Introduction

• Social accountability has been a significant buzzword in the blogosphere in recent months and years, yet it remains a massively encompassing topic and can take on a many different means. The aim of this piece is to focus on why social accountability can be good for personal growth and help you reach the targets you’ve been struggling over for a long time, I’ll also touch upon how it can help society improve at a macro-level.
• I should start by outlining what I mean by ‘social accountability’. At a broad level and academic level Malena and McNeil in ‘Demanding good Governance’ published in 2010 define it as: ‘the broad range of actions and mechanisms beyond voting that citizens can use to hold the state to account’, find the full article here: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2478/555460PUB0Dema1EPI1978968101PUBLIC1.pdf?sequence=1  (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2478). This is a very broad definition and much broader than I’m focusing on. I am focusing on the personal use of social media and social engagement to hold yourself accountable to the goals you set and promises you make to yourself, that is my definition for the purpose of this post.
• In the rest of the blog I want to cover the following; (1) how social accountability can lead to personal growth (2) my experience using social accountability to improve myself, and explain why it’s one of the reasons I started this blog (3) outline and discuss the potential pit-falls and how it can all go wrong (4) other ways to incorporate social accountability into your life other than for personal development. Enjoy!

How social accountability can lead to personal growth 

• As a human race we seem to unilaterally hate social failure or embarrassment, in fact we hate it much more than personal failure. We seem to find it easier to fail ourselves than fail other people, regardless of if we know them personally in many cases.
• Moreover, we want to be liked and feel saying one thing and doing another would lead to being disliked. Because of these things the power of social accountability is significant. If you have failed to reach your goals, kick bad habits etc. because you only have to answer to yourself, utilising the power of social accountability is massive.
• Let me take the example of good habit formation to show this in reality. Social accountability can be key to 3 of the 5 steps of habit formation:
  • Develop reliable cue – Updating progress on social media or seeing individuals engaging with your pledge is a cue or reminder that you need to be completing it, whether that be to lose weight, get fit or learn a new language.
  • Create powerful reinforcement – An obvious one where social accountability helps. If you announce to everyone you’re looking to make a new habit then every time you catch up they ask about it, holding you accountable and making you feel like a failure if you’ve lapsed. Putting money at risk is also a strong reinforcing factor, get a betting pool going with friends, you’ll probably find you try harder to prevent losing money than you do to win it.
  • Repeat until normal – Doing the above things will naturally lead to you repeat the objective over and over without realising it, and soon it’ll feel normal.
• For more information on the 5 key steps to habit formation, check out my ‘Forming habits and routines’ blog here: http://jablifestyle.net/2016/05/22/forming_habits_routines/
• To use social accountability to pursue personal growth you must ensure you are clear and obvious about where you’re looking to grow and how you’ll be going about it, you need to do this for two main reasons: (1) It makes it obvious to those people following or supporting you exactly what you’re wanting to do, there is so much content out in the world, if you aren’t precise and blatant people will move on (2) If you are vague or ambiguous about the goal then it’ll be easy for you to worm out of it later.
• As well as being clear about your goal you must also be clear about the consequences if you fail or fall short when using social accountability has a method of motivation. This is the case for similar reasons to setting your goal clearly, if you don’t set the failure consequences then it’s easy for you to change the game when you’re not feeling motivated and take away the stick to keep you going during the difficult times.
• Now is an important time to highlight that social media isn’t the only avenue to pursue when looking to benefit from social accountability. I’ve already mentioned about the use of betting pool with friends but similar examples exist in many domains. For example, if you are an entrepreneur you could use an ‘accountability partner’ who could be a business peer, to help you grow your company and keep you focused on the most important things and without getting side tracked. You can reciprocate and learn even more from seeing first hand how others look to grow.

Using social accountability for personal growth – my experience

• To personally grow using social accountability was one of the key reasons why I choose to set up this website.
• I’d say the primary reason was because I kept reading books and listening to podcasts which provided excellent pieces of advice and insight, but I’d forget them two weeks later. I thought that by taking time to internalise what I was learning, writing down the advice and insights in my own words and acknowledging how they applied to my life would make me more likely to action them. However, the second significant motivating factor was social accountability. I knew that by committing to good things I was doing, wanted to start doing or wanted to stop doing publicly on my website would help keep me on track and enforce all the things I’ve touched on above.
• Fortunately, it has worked! There are a considerable number of things that I have picked up and stuck with since I started this website, here are a few examples:
  • Ketogenic Breakfast – Publishing my blog on eating a Ketogenic Breakfast (find it here: http://jablifestyle.net/2016/05/22/converting-to-a-ketogenic-breakfast/) ensured that it is now the longest running diet amendment I’ve ever made, 6 months and counting. Before this I would try diet amendments for a week or two and then get bored or become less strict about the change. However I posted my  Ketogenic Breakfast post on 22nd May having started doing it in March and I’m still sticking to it today.
  • Optimal Gym Routine – With long, stressful and therefore draining days along with semi-frequent travel for work and a busy social calendar I have struggled with keeping my gym sessions regular and optimal. However, the thought that I must ‘practice what I preach’ is a significant motivation to not only hit the gym but maximise my productivity and effectiveness of session whilst in there, check out my post on Optimal Gym Routines here: http://jablifestyle.net/2016/04/24/optimal-gym-exercises/
  • Investing Advice – I publicly announced that I was above the £800 per month investing and pension saving level recommended by the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments and knowing this is out there for the world to see and judge me on helps ensure I don’t re-direct any of that money for short term non essential spending. Checkout my Pension Investment advice here: http://jablifestyle.net/2016/05/30/pension-saving-as-a-millennial/
• Above are just a few examples, but there are many more that I’ve personally seen work for me, I truly believe that we can all benefit from using social accountability as a tool for betterment and self-improvement.

