Accountability can be a challenging topic that many of us try to avoid. Why?
From my perspective, the answer is because accountability is often only used when someone has not followed through on agreements and obligations. It feels confrontational and personal or makes someone feel bad or wrong. As a result, it is often met with pushback. Those being held accountable can feel frustrated and micromanaged and seem like they aren’t being given the freedom and space to do their work. When accountability isn’t a regular part of the workplace, it easily triggers guilt, shame, excuses, deflection, etc.
However, without accountability, one might experience gaps, delays, dropped balls, unfinished tasks, and inaccurate deliverables. Many leaders just want to trust their team to do their jobs so accountability would not be unnecessary. It seems so simple. If people would just do what they said they would, accountability would not be needed, right?
Wrong. Accountability is not nagging, distrusting, micromanaging, and harassing people. Accountability is about excellence, communication, synergy, teamwork, and momentum.
Accountability, when designed well, can enable the team and individuals to reach greater levels of success. It requires commitment, clarity, and agreement. Accountability brings clarity to ambiguity and specificity to generalities. Contrary to perception, it allows individuals to function at their best. To be fully responsible and independent in their work, people need to have clarity of purpose, expectations, and responsibilities. Accountability allows projects and people to thrive.
Below are six tips to help you build accountability:
1. Define. Define and agree on what success looks like so everyone has the same understanding of what “finished” or “success” is.
2. Design. Outline who (specifically one person, never two or more people), will do what tasks by when and how the team will know. Accountability works best when each person knows the tasks they are responsible for, when they need to be done and how to communicate their completion. With this clarity, the team knows who is responsible for each part of the project. For example, let’s say John is responsible for contacting and updating the pricing for 25 clients by the last day of this month. He will let the team know by emailing a list of who opted for the updated pricing and who canceled.
3. Lead. Make the line of accountability clear (e.g., John reports to the head of the project or his boss). The leader is the person who needs to hold the tasked person accountable. Every tasked person should know their leader, and every leader should know the tasks for which they are responsible. Leaders then must systematically check in with each task holder at designed checkpoints.
4. Set checkpoints. Designed check-in points are conversations between the leader and task holder that help outline a smaller breakdown of the task. While a leader needs to give the team members the freedom to design how they want to accomplish the task, it is reasonable to talk about their understanding of the task, their plan and what it looks like to ensure they are on the same page. It also builds teamwork, as the best course of action is determined together. An organized leader has a way to track tasks to ensure that at each checkpoint, the agreed-upon actions have been taken and important tasks are not forgotten.
5. Track it. Whether in an app or a spreadsheet, track each project and list the who, what, when, where, how, etc. of each project. The tracker enables the leader to make sure every task stays on their radar. Key tasks are less likely to be forgotten. Obstacles to action can be addressed so progress continues.
6. Have healthy conversations. Discussing the status is important. When people are making progress, they typically volunteer the next level of information or have a question to move it forward. However, check-ins, where progress has stalled, can be challenging. People don’t want to look bad, so they might try to shut down or deflect the conversation. When pried for information, some become frustrated. Excuses try to cover inaction. This is when the time you spent to develop a culture and pattern of accountability matters most.
Don’t allow the discomfort to dissuade you from having a direct conversation about the lack of results and steps to move action forward. Understand the issues. Design the next steps. Set another check-in. As the leader, you have the responsibility to ensure tasks are being accomplished, challenges are addressed early on and you are on track for the excellence you desire.
Again, let’s say that, despite agreeing to call all 25 clients to update pricing, John emailed them instead and has yet to hear back. Rather than getting mad, this is the perfect opportunity for you, the leader, to practice having a healthy conversation. You could say something along the lines of, “We initially agreed phone calls are needed, and I still feel they are important. Would you do follow-up calls on those you emailed to review what is in the email and understand what they would like to do? How many calls do you think you can do before our next one-to-one check-in?” From there, set the agreement and the next check-in.
Accountability is an amazing dialogue and structure to ensure projects move along smoothly. It creates continuity and flow. It allows glitches to be caught early and corrected. With accountability, a project has synergy, as many tasks are being accomplished simultaneously, which ultimately leads to a finished result the team can be proud of. Embrace accountability; don’t fear it. It is your tool to ensure every project meets its objectives and finishes on time.
