Most leaders would welcome more accountability from their teams. They would prefer to be an empowering leader, giving people their trust and autonomy to deliver the job.
I'm sure everyone would love everything to be delivered to a high quality standard on time, every time!
The problem is that expectations are often wildly different between leaders and their teams. Unknowingly, assumptions are made about the extent of knowledge, capability or confidence that team members possess.
This is potentially due to the ‘curse of knowledge’, whereby something obvious to you may be profound to others. This in turn leads to the omission of key information or support when delegating responsibility.
It's also often due to a lack of clarity on expectations, timing, outputs and rationale for the work.
To enable more accountability, aim for an abundance of clarity on:
1. Expectations: Specify the job/project/outputs in detail. Show an example if possible and ask for a replay of understanding.
2. Quality: Allow time to review and return for completion if the quality is lacking, so that the person develops the skill and understanding for next time.
3. Direction: Even the most talented people need clear direction and support with new responsibilities. Just because they're smart/experienced/confident, doesn't mean that they are clear on everything.
4. Ability: Many people are capable, but not confident, so need support/validation/encouragement to execute. Show them your faith in their abilities.
5. Mistakes: Often, people are very fearful of getting it wrong and will avoid a task rather than make a mistake. Encourage trying, and reassure that you've got their back if a mistake is made.
6. Decision making authority: Who can decide/approve what.
7. Responsibilities: Who's doing what.
8. Accountability: Who's ultimately accountable.
9. Purpose: The importance of both the work itself and the contribution of the people involved.
Using RACI helps enormously, as does time spent planning and executing effective delegation.
Accountability is quite complex, but worth some effort up front to reap the rewards.
What else helps to build accountability?
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