Accountability means that we show up to be counted – we give a reckoning, we explain, justify. It is related to latin computare, which is to add things up to see what the total is.

At Maniphesto we commit to accountability. This means we agree to compare our words to our actions over time and allow the judgment of others on our (mis)alignment or (in)coherence.

In short we strive to be men of our word.

Accountability as Judgement

Why do we do this?

In a society where judgment is seen as bad and tolerance of all things is seen as a good, we notice that men are yearning for accountability.

Judgment has an important function – at the highest level, it brings about a state of justice to the present. As human beings, we have an instinctive and natural yearning towards justice and thus also to judgment. Most wisdom traditions would posit that judgment is a mechanism of the natural order of things. In Eastern religions this is called “karma”. In ancient Greek philosophy, justice is one of the four cardinal virtues. In Christianity, Christ is seen as the judge.

Judgment is often delayed. If you are a bad person, then you may prefer justice to be pushed as far away as possible, so you can enjoy the fruits of your misdoings. But if you are a person aiming towards to the good, then you look forward to judgment. Not your own, but what we would call “objective” or “divine” judgment and justice.

That is why we look for the judgments of other good men we look up to. Especially we yearn for the judgment of father figures.

Accountability in practice

We need others to hold us accountable. We are far too good at rationalizing and forgetting our commitments. And in practice, we struggle to submit ourselves to an actual accountability group, often experiencing that disagreements arise, drama ensues, and the process collapses.

Part of the reason for this is that we do not have the perfect “father figure” on hand who makes perfectly just judgements which we willingly submit to. In fact most of the time we have “brotherly figures”, who we at least unconsciously are competing with, judging negatively ourselves or simply disagree with their perspective.

That is why accountability in practice involves building relationships of trust. In the following we will present some of the most important aspects of building trustfor accountability.

Patient listening. Most of the time, we project our own issues, motivations and shortcomings onto others. This means that our judgments and ability to hold other men accountable are severely limited by our own progress. Thus, the ability to listen attentively, without judgment and with an utmost respect and appreciation of the value of another person, even putting them above one’s self, will go very far in determining our ability to support him with accountability.

Similar worldviews. Every person has a foundational set of beliefs about life, existence, what humans are and why we are here. To the extent that these overlap, we are more likely to interpret statements, events and actions similarly. When these foundational beliefs differ greatly, then accountability processes will be less effective and will need to be more focused on simple witnessing and mirroring as opposed to judgment.

Balance between challenge and respect. An accountability group needs to be willing to ask tough questions in order to ensure depth. But challenge should always be built on respect of things said in confidence and never misusing vulnerable information. The key here is the underlying motivation – accountability processes must be held in a true spirit of mutual support, appreciation of strengths and gentle treatment of weaknesses.

Strong, principle based leadership. If you do it long enough, confusion and even drama are likely to pop up once in a while in an accountability group. At these times, it is important that the group has a clear leader who upholds and enforces clear shared principles in a consistent way.

Personal connection. Large group accountability needs to be supplemented with personal accountability in smaller groups or even 1-on-1 interactions which help cultivate personal connections of trust and understanding.

How we do Accountability

Stating one’s goals in front of a group of men and being held accountable for one’s actions is perhaps the most central focus of the work we do on Maniphesto Core.

When men join Core, then they are supported in creating a personal vision for their life, setting concrete goals and then implementing daily habits. Weekly meetings in groups are focused on supporting men in ensuring movement towards the set goals. Groups also organize daily buddy calls where individual men connect and support each other in getting through the small hurdles and challenges of everyday life.

The importance and transformative power of these daily buddy calls cannot be underestimated. Through the simple point of connection of having to report back on your progress towards a specific outcome every single day, and being held accountable to your commitment, men are able to build awareness and integrity in a pwoerful way.

Our work in Maniphesto is guided by our 10 Principles. In this way, we have a shared foundation for our work. In this work, we consider it naive to make inclusion and tolerance the most central values. Instead we aim to set a high standard with pragmatic principles which lead to men living thriving lives of purpose and direction.

If you want to experience working on accountability in a group of men, then sign up for Maniphesto Core here.

The weekend is aimed at participants getting to know themselves and each other as a team in action, performing tasks aimed at reaching individual and shared goals.

