From the course: Best Practices for New People Leaders

Accountability

From the course: Best Practices for New People Leaders

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Accountability

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- I have spoken to many groups of leaders and employees in many different industries. I ask the same question to each group. How many of you consider yourself an accountable person? Of course, almost every hand is raised. Then my next question is, how many of you believe this company needs more accountability? The same hands go up. So there's the paradox. Everyone thinks they're accountable, and yet we also need more accountability. The result is that people think problems are outside of themselves and therefore inclined to start blaming. When we're focused on who messed up and telling our colleagues how badly they failed, we take energy away from finding a solution and driving towards results. When companies struggle to perform, this is one area to investigate. How are they spending their energy on the problem or the solution? Positive accountability focuses people on the solution, driving better results. I'm going to share with you how to foster positive accountability within yourself and your team. First, focus on adjusting your mindset. When considering accountability in yourself as well as others, consider it through the lens of what can I learn from this? Or what are some of the solutions I can control? Through this lens, accountability becomes positive. It's a tool for us to use instead of a weapon to wield. We learned to take accountability when solving problems instead of assigning it to blame someone else, which doesn't get us any closer to solving the problem or learning from mistakes. When mistakes happen, take the time to investigate them, including finding out who was accountable. This knowledge will come in handy in the future when you need to develop a solution to a new problem. When you start using accountability in this way, your team will see this as a positive and understand when to use it themselves. When asking your team for accountability, try to get their ownership and buy-in, rather than simply inflicting it on them. If you have someone on your team that has missed a deadline, then ask them when they will get it in to you and what will happen if they don't. Approaching accountability in this way as a tool to bring forth in someone and not an assignment of blame will increase ownership and confidence throughout your team. These have all been examples of positive accountability. If accountability has been a punitive stick used in your company, take steps to turn it around and into a positive tool to use when seeking solutions.

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