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Time stopped the moment I realized what had happened. I felt my heartbeat in my ears, which turned red from shame. There’s no coming back from this. All that work I put in to build my reputation? Destroyed with a click of a button.
Intro
Welcome to Lead It Better, the podcast made to help you become a more impactful leader.
Whether you have years of experience or just getting started on your leadership journey, you’re in the right place to pick up practical, actionable advice. We’re gonna discuss not only how to best deal with leadership-related questions and situations but explore why a particular approach might work better than others.
My name’s Marton, and for the better part of a decade, I’ve been helping aspiring, new and experienced leaders develop their skills and leadership strategies.
This is episode 8, and this week we’re gonna talk about accountability. Specifically, about how you can hold your team accountable, avoid the blame game, and create an environment where this topic is understood as part of the support you provide as a leader.
Mistakes reveal character
I had a life-changing experience when I started working at IBM Financing. While it wasn’t my first job, it was the first time I was doing something in a very structured way, with standardized operating procedures, work instructions, and Sarbenes-Oxley testing. It was also my first time working in a silo, being impacted by the work of the department before us, and having a direct impact on downstream teams and even our customers.
While you get used to working with hundreds of thousands and millions of euros on a daily basis, the first time you look at that many zeroes and realize that your actions are what’s required for the operation to run smoothly… I don’t know; it feels humbling and borderline anxiety-inducing. Because it also means that if you make a mistake, the cost of that could be quite material.
I was working hard to establish myself as a top performer. I liked the job, I liked the team, and I was young (or young enough) to feel the urge to prove myself. So I learned fast, raised my hand when there was an opportunity, and made a point out of being the first one in and the last one out. Literally.
Whether that’s really the best way to build a reputation is a question for another time. I enjoyed the praise and was confident that I was doing well.
The life-changing bit of my story is the first time I messed up in a seemingly irreversible way. While I don’t remember the details, it comes down to a large amount of money and that my actions had a negative impact on one of our clients.
Time stopped the moment I realized what had happened. I felt my heartbeat in my ears, which turned red from shame. Adrenalin was pumping through my veins. As I stared at my laptop, paralyzed, I conceded that my corporate career had ended. There’s no coming back from this. All that work I put in to build my reputation? Destroyed with a click of a button.
I accepted my fate and asked my manager whether we could speak in private. I didn’t try to justify it or explain it away; I told her that I didn’t pay enough attention and that my actions would have unfortunate effects.
Here’s the bit that confused me: while she acknowledged the fact that there’s some cleaning up that needs to be done, she thanked me. Both for owning up to it and for sparing her the surprise of getting the news from either the CFO or the customer. Now – she said – we both had jobs to do: I had to try and undo what happened, while she had to call the CFO and probably the customer.
Turns out, while I made a reputation for myself as a bright fellow who gets things done, by holding myself accountable, I established myself as someone who could be trusted.
There’s something special about the psychology of owning your mistakes. It’s very counter-intuitive how it can provide you with an opportunity to leave a lasting impression and show what kind of person you really are. Small but noteworthy caveat: you must avoid making the same mistake twice or often, as that builds a whole different type of reputation. But other than that, the point here is how you handle the aftermath. Do you sweep it under the rug, hoping no one will notice? Or do you stand up straight and be upfront about what went wrong and the part you played in it?
What kind of people would you want to be surrounded with? Yeah, me too.
The thing is, you’ll have all kinds of people in your team – some, who’ll keep themselves accountable, some who’ll try to sweep things under the rug no matter what, but most will act based on their environment. Or, to make it more personal: based on the environment you create for them as their leader.
Nurturing a culture of accountability creates a sense of ownership and commitment, which in turn leads to an increase in motivation and teamwork while also encouraging a growth mindset. Done right, your team members will take responsibility for their actions, decisions, and commitments and collectively own the outcomes, both positive and negative.
If you’re not intentional about holding your team accountable or act in a way that discourages your team members from taking ownership, that will negatively affect trust, morale, and performance and give way to conflict and blame of the finger-pointing variety.
So here are
The top 3 things you can do
to hold your team accountable and create a culture of accountability:
- Forget about whose fault it is
- Stay consistent – even if you’re tempted not to
- Provide clarity and transparency
1. Forget about whose fault it is
When it comes to the “how” of holding people accountable, most people seem to tense up, preparing themselves for one of those infamous difficult discussions. There’s this sense of impending conflict. After all, holding someone accountable usually means someone either didn’t do something or they did it poorly.
If you also feel this way, I’d argue that you think of accountability in terms of blame and fault. It might not be conscious, but you can only have a sense of conflict if you feel that there will be opposition and that you and the person (or people) you need to hold accountable won’t agree about something.
But you’re not there to be anyone’s keeper – everyone on your team is an adult. And you should treat them as adults, not children, to be admonished, punished, or shamed into doing something. By the way, don’t do this to children either.
The frame of mind you need to adopt to change that feeling of impending conflict, that feeling of “ooh, this is going to be a difficult discussion,” is one of empathy and support. Similar to the coaching approach we discussed last time.
If you’re having that discussion because you want to help, truly, genuinely help, there’s little chance for friction.
Now empathy and support don’t mean letting things slide. But they do mean focusing on the future rather than the past. While it is essential to get the full context, it shouldn’t be at the expense of looking ahead, finding solutions, or addressing the root cause of an issue. When you start the discussion by asking what happened and following up with questions about how they feel about the situation and whether there’s anything they’d do differently, you give your team members a chance to open up and be brave enough, vulnerable enough to take responsibility.
