." They could insist on high standards without fighting through the media. "The only time we ever had fissures between us was when outside people started to chip away at our bond. That would go on for about two or three weeks too long. One of us would have to ask, 'What the hell is happening? Let's talk about this,' and we'd get in a fight. It only happened maybe three times in those 11 years together, but each of those coming-to-a-head moments was vital for us. It was just looking in the mirror and asking, 'What do we want?'"

The blowups weren't just a way to even out whatever new wrinkles had emerged in their intense partnership. They were a natural sign that the teammates needed to renegotiate and renew their commitment to the relationship. "It's so important in a relationship, especially when you've been together for so long, to be very clear about what you want, where you're going, and if...