8 Ways You’re Causing Accountability Pain
In this blog let’s unpack how to take back control and build a culture of accountability (pro tip: it starts with you!).
You want your team, your boss, and everyone around you to be more accountable, but how well are you doing that yourself (d#mn those mirrors!)?
Here are some of the reasons accountability dies (not all 8!):
1. Everyone is accountable
The first extreme that kills accountability is when everyone is held accountable for a particular project. The entire team’s name is put on a strategic plan. But when the objective of a project is not met, there is no one you can talk to! As the old saying goes, if there’s more than one person accountable, no one’s accountable.
2. No one is accountable
The extreme of the same problem is when no one is accountable. You assign someone a task to complete and they don’t do it but you still don’t ask them why they didn’t finish! Not. Good. At. All.
3. Consensus first approach
You have a major decision to make about a project and you want every single person on the team to agree with it. H3LL NO! You don’t need everyone to agree. It is ok to have a few detractors. Your role as a leader is to move towards action. Consensus kills progress.
4. Equality of reward regardless of performance
Suppose you have 2 people on your team, Charles and Jake. Jake is a high-performing team member and does an amazing job. On the other hand, Charles just does enough to tick the boxes, but he is not actually contributing or driving the growth of the place. It is time for the performance evaluation and you give them both the same reward. This will kill high-performance and reward mediocrity!
5. Unchecked behaviours
Let’s take Jake from our previous example. He may be a high-performing sales lead. But when he comes back to the office he is a rude, condescending jerk and no one wants to deal with him. On the other hand, Charles may be a really nice person with poor behaviour. Having a difficult conversation with Charles may feel a lot like punching a kitten in the face! But unfortunately, you can’t allow someone who is performing really poorly to be left unchecked because they’re nice (nor can Jake be that way because he is high performing).
Want the other 3 tips AND tools to overcome these killers of accountability?
Guess what, it’s just a few clicks away! You can access DOZENS (no joke) of on-demand tools, topics, conversations, and leadership bad@ssery. What’s better? You can start with a 14-day trial.
Get stuck in and become part of the growing community of leaders facing the storms of leadership change head-on.