The program consists of a series of team and individual challenges designed to develop real work skills and dig a layer deeper than the polite screen personalities that we bring to online group meetings. Each man will be given the opportunity to lean into his fears and limitations, to see how he and others react under pressure, how he deals with discomfort, unexpected difficulties and conflict, and how he works as a member of a team. This provides an ideal foundation for taking the next step in development and depth in a men’s group.

The training will focus on developing skills in nature survival, bushcraft and military tactics. Concrete skills which will be introduced and practiced during the weekend include:

• Map, compass and primative navigation
• Camouflage, stealth movement, tactical target reconnaissance and observation
• Survival with minimal food, sleep and equipment under harsh conditions
• Water crossing
• Medic and first aid
• Military physical fitness test
• Basic self defence
• Force-on-force training with hardball weapons
• Close Quarter Combat Simulation
• Military patrol formation and standard procedures

Expect a program with limited sleep and exposure to the elements. The program is designed to cater for a group of men at considerably different levels of physical fitness and ability.

As a minimum to complete the weekend, you should be able to run at least 3km. To prepare for the weekend, it would be an advantage to start training as soon as possible, focusing on running, rucking, field navigation and orientation and a physical strength training program such as Maniphesto’s Kampkraft training.

Available weekends:

• 1st – 3rd Dec 2023
• 8th  – 10th Dec 2023
• 26th – 28th Jan 2024
• 2nd – 4th Feb 2024
• 16th – 18th Feb 2024
• 23rd – 25th Feb 2024
• 8th – 10th March 2024

Pricing:

• 600€ pr participant for individual signup
• 1800€ for group of 5 participants
• 200€ for additional participants above 5, maximum 15 participants

This is a tailored package training program for teams on Maniphesto Core. We can also cater for a men’s group outsode of Maniphesto or any team of men who want to establish a strong foundation for work.

Minimum 4 participants. For practical details, please contact us on info@maniphesto.com

Some pictures from our previous events:

Having grown up protestant, so virginity was something that my parents thought that I should maintain, but not exactly popular amongst my school friends.

Having become Orthodox, I can see the incredible value and honour given to purity, chastity, and of course also to the Theotokos, the Mother of God, and also the importance that she is EVER Virgin.

I am still trying to understand this, and so it was really useful for me when Maximillian Ravn came and joined our Core fellowship. A student of Theology in Denmark, but more importantly has personally experienced the power of the Virgin, rather than just studying ideas about her. I got a lot of value from our last conversation and then asked him to tell his story. It was an even more powerful story than I expected.

See our previous conversation here: https://youtu.be/xUoZKCYWCZE

The foundation of leadership is often wrongly assumed to be related to authority and power. This is a misconception – leadership is founded on a person deciding to take on responsibility for ensuring a specific shared goal or outcome. Authority and power which can be used for good are the natural result of manly leadership.

Leadership is therefore not a role which is assigned to a person, but rather a burden which one takes upon one’s shoulders through an explicit decision to take on a responsibility for a positive outcome.

In order to lead, men need to be able to formulate a compelling vision. That is why we work explicitly with supporting every member on Maniphesto Core to develop a high level vision for his life. That vision then needs to be grounded in the practical work of his everyday life of developing the habits that will mold him into the kind of man who can realize it. This is what we do in our Core groups with our accountability work.

A key necessity to formulate vision is to have an explicit existential foundation which defines your cosmology and anthropology. Only through having a clear and positive understanding what life and existence is about and what humans are, can you develop a clear and true vision of the future. This is defined through the spiritual, religious level. Thus men need to ensure a stable, strong and embodied spiritual practice rooted in real community to lead well.

For most men, family life is the ideal training ground for leadership. It is through learning to take responsibility for, to love, and to guide their own family well, that they can learn to lead others. Especially the relationship with his wife in a fully committed marriage, which he is driving towards deeper intimacy, is the key ingredient which will make a man a leader who is a flame which is fully alight and burning brightly in the world.

