Competent coaching should include helping you with accountability.  To call it “Accountability Coaching”  assumes you will not do what you know you should do, on your own, and makes accountability the priority.

The worst kind of accountability coaching is when you should make that call but you really do not want to do it.  So, you have someone nagging you to do what needs to be done.  Or they nag you to do what they think you need to do.

However, we do treat tasks differently when we know we will be discussing our progress with others regularly.  Being accountable to another can be empowering and helpful. New routines and new learnings are often uncomfortable and benefit from extra support.

But keeping your nose to the grindstone is not the whole of any project.  If you need to be nagged regularly to pursue goals, perhaps your goals are out of alignment or your strategies are not suitable to your strengths.

Getting out of your intellect and into your intelligence and intuition helps you align your goals with your authenticity.  This approach works so well, I’m surprised it isn’t more popular!

Creating what you want is really not about muscling through resistance to new activities.  There is an entire spectrum of other approaches.  If you carefully create goals and strategies that are well aligned with your desires and strengths, there will be less resistance in the first place.  When your goals are well aligned with who you are, all your energy flows in the direction of achieving them.

When you do encounter resistance, perhaps you need to overcome it in yourself before you attempt to push through it.  Perhaps, just perhaps, you can work around the resistance and accomplish a task differently.

The accountability partner has a responsibility too; to help you find ways to express yourself authentically in your achievements and creations.

Even uncomfortable tasks may have an attraction for you if they are filled with meaning as part of your bigger plan.  You won’t have stage fright quite the same way.  You will not make calls, praying there’s no answer.  You will figure out how to warm your conversations up, and present ideas you love.  Your adventures will be appealing.  You would rather do it than not do it. 

The Accountability session then becomes a chance to pat yourself on the back with your coach as an audience or for your mastermind partners to be the cheerleading squad for the brilliant and effective actions you took.