Culture of Accountability

A few weeks ago, I was coordinating a leadership class with first-line supervisors and the discussion turned to accountability.

We look at accountability from two different but equally important lenses.

The first is for the individual to take responsibility and be accountable for their actions. Ultimately, this is what we all want. The onus is on the employee to do the right thing.

The next is for the individual’s boss to hold this person accountable. Do you know who wants this the most? The individual’s coworkers. Nothing frustrates people more than a fellow employee who is not held accountable for their actions, especially when it is a performance issue.

The question asked during this training, and something that regularly comes up is how. How do we hold people accountable?

When I think about an answer, I think about communication. Is your vision clearly communicated? Is the work or task clearly communicated? You cannot hold people accountable when the communication is broken.

Some other suggestions about communication -
 

• Do your employees know their roles and responsibilities?  There should be no confusion or excuses.
  
• Do your employees know what you expect? This goes back to your vision. What do you want from your employees?
  
• Are you providing regular feedback? You should praise your employees when they do well and provide feedback when they do not. Do not be a manager that only talks about performance once a year during an annual performance review. That is too late.
  
• Are you allowing for personal ownership of the work your employees perform? People work harder when they are able to do what you pay them to do.
  

 
For some of you, this is hard. It will get easier if you break each of these down and focus on your communication.

The good news is once you develop this culture of accountability, people will work harder and even hold each other accountable. It has a snowball effect on the organization and, ultimately, the culture.

Behavior drives culture.

- Brian Townsend, Eagle 6 Training