What is accountability?
One definition is “the quality or state of being accountable, especially an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for ones actions”
Accountability – or lack of – is a major problem for many businesses – building a team that truly takes accountability is the holy grail for many of us.
I was blessed to lead a team who did understand and accept accountability as a way of working. A team that worked together, in sync, with common goals, great communication and a high level of camaraderie. (You know who you are guys and gals and I miss you all).
It was a team that really came together during the pandemic, and I acknowledge that the pandemic conditions gave us a unique opportunity as we simply needed to find ways to be effective in our new circumstances, and we needed to do it quickly. But, when I think about the reasons why the team was so effective and why we did achieve that state of accountability, it distils down into a few simple things which, given some determination, can be replicated.
The first thing is the most important and that is to adopt a position of trust. Trust each other to do the things that need to be done when they need to be done by. Start out here – abandon any thoughts of people earning trust. Just give it, assume it, and expect it in return.
The second thing is to immediately enable free communication – without fear of anything at all – questions are your currency. Everyone needs to know what your expectations are, what the deadlines are, and what the necessary outputs are, and they need to be able to ask any questions at all, as many times as they need to, in order to understand fully what they need to do, and how they are able to do it.
The third thing is ensuring everyone knows why they are doing what they are doing. How does it fit, why is it important, what fails if it doesn’t get done. This is pivotal.
The fourth thing is making sure your team have the resources they need to do what they need to do. Equipment, knowledge, and time all come under this heading. Give some thought to the knowledge element – it might need to encompass stuff like how to use pivot tables in an XL spreadsheet or re-use slides from a different PPT deck as well as any managerial or technical training that is part of their competence to do their job.
The fifth thing is providing a platform for feedback that is a blame free zone. So, when things go right you can celebrate that the steps you have taken have worked, which is a great way of reinforcing the behaviours, but, when things go wrong, you don’t look for who is blame, you galvanise your team into fixing the problem, and then fixing the gap in communication that lead to the problem arising in the first place.
Trust – communication – understanding how the pieces fit and a regular time for feedback WILL drive accountability. It’s a virtuous circle. Do it, and do it again, and again. If it isn’t working then spend time finding out why, and then, as a team, work on the fix.
One final comment – micromanagement has no place in a team where you hope to achieve accountability. It will kill it stone dead.