Warnings & pit-falls

• Whilst there are huge benefits and potentials in the power of social accountability, it would be amiss for me to issue something that doesn’t highlight the potential pit-falls and add some warnings.
• If anyone has read ‘So you’ve been publicly shamed’ by Jon Ronson – if you haven’t I’d highly recommend him, an incredible and riveting author – you’ll know about this all too well.
• Ronson’s book takes a look at a number of individuals who have been shamed and ridiculed due to things that have said or shared on social media. This includes Lindsey Stone, a US care worker, who was quickly sacked when a private photograph of her ‘goofing around’ in Arlington National Cemetery suddenly became public and she was accused of ‘disrespect’ and perhaps most famously of all Justine Sacco, who made a bad-taste Twitter joke and, when it went viral, lost her job in PR. For more information on the examples within the book I suggest checking out the following article and review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/05/so-youve-been-publicly-shamed-jon-ronson-review
• What Jon Ronson’s book and many other infamous examples highlight is that we must all be very careful and aware before we share things on social media or with the rest of the world. Here are a couple of important things to be aware of in light of this warning:
  • Social accountability doesn’t have to mean the whole world. You could just do via e-mail distribution or Whatsapp group to a few close friends. This can have the same impact as sharing to the whole world.
  • Don’t over-share – Definitely don’t share any financial information, passwords or exact addresses. Think about what you’d be happy to tell a stranger on the street, if you wouldn’t tell them, don’t post it online.
  • Be very careful making jokes – They can be taken out of context or mis-understood. I’m personally not that funny anyway, so choose to share my jokes with friends, family and colleagues who understand my humour and are a much more forgiving audience!
• Somewhat related to this is that you should also be wary of treating other people unfairly online. If you see someone make a transgression online don’t jump on the shaming bandwagon, even if you think they are being completely ridiculous or unreasonable. I’d suggest keeping that negative view offline, you might find out later there were circumstances you were unaware of which led to the comment or post.
• At a fundamental level what I’m saying in this section is thinking before you issue as well as carefully choosing which form of media you use when looking at social accountability as a way to help increase your personal growth.

Using social accountability beyond personal development

• Up to this point the focus has been on how you can use social accountability to drive better habits, kick bad habits and help personal growth, now I want to briefly touch on the other ways it can be harnessed for good. I’m just going to give one example in this post, but there are many more:
• The rise of the internet means we no longer live in a world where we can turn a blind eye and pretend we don’t have visibility or awareness of many of the horrors in the world. Social accountability and social media can help ground movements grow to affect real changes, whether that be better treatment of animals in developing countries or to highlight human right records of certain countries. Adding your voice and highlighting how we can all help fight these things through increasing social accountability can lead to real change in the world. A rather simple example is the ‘Ice  Bucket  Challenge’ which swept the world a couple of years ago, it raised a massive amount of money for charity and one of the main reasons it worked was because people felt they had to get involved because they were being named in a video posted on their social channels. Not getting involved would have led to a loss of face and social embarrassment. The impact of the Ice Bucket Challenge was huge: ‘from 29 July to 28 August this year [2014] ALS received $98.2m – compared with $2.7m donated during the same period last year (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29013707).

Conclusion

• Social accountability is potentially a massive tool to help you grow, develop new habits, kick old habits and even help society improve as a whole. When put like that it sounds incredible, and it absolutely has the potential to be, you just need to be careful about how you use social accountability and how you interact with different forms of social media. The pitfalls are now being better understood and publicised, so take note of them and re-evaluate your approach to ensure you are not at risk.
• I use social accountability to help me everyday, most notably through this website, so I know it can work. If you aren’t embracing it I suggest giving it a go, you could kick that horrible habit, finally get your gym regime on track, or you might even earn millions of pounds for charity, the potential is endless.

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