If you treat your team like adults and focus on empathy and support instead of blame and punishment, you build a culture of trust, openness, and a willingness to learn and grow.
Sometimes you’ll have a situation where the person is unwilling to take responsibility despite your best coaching questions. They just don’t see the issue or why it would be their fault. “What’s the big deal?” To be on the safe side, and to keep with the established approach of helpfulness, assume that they’re missing a piece of information to come to the correct conclusion. So you need to help provide that missing piece.
There’s a relatively rare situation where you’ll have someone who simply disagrees with the expectations or goals they must work towards. I think it’s still worth having an open conversation about the whys. It’s a win-win: they will feel heard, and you get to understand their point of view, which could hold something you haven’t considered yet.
However the conversation progresses, you need to – and this is my second point – stay consistent, even if you’re tempted not to.
2. Stay consistent – even if you’re tempted not to
Now, in the context of holding your team accountable, you need to stay consistent in two ways. At least.
First of all: expectations. You need to both set clear expectations and then uphold them. Whether they’re necessitated by the business, decided by you, or developed through a coaching discussion, every member of your team needs to know the extent and quality of what they need to do.
Ok, so obviously, if the commitment was for 100% and instead only 50% happens, that’s a no-brainer, right? You need to step in and talk about what happened. But what would you do if your team delivered 95 or even 99 percent?
Do you let it slide, or do you call it out?
When discussing vulnerability a few weeks ago, we said that you show rather than tell what you think is wrong and what is right, what is acceptable behavior and what is not. The same applies to accountability: if you tell your team that 100% is what they need to do but don’t say anything when you get less than that, your communication is clear: less is enough.
It won’t happen one day to the other, but it is a slippery slope. You might find yourself in a situation where your team isn’t meeting your expectations, and it’s increasingly awkward to call it out. This is why feedback needs to be immediate on an individual and a team level.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for you to be a tyrant or a micromanager; far from it.
Before you go out of your way to list everything that still needs to be done, I’d start with the 99 times longer list of achievements and successes. Recognize progress, and then look ahead to what needs to be done. You don’t need to be mean about it. You just need to be consistent about communicating and upholding expectations.
The other way to stay consistent is to hold all your people accountable equally.
While the people in your team will be different – different personalities, priorities, and of course, different levels of performance – the rules you agree to and uphold must apply to everyone. Playing favorites can damage or even break trust not just with you but between your people. Consistency in holding everyone on your team accountable (including yourself) encourages open communication. It connects back to psychological safety and how people feel safe to voice their concerns, ask questions, share ideas, and are not afraid of owning their mistakes and being accountable.
Which brings me to my third point: you need to provide clarity and transparency.
3. Provide clarity and transparency
An unavoidably human mindset is that we all are the main characters of our own movies. This is why something can be a justifiable decision when it’s ours but an obvious mistake when someone else does it. Part of this psychology explains how in a group setting, everyone will think that they’re doing more than others. No surprise: you see how much you work, but relatively speaking, you have no idea how much others put in.
This can impede accountability. “Of course, I made a mistake; I work more than anyone else.” People can resent each other if they think others are doing less but are not called out for their mistakes. Especially during periods of high stress – be it year-end closing, busy period, or just too much work for not enough people.
What can counter this is clarity and transparency on an individual and group level.
You need to check in with every one of your team members regularly – not for you to do a performance review, but for them to be able to discuss what they’re doing, ask for help with any challenges, and recalibrate goals as needed. Speaking of goals, there will be some that they can commit to as it fits them and others where you need to be specific about deadlines, scope, and quality. If last episode’s example with the apples comes to mind, that’s for a good reason. These meetings allow your team members to hold themselves accountable and enable you to ensure everyone is on track.
On a group level, on the one hand, I’d set up regular team meetings which focus on team goals and the future and align efforts in the same direction. On the other, I’d schedule retrospectives (even if you don’t work in an agile framework) so the team can discuss what went well, what could’ve gone better, and whether there are any questions or uncertainties.
Ideally, if the data is there, I’d make progress and effort available for everyone to see. Whatever someone feels about how much work they did, it’s difficult to argue with numbers. Whatever your metrics, dashboards like this enable you to pinpoint potential areas of accountability while incentivizing team members to work together because everyone is looking at the big picture.
Recap
However you go about it, part of your job is to come up with, agree on and uphold standards, expectations, and requirements, creating a balance between the needs of your team and the business.
To do that effectively, you must be intentional about holding your team accountable and fostering an environment where your team members want to hold themselves accountable.
For that, you need to forget about fault and blame and focus on empathy and support; you need to stay consistent, even when it’s tempting to let things slide; and you need to provide clarity and transparency to focus everyone’s attention on the team’s efforts instead of their own.
What’s next?
Ok, so what’s next? Where do we go from here?
We talked about how everyone is the main character of their own movie. If you ask me, this can make some situations quite difficult as two people can hold equally valid beliefs – at least from their points of view. As a leader, another thing you need to be intentional about is conflict resolution.
This is what I’d like to discuss with you next time.
If you’re interested, make sure you hit subscribe and share this episode if you think it would benefit someone you know.
Thanks for listening; I’m truly grateful for your time and attention.
Talk to you soon.