Your project deadline is looming, but the problems just keep mounting. Feedback isn’t being acted on. People keep missing tasks. Nobody is taking any responsibility for the delays.
This nightmare scenario, which can feel excruciating, tends to be the result of a lack of accountability.
The Impact of Accountability for Teams
When a team is accountable, it performs more effectively and efficiently, and, perhaps obviously, they achieve better results. They produce more high-quality work and find it easier to meet deadlines. Clarity around task ownership means creative workflows are more likely to stay on track. An accountable team also helps foster a more cooperative and collaborative workplace culture.
Building a culture of accountability without veering into micromanagement is challenging, though, because it requires balancing trust and oversight, ensuring team members feel empowered rather than scrutinized. Micromanagement can stifle autonomy, leading to disengagement and diminished morale.
When you do get it right, though, with more trust and open communication between colleagues, it facilitates effective collaboration. Toxicity is less likely when everyone is focused on pulling their weight and any issues that do occur can be immediately and respectfully addressed .
All of this not only increases the team’s efficiency but has a positive effect on employee engagement and wellbeing as well.
What Accountability Should Look Like
It can be hard to pin down what accountability should look like in practice. We’ve gathered some signs that your team is nailing accountability, and some actionable tips for encouraging these productive behaviors if you’re not quite there yet.
Aligning on Ownership
With accountability, there’s a clear understanding of everyone’s individual role and how it all fits into the bigger picture. Everyone is aware of not only their own responsibilities, but what other’s responsibilities are and what the team is trying to achieve.
A holistic approach enables a team, as a whole and as individuals, to take ownership of tasks and desired outcomes. There’s a clear understanding of the impact their actions have on their teammates and the project overall. It also means they’re better placed to take the initiative when it comes to solving problems and identifying opportunities to add value.
People are more likely to take ownership when everyone involved is clearly communicating expectations. For every project, agree on objectives and desired outcomes as a team, then set goals for each team member (including the metrics you’ll use to gage success). People will be far more engaged if they’ve been involved in defining the goals and objectives from the start and can see how their work directly contributes.
Time Management and Prioritization
People who are holding themselves to a high level of accountability can more effectively prioritize their tasks, meet their deadlines, and provide feedback in a timely way, all without being constantly prompted.
Poor time management isn’t necessarily a failure of willpower or commitment, though – there are complex neurological and environmental reasons why people struggle with it. To help your team tackle them, you can:
- Support people to experiment with different goal-tracking and time management strategies to find the ones that work for them.
- Have discussions as a team to identify distractions and time sinks.
- Have management take accountability, too – is there a chain-of-command snag keeping employees from performing at their best?
- Invite people to share techniques they find helpful.
Investing in software to provide systems and structure can help people stay on track more easily. For instance, if you use an online proofing tool like ReviewStudio to manage your feedback cycle, you have the ability to set feedback deadlines and assign tasks to specific people.
Clear Communication
Transparency and effective communication are another hallmark of accountability. For instance, if there’s an unavoidable delay, communicating that as soon as possible ensures nobody is taken by surprise.
Start by making sure there’s a centralized space for project-related updates (like a designated Slack channel or automated approval workflow in ReviewStudio) so that important updates don’t get buried in an endless email chain.
Regular check-ins get your team into the habit of providing updates on what they’re doing and how it’s going.
Accepting Feedback
A readiness to grow and learn is another sign that someone is holding themselves accountable. Teams are focused on doing the best job they can and are likely to be more open to constructive feedback as a result.
Try to standardize your team’s feedback process. Create a framework that will help people to embrace it as part of the workflow, rather than feeling ambushed.
You could also discuss what quality feedback looks like as a team. If you can agree on guidelines for how to make sure feedback is specific and considerate, it should make it easier to act on.
Learning From Mistakes
People taking accountability also readily admit to mistakes, failures, or missed objectives. They do this without making excuses, while also ensuring that they understand all the contributing factors to prevent it from happening again.
Creating a psychologically safe environment is key to encouraging people to be open about setbacks. You can do this by:
- Make sure people understand the distinction between preventable mistakes , instructional failures or happenstance.
- Focus on finding solutions, not on assigning blame.
- Help everyone treat mistakes as valuable sources of data and chances to learn.
Your Role as a Leader
Accountability is for everyone on a team or organization, top to bottom, bottom to top. While giving teams the guidance, resources, and tools they need, leaders that model accountability are perhaps the most effective means of building it into a culture.
As staff from the NeuroLeadership Institute explain: “When employees are told to do one thing and see their leaders doing another, the mismatched expectations can register as a threat.” That neurological threat can then cause workers to disengage.
People are far more likely to hold themselves to account if they see that leaders are dedicated to taking ownership, meeting deadlines, communicating clearly, and so on.
Balancing Accountability and Autonomy
While people need structure and clarity to help them fulfil requirements, they also need to feel that they’re trusted to do their work well. That includes having the autonomy to make decisions and to make full use of their skills, expertise, and creativity.
Accountability and autonomy don’t always have to be in opposition. Managed well, autonomy can encourage accountability because people feel greater ownership over their tasks when they’re trusted to find the best way forward.
Michael Mankins and Eric Garton say the key is to set clear expectations about the what and why – but leave the how up to the team. “Employees and teams know they will be held accountable, and they know where the guardrails are. They understand the objectives, and they have a great deal of freedom in determining how to reach them within those guardrails.”
In other words, give people the knowledge, guidance, and resources to do a task well but then trust them to find the best way to achieve it.
Creating a Culture of Accountability
To create a culture of accountability, focus on setting clear expectations, establishing robust systems for feedback and project management, and nurturing an open-minded culture.
By clearly aligning on the purpose, timeline, and desired outcomes up front you can then leave the details of how best to achieve them up to your team. This way, you’ll empower everyone to take accountability while giving them enough autonomy to do their best work.
