Workforces are continually asked to do more with less. One report found that even with AI, which is meant to help increase productivity, 77% of employees report workloads increasing. Accountability can help keep teams on task, but leaders must also be the voice of reason by:
- Do their part to ensur employees can meet their goals
- Keeping workloads at manageable levels
- Putting an end to finger-pointing when work isn’t completed
Part of success planning in business is requiring leaders to pave the way in the workplace. If you approach people the right way, you’ll bring teams together and push them to do their best work.
But with accountability, it cannot be a one-way street.
Great leadership means holding yourself to standards even higher than those that you expect from your employees. Self-accountability pushes teams to perform better because they see it coming from the top down.
Below is a blueprint to leadership accountability that you can follow to achieve success.
4-Steps to Leadership Accountability Success
1. Master the Art of Conveying Accountability Expectations
Walking into the room and pointing fingers is one of the fastest ways to demotivate your team. Singling employees out and making them feel like they’re the sole ones responsible for all of your company’s problems is not a sign of a strong leader.
Your strength comes from:
- Clarifying and communicating your expectations
- Reinforcing these requirements constructively
Speak to your team with a tone and confidence that shows that you appreciate their hard work and can read the room. You can show appreciation while holding everyone on your team accountable at the same time.
Don’t know where to start?
Lean on the company’s mission, vision, values and culture.
For example, in a previous sales job, I used a spreadsheet to do this and it worked really well. On my sheet, I listed my:
- Annual goal
- Monthly goals
- Weekly goals
Monthly and weekly goals were always aligned with what I needed to achieve to reach my primary annual goal.
I then tracked my daily activity against my goals and weekly I reported my activity and results to my coach, who gave me feedback and held me accountable.
New and veteran employees should know their roles and responsibilities, and teams must know the expectations and mission you require from them. Once everyone is on the same page, it’s easier to move toward the business’s main mission.
2. Measure Employee and Leadership Accountability
Managers, leaders, and owners rely on KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the actions they take.
If teams are hitting their deadlines and getting work done, that’s the most critical issue.
However, teams often have stragglers and underachievers who hold the rest of the team back. Leaders are not exempt from this classification, so you need a way to measure success among both your leadership and teams.
What I recommend is that you track tangible targets that help you judge success rates.
Here are a few examples:
For Employees
Jim is a key employee on your sales team who typically hits his sales targets. However, he missed his monthly goal while everyone else on the team hit it. Great leaders will ask themselves:
- Is this a trend or an isolated instance?
- Are there any extenuating circumstances?
- Is this a skills/knowledge issue or an attitude/habits issue?
You know that Jim has the capability to succeed given his past success, and by answering these questions, you are in a better position to help him reach his objectives. Since he has typically been exceptional in his role, it’s likely a blip on the radar that will resolve itself.
Nevertheless,you want to address it so it doesn’t become a trend, while not overreacting.
For Leaders
What do you do with the managers & supervisors who are “steering the ship?” Leaders have the same, if not higher, responsibility to be held accountable.
You need to hold all managers and higher-ups to the same standard, especially yourself.
If you’re not hitting your own goals, it’s time to address them and resolve the problem immediately because it cultivates a healthy work culture.
Why?
Employees want to follow a leader who takes charge and holds themselves to the same standards as the rest of the team.
Research shows that 2-in-3 employees cite work culture as impacting their day. Leaders have the opportunity to become a part of the catalyst of change in this regard by taking charge of the accountability that they demand of everyone else.
3. Support Your Team
Employees know their goals, but they may also need a little help reaching them. Offer your team the resources necessary to reach these milestones. Leadership can do this in a few ways:
- Supply the tools needed for success. What are your team’s bottlenecks? You may be giving them cutting-edge tools, but if they don’t address their core issues, they’re not having the right impact. Review the software and platforms that your workforce uses on a daily basis and see if there are better options. Team leads are goldmines of information to identify areas where notable improvements can be made.
- Provide support only a leader can offer. Leaders must check in on teams, offering team members the individual support they need. Your team needs resources to perform their best, including tools, new techniques and resources.
- Train and educate your employees. As new advancements are made, be sure that employees know these approaches so that they can remain productive and maintain the skills necessary for the business to grow.
Leaders who go the extra mile create deep bonds with employees. Your showing up for your team and going into the trenches with them to help them reach their goals is impactful. If you’re measuring success along the way, you’ll know what’s working and not working with your approach.
4. Identify the Consequences of Not Reaching Goals
Employees and leaders may still fall short of reaching their goals even with the right tools. Sometimes, the motivation is simply not there for people to achieve their objectives. You can entice them to work harder by providing clear and measurable KPIs with clear rewards and consequences.
Constructive redirection can also help:
- Provide clear and descriptive feedback – good and bad
- Ask why the employee took certain steps to better understand their thought process
- Work together to find a solution and develop an action plan for success together
- Follow up with employees and encourage them if there are hiccups along the way
Focus on the things in the employees’ control when evaluating them and offer ideas to help them. Consider performing a Working Genius assessment. Why? It ensures you’re putting the right people into the right seats.
If you use accountability to facilitate improvement for leaders and employees, it keeps team members happy, productive and motivated.
To learn more about how we can help with leadership accountability or to schedule an appointment, click here.