How to increase the accountability of your team
9 in 10 leaders say accountability is one of their organisation’s key development needs. The results of poor accountability are low morale, high staff turnover, decreased productivity and a lack of trust. In a low accountability workplace, there will be lots of blame and plenty of excuses.
High accountability means people taking personal responsibility for their actions, behaviours and decisions. This leads to teams feeling valued and motivated.
The accountability paradox
The paradox for high performing leaders who hold themselves highly accountable for the performance of their team is that they can be so anxious about ensuring team performance they find themselves disempowering their team through being too involved in day-to-day actions and decisions as they seek to ensure great results.
Often high performing leaders have got to where they are because they have high personal accountability. They have been able to get things done well, delivered results through knowing and caring about the detail and being able to deliver on time and exceed expectations. But to deliver results through others requires an entirely different skill set.
Therefore, as a leader how can you make a team member take accountability?
The honest answer is you can’t. (Not without being aggressive and ensuring accountability through fear – shouting, threatening and punishing, which is obviously highly unprofessional behaviour.) That is why managing people can be frustrating because we have control over our own actions but only influence over other’s.
If it is not possible to make someone take accountability, what can you do to influence them?
Accountability must be encouraged, enabled and nurtured.
Agree clear goals for the team and share your goals
When both leader and team member are clear and conformable with the team member’s goals then this is a good basis for building accountability. Include task-based objectives and objectives that focus on their development. Importantly, also share your goals so that the team member knows what you are working on and can better appreciate your pressures, stakeholders and targets.
Communicate how your team strategy fits with the organisation’s strategy
People can then see the bigger picture and how their role fits with the overarching aim.
Contract with your team members in 1:1s on what they feel comfortable being accountable for
People feel more accountable when they feel more ownership and control over what they need to do and how they need to do it. Clear roles and responsibilities are essential to build a culture of accountability.
Build a strong induction process for new team members and quality training
This ensures a lack of knowledge or skills does not hold the team back from being accountable.
Build a strong communication and two-way feedback culture
Accountability of a team is not possible in a vacuum. If people are empowered to get the job done and take responsibility for how they do this, there needs to be great communication to ensure shared knowledge. There also needs to be a commitment to giving positive and negative feedback to the team, and them to you, in a timely and respectful way.
Manage poor performance
Nothing will erode accountability faster than a team member who visibly doesn’t take accountability, is seen to do less and take less responsibility with no consequences. Support them through giving feedback, agreeing a development plan, offering skills training and mentoring or coaching. If supportive interventions do not help, then agree a performance management plan.
Be visibly ok about things not going ok
Things won’t always be done how you would like them, and your team sometimes might not meet targets or have poor KPIs, or mistake will be made. It is much easier to be empowering and positive when things are going well. It is so much harder when things are going not so well. How you react when there is a mistake will define how honest and accountable team members will be in the future.
Giving and receiving accountability is not transactional; true accountability forms from trustworthy, positive and supportive working relationships.
What could you do to increase the personal accountability of your team this year?