Transform Empty Accountability into Real Accountability

Accountability has long had a finger-pointing overtone that often triggers a fight or flight response (Read: defensiveness). There’s a sense of being reprimanded for what hasn’t been done.

Being “held accountable” conjures dangling feet as a gangster type holds you up against a wall.

It’s also a empty catchall buzzword – almost always directed toward others. “We’d be more successful if only our team was more accountable.” 


And yet the reason accountability often gets an eye-roll, is it feels condescending and demeaning. When most of us agree to do things, when we take on commitments, it’s with the best of intentions. We think we can. We want to. We hope to. We strive to. We desire to complete said task by the time we said we would. We’re not liars, deceivers, connivers, agreeing to take something on with no intention of following through.

So how did we get here? Where we desperately want accountability in our organizations and yet, it feels elusive. 

5 Ways to Transform Accountability

1) Change the definition:

Accountability, said another way, is the ABILITY to COUNT. When we choose to be responsible – ABLE to RESPOND, then we have a chance to make a meaningful difference through our work.

• A chance to create progress
• A chance to help, to support, to create, to demonstrate, to alleviate, to revitalize, to expand, to open, to simplify…
• A chance to forward the meaningfulness of what we’re up to in the world as a workplace community

Real accountability is not about imposing punishments on people when they mess up. It's about getting in the habit of giving an account of performance on an ongoing basis. For the individual, it's the ability and willingness to follow through on your own promises and commitments.

2) Change the manager approach and employee experience:

Accountability is often a top down experience. As the parent scolds the child for not doing chores, the manager questions the employee for not doing tasks.

As a manager, accountability is your responsibility to actively notice your people. To witness them – to praise their successes when they are able to respond and when their work makes a meaningful contribution. As well as support, guide or direct them in their challenges when they are struggling or not bringing their “A” game.

3) Change ownership and add peer witnessing:

Implement “Cadence of Accountability,” a rhythmic meeting process that comes from the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Once a week small work teams come together for a 10-15 minute standing meeting in which each individual self-defines and declares the 1-3 tasks they are committing to accomplishing that week to strategically move forward the current team goal. And they report on their follow through (or lack thereof) on the task(s) they declared the week before. This simple process is great on several levels – my favorite of which is empowering peer pressure and support.

4) Change the context from morality to workability:

Accountability isn’t about being wrong or right, or about someone being good or bad. It’s simply about follow through on getting the work that needs to be done, done. When there’s a lack of alignment between commitments and completion, refer to the “Whole Integrity Checklist.” 

5) Think of accountability as a dial with five steps (Or notches):

You start at the low end and then turn up the dial if necessary.

It’s the first three steps — what are called the mention, the invitation, and the conversation — that most managers skip over, leading to employee disengagement and cultural stagnation. The last two steps, what are called the boundary and the limit, cover the ground of PIPs and termination, albeit in a far more humanistic and supportive frame. 

Fortunately, most managers have to use these more extreme steps only rarely; unfortunately, too many managers jump right to them, bypassing the first three steps and leaving employees blindsided by tough feedback that too frequently falls on deaf ears.

The first three steps cover the essential skills of naming, framing, and unpacking performance issues in a way that quickly moves from surface-level events to meaningful and actionable personal growth themes:

The mention. The first step is naming small but problematic behaviors in an informal way in real time. By pulling an employee aside to put words to what you’re noticing, instead of waiting for a crisis, you start to build a relationship of mutual respect. You show that you genuinely care about their growth by acknowledging that they’re overwhelmed instead of pretending you don’t see and by helping them find their contribution to a conflict instead of letting it fester.

The invitation. We’re great at seeing patterns in other people’s behavior; it’s harder to see those patterns in ourselves. The invitation is taking the time to help your employee connect the dots. For example, let’s say you saw typos in a team member’s customer email on Monday, they seemed disengaged in a team meeting on Wednesday, and then there was a miscommunication with a teammate on Thursday. Ask them what those events might have in common, or point to a deeper theme.

The conversation. This is the place to go deeper, by asking questions that guide people to the “aha!” moment, when they discover for themselves how changing this pattern at work would have positive impacts at home. It might sound something like this: “We’ve been talking about you taking on too many projects and the impact that’s having on the quality of the most important ones. I’m not asking for you to share what you come up with here, but one question that helps me is, ‘Where does this pattern show up in my personal life, and what would be the benefit if I stopped?’”

The key to building the bridge between work performance and personal growth is to focus on impacts. How are people showing up in a way that is making life harder, more complicated, or more frustrating for the people around them? It’s your job to guide them to make those connections. It’s their job to do the work from there.

In short, be observant and address problems that you see. Follow up with your employee to let them know it’s important. Then walk it down with them — to the place where the line between personal and professional growth disappears. Not because you’ve gone over that line, but because you’re treating them as a whole person.

At work as in life, we all need the people who care about us to reflect us back to ourselves, to be centered enough in themselves to let us work through our initial defensiveness and excuses so that we can let them go and get back to the work of becoming a better version of ourselves. Accountability can help do that.

In case you missed it, check out our related articles: 

How to Get Clarity, Accountability and Results in 5 Minutes

Accountability: How the Best Managers Get People To Take Ownership

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com
Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.