The Building Blocks of Accountability
When you read or hear the word accountability, how does that make you feel? For some, it may bring on notions of pressure or stress. For others, perhaps you’re letting out a long groan. If you are a leader or business owner, you may find yourself wanting to hold others accountable, but challenged with how to do that. Various studies on the brain, such as this one, have determined that accountability can leave our brain feeling threatened which can bring on undue tension, result in procrastination, loss in productivity and unwillingness to commit. Regardless of our initial emotion, we can all agree that accountability is key in making progress. In order to develop accountability with a team, there are a few critical steps each individual must take, regardless of their position within an organization.
Accountability is required to effectively drive results across teams, whether you are an individual contributing to a team, or a leader of a team, accountability starts with developing trust within the team. You can develop trust with your team in a few different ways, but one that we’ve seen work well is when leaders or team players regularly and authentically check in with the individuals who make up their team. These check-ins can be informal coffee chats, morning drive bys or part of a one-on-one meeting. Regardless of the execution, the intent should be to better understand the individual, their motivations, and what is going on in their life. Building this personal connection helps build trust, a personal relationship and a common understanding that you want your team to succeed.
It’s also important to consider the impact of the team culture. As a team leader or an individual on a team, you have the ability to shape the culture of every team you are a part of and, by being the example, you can shift the team culture towards accountability. By holding yourself accountable and reporting out to your team on what’s working, what isn’t and where you need help you’ll continue to earn trust and set an example by keeping your own commitments. This continual commitment and intentionality has the ability to shape the team culture, and further encourage an environment where accountability is occurring.
To further the cultural aspect, it is critical that each team establishes expectations and transparency. Help the team understand the why behind an ask, and what happens when goals or timelines aren’t met. If you’re a people leader, it can also be helpful to provide transparency in the evaluation process so that individuals know what they are being evaluated against and can tie their current objectives to those standards so that they better know what they will be evaluated against. By establishing expectations, and building on culture and trust within a team, individuals will feel comfortable sharing their challenges, voicing concerns and asking for help.
Finally, help your team understand the purpose of their work and how it ties to the organization’s goals. When individuals understand the importance of their work, they are more motivated to get that work done. In fact, a recent study determined that highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. A team or individual needs to be working towards a purpose; by helping your team understand how their individual initiative is helping further the company’s goals, you can drive revenue growth, increased productivity, and accountability.
If you are able to effectively implement the aforementioned aspects into your team, then you are on the right track towards building accountability within your team. According to Ron Carucci in his article, “How to Actually Encourage Employee Accountability”, accountability processes are the ways in which leaders discuss and direct those that they lead, their work and their improvements to those contributions. An accountability process could be an annual performance review, a one-on-one meeting with an individual employee, a regular check-in with your team or a project management meeting. Each forum provides an opportunity for an individual to report out on their progress and receive feedback. You can make accountability a habit within your team such as implementing a daily check in with your team. This creates an avenue for individuals to share out on their progress, get early feedback, and ask for help.
Action into insight: If you think a daily check-in process could work well for your team, consider adopting some principles from Scrum project management. Scrum is a lightweight project management framework. While Scrum historically has applied to the technology industry, aspects of scrum are being implemented across diverse organizations because the style allows for cross-functional project support and quickly ideating and developing. The daily meeting is part of the Scrum process, and can be a short 15 minute check in or can even occur just a few times a day, but the purpose is to ensure regular check-ins are occurring across the team. If meetings aren’t the right forum you can also consider a regular text check-in or another process that encourages regular communication.
