LET’S TALK ABOUT IT. — Protect Home, Part IV: Everybody Wants Accountability Until It Reaches Their Chair

Kids blame coaches.

Coaches blame kids.

Parents blame coaches.

Coaches blame parents.

Everybody blames the umpire.

And somehow the adults are standing around wondering why youth sports feels like it’s losing its mind.

Parents fight in the stands. Coaches scream across fields. Officials get followed toward parking lots. Kids watch grown people turn a game they were supposed to enjoy into somebody’s personal war.

Then Monday comes.

We sit those same kids down and talk to them about accountability.

That’s interesting.

Because accountability has been on my mind a lot lately.

Not just in sports.

Business. Schools. Coaching. Leadership. Friendships. Families. Relationships. The circles we build around ourselves where, sooner or later, somebody says:

**I got you.**

Do you?

**Let’s talk about it.**

---

Accountability is easy when it travels downward.

A kid misses practice? Be accountable.

A player makes an error? Own it.

A student doesn’t turn in the assignment? No excuses.

An employee makes a mistake? Take responsibility.

An athlete doesn’t get recruited? Work harder.

You didn’t get the position? Interview better.

The opportunity went somewhere else? Get better.

Fair enough.

There are times when that is exactly the answer.

The player wasn’t prepared. The employee wasn’t qualified. Somebody else earned it. Maybe you simply weren’t good enough **yet**.

That word matters.

But here’s the question we don’t ask nearly enough:

**Who holds the people making the decisions accountable?**

What happens when the coach helps create the environment everybody later blames on the kids?

What about the parent screaming at somebody else’s child while demanding sportsmanship from their own?

What responsibility does a manager carry after preaching development but developing nobody?

What about the person who encourages somebody toward an opportunity, tells them they belong in the room, then becomes unavailable once the room makes its decision?

Or the friend who says, *“I got you,”* until having you actually costs something?

Before anybody gets comfortable thinking I’m talking about everybody except myself:

**Put my chair in the room too.**

Actually, put it near the front.

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## I AM NOT PROUD OF EVERYTHING I’VE DONE.

There are things in my life I got wrong.

Not misunderstood.

Not *taken out of context.*

**Wrong.**

I have hurt people.

Made decisions I would make differently today.

Wanted understanding while failing to understand somebody else.

Expected grace I had not necessarily earned.

Let anger drive when it had no business behind the wheel.

Stayed quiet when communication was required.

Failed at times to be the husband, father, friend, coach, leader and man I should have been.

**I am not proud of those things.**

Saying that doesn’t erase them.

Understanding why I made a mistake doesn’t undo what that mistake did to somebody else.

**Explanation is not absolution.**

Understanding why you became something does not excuse everything you did while becoming it.

That standard applies to me before I ever apply it to anybody reading this.

Nobody gets an exemption.

Which brings me to three words I stand on harder today than I ever have:

**Discipline. Consistency. Accountability.**

Those words didn’t become important because I mastered them.

Quite the opposite.

Life showed me what happens when I don’t live them.

I thought I had created a name for a standard.

Years later, I’m realizing the standard was naming **me**.

Not the man I had always been.

The man I was trying to become.

Business can do that to you.

At first, you create the company. Pick the name. Design the logo. Write the mission statement. Buy the domain.

Keep building long enough, though, and something changes.

The company starts telling **you** what its name means.

Your brand stops being something you designed and becomes something you’re responsible for living up to.

That’s what DCA became for me.

Not a slogan.

**A mirror.**

And a mirror is worthless if you’re only willing to hold it in front of somebody else.

---

## “I GOT YOU.”

We throw those three words around too easily.

Sports has its version.

*Come play for me. I got you.*

*Keep working. I got you.*

Business has one too.

*Apply for it. I got you.*

*You’re exactly what we need.*

*I’m putting your name in.*

Friends, coworkers, coaches, administrators, managers and families all have theirs.

But what does **I got you** actually mean?

Because proximity is not loyalty.

History isn’t loyalty.

Calling somebody brother, family, my guy, my coach or my people doesn’t prove it either.

**Follow-through does.**

That doesn’t mean controlling every outcome.

If somebody advocates for me and I don’t get the job, betrayal isn’t the automatic conclusion.

A coach can believe in an athlete without promising a starting position. A parent can advocate for their child without controlling the answer.

Another candidate may simply have been better.

Another player may have earned the spot.

We have to be mature enough to accept that.

But maturity runs both directions.

The person saying *“I got you”* needs to understand the weight of those words.

People make real decisions based on what people they trust tell them.

Your words don’t have to guarantee the outcome.

**They should still mean something.**

---

## THEN WE WONDER WHY PEOPLE CHANGE.

An athlete quits asking questions.

An employee keeps the next idea to themselves.

The assistant coach stops sharing what they see.

A student who once raised their hand doesn’t anymore.

Somebody who answered every call lets the next one ring.

Then everybody asks:

**What happened to them?**

Maybe the better question is:

**What happened?**

That distinction matters.