Additional resources on Men Lead:

Men Lead series:

• The Power of Vision in Leadership | Men Lead Series 1
• Unveiling the Foundation of Leadership: Religion & Spirituality
• Family Life is a Leadership Training Ground
• The Path to Deeper Connection: Eros and Intimacy as the Vital Ingredient
• Leading with Purpose

Core Community meeting: Why Vision is Masculine

Vision for Orthodox Christians

See the original episode here: https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts…

Find the book here: https://visiondrivenleader.com/ and on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Driven-…

Michael Hyatts company Full Focus: https://fullfocus.co/

The only thing in the world that you can control is yourself. If you see anything anywhere which you think should be better, then you should automatically think – can you fix it first in yourself? As you manage to establish peace and harmony within yourself as a fully functioning human being, then you will naturally find that the opportunities for taking responsibility for things outside of yourself will grow together with your capacity to manage them. Taking hold of and struggling with these opportunities is your journey of growth.

A man who takes responsibility is a rock who cannot be moved and who can be depended on through storms and chaos. He is a model of integrity in that he can always be depended upon to only say that which he knows he will do. And once he has said he will do something, he does it.

It is easy to find things that are somehow wrong in the world. It takes a little more effort to figure out how they got that way. Coming up with ideas as to how to fix them requires critical thinking. And doing something about them requires real action in the world. But all of these are nothing in comparison to the work of focusing your critical attention on yourself and making yourself into a better man. And until you do that, then your efforts in all other areas will fall short.

Taking responsibility entails being able to give a guarantee for ensuring without doubt that something in the future will happen in a specific way. Given how chaotic reality appears to us and how unpredictable the future is, it is difficult, even dangerous, to attempt to take responsibility for yourself, let alone people and things outside of yourself.

And yet, as a man, taking responsibility is the key to growing from being a boy in a man’s body, towards maturity and adulthood, and eventually into eldership. Taking responsibility for ensuring the stability and robustness of your own health, finances, and relationships are some of the first indispensable steps into manhood. This means that a man still living off the state or his parents, has yet to join the ranks of manhood. But even this is not enough – men are characterized by taking responsibility for things and people other than themself, which is why selfishness is so frowned upon in men.

The ability to take responsibility is ideally taught from father to son during childhood, and is ultimately dependent on a man being willing to put his own body on the line and to “sacrifice” his own desires, wants, and ultimately his own body, in order to realise a specific outcome. This starts with actions such as a boy sacrificing his playtime to mow the lawn, and finds one of its fullest expressions in a man who is willing to put his own body and life in the way of a mortal threat to his loved ones.

All men have areas where they fall short, blindspots and failings in the way that they take responsibility. Taking on an appropriate level of responsibility for something outside of yourself that takes you just a little out of your comfort zone is thus a growth accelerator for men.

Maniphesto Core provides opportunities for its members to take on appropriate levels of responsibility which parallel and mirror their battles to take on responsibility in their own life. Through the Core Team accountability process, men are able to experiment with taking responsibility, be held to integrity and receive honest reflection and input as they struggle with the consequences, and thereby continue to grow in insight into their own strengths and weaknesses.

To say that men are masculine is to not just state the obvious, but it is to underline the essence of what manhood is about. We love, admire and value masculinity in men. And the core of our work is aimed at constantly strengthening our masculine attributes.

The discussion as to whether masculinity is determined socially or biologically is of marginal interest to us. Neither are we interested in engaging in discussions to try to convince people who think that masculinity is toxic or harmful.

Some of the aspects of masculinity we appreciate the most include strength, courage, assertiveness and the ability to lead. While some aspects of masculinity change in time, there is a central and stable core, which is perhaps best captured by the Greek ἀνδρεῖος (andreîos) which refers to that which is pertaining to a man, that which is strong, brave and courageous.

Masculine men are trustworthy, stable and solid. Confident in themselves, they have no need to prove anything to anyone else, but continuously focus on working to contribute value, as they know that their strength is best employed and developed in sacrificial service to those around them. They are a force to be reckoned with, creating safety and security for those under their care, but are fully able to stand firm in the face of adversity and to defend themselves and others if the need arises.

The secret of the masculine man is that he is able to fully submit himself and receive from that which is far greater than himself – for a religious man, he will call this God. Through putting aside his own selfish desires and aligning himself, his actions and his life with the deepest mystery and patterns of reality which are revealed to him, he is able to fully find himself and his own manhood, and thus embody that mystery to others around him.

Besides this, a practical method to developing masculinity is to spend time with other masculine men, to learn from them, to develop brotherly relations with them, and to explicitly remind each other about ad hold up masculine values as worthy of striving after. This is what we do on Maniphesto Core.

Additional Material: