By nature, as leaders, we all know what others should do, but the biggest issue with leadership in Sri Lanka is that leaders are the least bothered about what they should do.
This is a common phenomenon across all fields not only in business; but also in sports, politics, media, academic or art. If you expect accountability from your followers, as any leader should, you need to set the tone by holding yourself accountable for what you need to deliver as a leader.
Accountability starts with you. Hold yourself accountable and you will show others what you expect of them. Aim high. And model how to take ownership for your actions, and how to not be afraid of trying and falling short. Accept when you fail and nurture accountability by rewarding others for honesty and integrity.
To make people accountable and grow a sense of accountability, it should cascade through your organization. In addition to setting the tone by holding yourself accountable, encourage others to take ownership for their actions and for acting with integrity and honesty.
Accountability in the workplace is something every business leader wishes to have. It has a clear link to higher work performance, improved competency and commitment to work, high employee morale, and work satisfaction. It also promotes creativity and innovation because the employee is more invested in the future of the organization by being obligated to constantly improve.
Ownership
Ownership is about taking the initiative and doing the right thing for the business. It’s about taking responsibility for results and not assuming it’s someone else’s responsibility.
At minimum, taking ownership means that if you recognize something is material to achieving results, you take the initiative to bring it to the attention of the right people.
If ownership is about taking initiative, accountability is about follow through and getting done what you said you’d get done. It’s recognizing that other team members are dependent on the results of your work and not letting them down.
It’s about good, open, pro-active communication to keep team members informed on the status of your commitments because you respect that the results of your work has a direct impact on their ability to make their own commitments. Ultimately, when team members consistently demonstrate ownership and accountability, trust is formed.
Without accountability, execution suffers. The first is that when we don’t hold ourselves accountable to getting work done well and on time, there’s a tendency to become even more lenient and forgiving for slips.
A day becomes a week, a week a month. If it happens once, it’s that little bit more acceptable for it to happen again. The second is that when we don’t hold ourselves accountable, the impact is exponential.
Your delay becomes your team’s delay. The work they had planned gets impacted and that work potentially has further downstream effects.
Foundation
The post, The Importance of Accountability on Teams, explains the lesson of punctuality on the Canadian ski team: when 10 people are waiting for you, and if you are two minutes late – it’s not just two minutes lost – the team has lost 22 minutes
Make accountability a part of your team’s normal way of operating. Talk about it, share ideas, come to a common consensus about what accountability means in the workplace, and then use that as a foundation everyone works from as they make accountability an organizational goal.
An important step here is to break things down into meaningful goals and measurable metrics for everyone in the organization. Without proper goals, it will be nearly impossible to effectively enforce accountability. Goals provide clear expectations for everyone on what’s expected.
The less room for ambiguity the better – so goals need to be specific and measurable.
In a team environment, this is especially important because of the dependency on each other’s work and the exponential impact of not meeting expectations.
Another important outcome of having goals is defining what is not going to be a priority.
One of the biggest reasons we fail to live up to our commitments is because we put too much on our plate and become de-focused on key priorities. Goals need to be realistic.
We can’t create accountability if what we’re asking people to be accountable for, isn’t realistic or achievable.