Pain isn’t permission to hurt people. Disappointment doesn’t remove responsibility. Being wounded does not give us unlimited permission to wound somebody else.

I’ve had to learn that myself.

But behavior has context.

What adults label an **attitude problem** can sometimes be somebody who stopped believing the adults around them.

Think about the kid who keeps hearing *keep working* while watching opportunity repeatedly go somewhere else.

The employee constantly hearing *your time is coming.*

The assistant coach doing everything asked while every meaningful decision happens in a room they never enter.

The qualified outsider watching another opportunity stay inside the circle.

Eventually, *keep working* starts sounding different.

Not because work stopped mattering.

Because **trust did.**

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## WE DO THIS TO KIDS AND THEN BLAME THEM FOR QUITTING.

Adults control almost everything in youth sports.

Teams. Lineups. Tournaments. Opportunities. Which mistakes become lessons and which cost playing time. Who gets another chance and who doesn’t.

Then a child reacts to one of those decisions and suddenly:

**These kids today.**

Stop.

The kid may need accountability.

They may not have prepared.

Another athlete may have earned the spot.

And parents, sometimes your child simply isn’t as good as you believe they are **right now**.

We have to be able to hear that too.

But there is another possibility adults hate admitting:

**We got it wrong.**

The coach handled something poorly.

A parent made the situation worse.

Communication failed.

Familiarity received more consideration than it deserved.

An administrator avoided a difficult conversation.

Adults make mistakes too.

Accountability cannot be a standard reserved for whoever has the least power in the room.

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# PROTECT HOME.

I’ve talked about Protect Home before.

I’m beginning to understand another layer of it.

Protecting home does **not** mean cutting everybody off the first time they disappoint you.

That can look like strength when it’s really fear wearing armor.

Being close to somebody doesn’t automatically entitle them to permanent access either.

Protect Home means learning the difference between somebody who disappointed you and somebody who revealed something about the relationship you can no longer ignore.

Before burning the bridge, investigate it.

**What was actually promised?**

**What did I assume?**

**Who controlled the decision?**

**Did somebody advocate for me and lose?**

**Was somebody else simply better?**

And then:

**Did somebody tell me one thing and do another when it mattered?**

The answer changes what happens next.

A conversation might repair it.

New information might reveal that you owe the apology.

Maybe they do.

Trust can survive while expectations change.

Forgiveness can happen without restoring the same access.

And some relationships eventually need to end.

Not dramatically.

Not by trying to destroy somebody on your way out.

You simply stop building your future around words that actions no longer support.

**That is Protect Home too.**

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# AND YES, I’M ANGRY.

I am.

But not only with other people.

**I’m angry with myself too.**

For things I allowed. Things I believed. Expectations I created. Signs I should have recognized earlier. Moments when I knew better and still didn’t do better.

And sometimes I’m angry because I’m tired.

Not sleepy.

**Tired.**

There’s a difference.

I’m a man.

For a lot of us, manhood comes with an unwritten set of instructions.

Handle it.

Provide.

Protect.

Lead.

Don’t fold.

Don’t show too much.

Don’t let them see that hurt.

Keep moving.

Mothers know their own version of that weight. Women know it. Fathers know it.

Different expectations. Different pressures. Different wounds.

Same human tendency to carry more than we say.

And our kids are learning it earlier than we want to admit.

The teenage athlete who says *“I’m good”* when he isn’t.

The girl who keeps performing because everybody depends on her being the strong one.

The kid laughing in the locker room who goes home wondering whether they’re good enough.

The student who stopped caring because caring and getting disappointed started hurting too much.

Adults see the behavior.

We address the behavior.

Sometimes we should.

But how often do we also ask:

**What are you carrying?**

Accountability and empathy are not enemies.

We can tell somebody:

**What you did was wrong.**

And still ask:

**What happened to you?**

I wish more people had done both with me.

More importantly, there are moments when **I wish I had done both for somebody else.**

That’s part of my accountability too.

---

Recent professional situations forced me to revisit all of this.

I trusted people. Believed people. Followed opportunities people encouraged me to pursue.

And I walked away disappointed.

More than once.

Somebody reading this may decide:

**He’s just mad.**

Fine.

Now answer the question anyway.

Anger does not automatically make the question wrong.

We attack somebody’s emotion so we don’t have to examine their message.

*He’s bitter.*

*She’s emotional.*

*They’re complaining.*

*That kid has an attitude.*

Maybe.

**Now what happened?**

That’s the question we keep skipping.

And I don’t get to use any of this to excuse myself.

There may have been rooms I wasn’t ready for. Someone else may have been better. I may have misread relationships. Maybe I heard guarantees nobody actually made.

My own decisions may have helped put me in situations I later became angry about.

**If I’m going to investigate everybody else, I have to investigate Alexander with the same intensity.**

Otherwise DCA is decoration.

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# STOP OVERLOOKING PEOPLE.

Some kid is sitting on a bench needing somebody to evaluate what they can actually do instead of relying on reputation.

Inside a company, there’s an employee capable of changing the place if somebody gives them room.

A good coach doesn’t belong to the right circle.

A teacher has an idea nobody bothered to ask about.

Talent is sitting somewhere right now in packaging adults weren’t expecting.

And outsiders can sometimes see problems everybody inside became too comfortable to notice.

That doesn’t automatically make the outsider right.

The starter may deserve to start.

An internal candidate can earn the promotion.

A coach can make the correct decision even when somebody hates it.

This isn’t an argument for outsiders.

It’s an argument for something much simpler:

**Actually look.**

Study what somebody can do before deciding what they can become.

Don’t confuse familiarity with qualification.

Don’t confuse access with merit.

And don’t spend twelve years telling children preparation and performance matter while quietly demonstrating something completely different.

Relationships matter too.

That’s real life.

Teach them that honestly.

How to build relationships without becoming fake.

Advocate for themselves without becoming entitled.

Lose without deciding they’re losers.

Be overlooked without making *overlooked* their identity.

Keep working when nobody is clapping.

**That’s development.**

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# COACHES, THIS ONE IS FOR US.

We cannot scream accountability at children and become victims every time somebody questions us.

Parents cannot demand fairness for their child while treating another person’s child like an obstacle.

Managers cannot preach culture while rewarding politics.

Administrators cannot demand transparency from everybody below them and hide behind silence when the difficult question reaches their office.

Teachers cannot require communication while avoiding hard conversations themselves.

Employees who hated bad leadership should remember that feeling when somebody finally hands them authority.

Athletes deserve opportunities to prove themselves, but opportunity still requires preparation.

And the author of a book called **Discipline. Consistency. Accountability.** doesn’t get to decide accountability stops when the mirror reaches Alexander Moore.

It doesn’t.

**Nobody gets out of the room.**

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# MAYBE THAT’S WHAT “LET’S TALK ABOUT IT” MEANS.

It doesn’t mean I have all the answers.

I don’t.

It isn’t shorthand for *you’re wrong and I’m right.*

I’ve been the wrong one plenty of times.

Every uncomfortable situation doesn’t require a villain.

Life can hurt without somebody being evil.

Maybe the point is staying in the room long enough to ask the second question.

Then the third.

Eventually, the one you hoped nobody would ask because the answer might expose **you**.

There are parts of the old way worth bringing back.

Not abuse.

Not humiliation.

Not *because I said so.*

Leave that behind.

Bring back coaching that actually develops somebody.

Mentoring that doesn’t disappear after giving the advice.

Leadership that understands authority comes with responsibility.

Parenting that cares less about producing the appearance of a successful child and more about developing a functioning human being.

Friendship where *“I got you”* carries weight.

Correction without automatically becoming enemies.

Failure without turning a human being into a failure.

**A person’s word meaning something.**

Because people are watching us.

Athletes. Employees. Assistant coaches. Students. Friends.

Our children most of all.

Eventually, people stop listening to what we preach.

**They start studying what we do.**

We notice when somebody changes.

We criticize the reaction.

What we don’t investigate nearly enough is **what taught them to react that way.**

The answer might be them.

Their decisions. Their behavior. Their accountability.

The answer might be us.

Quite often, everybody in the room has fingerprints on it.

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# ONE LAST THING.

Know what it feels like to be overlooked?

Remember that feeling when you have the power to see somebody else.

Want a coach to believe in your child?

Don’t tear down another person’s.

Hated favoritism when you were outside the room?

Recognize it if somebody eventually hands you the keys.

Demand accountability from athletes?

Practice it when the mistake belongs to the adult.

Remember wishing somebody would open a door?

Don’t forget what the hallway felt like once you’re standing beside one.

And if you tell somebody:

**I got you.**

Mean it.

That doesn’t guarantee the job.

The roster spot.

The promotion.

The opportunity.

It means your actions shouldn’t leave them wondering whether your words were ever real.

And if you don’t have them?

That’s okay.

**Just don’t tell them you do.**

As for me, I still have work to do.

There are things behind me I am not proud of. People who deserved better from me. Things I cannot undo.

DCA doesn’t erase any of it.

Neither does Knox•Moor, a book, coaching, being a husband or father, or whatever success may come later.

What I can control is whether the man walking forward learned anything from the man who got it wrong.

That’s why I stand on my pillars.

Not because I’m an example of perfection.

**Because I know what happens when I don’t.**

**Discipline. Consistency. Accountability.**

I thought the businessman gave the company its name.

Turns out, somewhere along the journey, **the company taught the businessman what the name meant.**

Now I have to live up to it.

So when I talk about coaches, parents, athletes, teachers, administrators, managers, business owners, friends, fathers, mothers, men, women and kids, understand something:

I’m not standing outside the room pointing at everybody inside it.

**My chair was the first one I pulled up.**

Pull yours up.

# Let’s talk about it.

**— Alexander Thomas “Kunta” Moore** *Protect Home, Part IV*