A Culture of 200% Accountability Is Required When Returning to Work In An Ongoing Pandemic

States and businesses are starting to "open up." Many people are returning to the "central" workplace but in a state of heightened vigilance. The "new normal" will be risk mitigation, not risk elimination because there is still a lot we do not know about the coronavirus.

Successful businesses will develop social protocols suited to the Covid-19 environment. Public health experts recommend that organizations rigorously practice social distancing and hygiene habits. Their guidelines include creating permanent spaced work areas to enforce social distancing. Airlines may need to issue face masks and stagger seating. Effective leaders will change meeting patterns to rely on virtual contact as a default not a temporary inconvenience. Hygiene prompts and associated cleaning products will be ubiquitous. And none of this will succeed without a culture of 200% accountability.

Two-hundred percent accountability means that not only is each employee 100% accountable for following the social protocols, they are also 100% accountable for enforcing the standard with their coworkers.

In a Harvard Business Review article, titled  The Best Teams Hold Themselves Accountable, Joseph Grenny discovered that teams break down in performance roughly as follows:

• In the weakest teams, there is no accountability.
• In mediocre teams, bosses are the source of accountability.
• In high performance teams, peers manage the vast majority of performance problems with one another.

Coaching your people to hold their peers accountable is a tricky but doable proposition.

Peer accountability differs from top-down, authoritative accountability because it requires and breeds transparency. Peers holding each other accountable requires trust, clear expectations, role modeling, assertive communication, and a spirit of helping not judging.

Build Trust

Peer-to-peer accountability can only be established when you trust someone. It is so much easier receiving constructive criticism from someone you trust and believe has good intentions. You would be surprised how much more time you have to get things done when people are transparent with each other and don’t have to second guess everyone’s motives or sincerity.

Work on building trust among your team first because being able to hold each other accountable won’t feel like another initiative, but rather a natural progression of a high trust team.

Click here to discover the essential activities for building trust.

Set Expectations.

Let your team know up front that you want and expect them to hold you and others accountable.

Click here to read about setting expectations.

Model the Way

You cannot expect your employees to be direct with each other if you can’t be direct with them.

Teach Assertive Communication Skills

Communicating using the assertive style (care and candor) is as a key principle in creating healthy work forces. Being assertive fits perfectly when trying to establish peer-to-peer accountability.

Communicating assertively with a coworker about a social protocol lapse sounds like, "I noticed you struggling with the social distancing protocol, I'm wondering what I can do to help you?" If the coworker replies, "nothing," you simply say, "let me know if you change your mind because I want all of us to be safe." The tone of the assertive communication is neutral.  No judgment, blame or shame.

Click here to learn about assertive communication.

Encourage A Spirit of Helping, Not Judging

Here’s the thing most people don’t understand: Accountability in the workplace doesn’t have to be painful, although it's not easy.

Too many people associate accountability with a negative confrontation involving a lot of harsh attitudes and biting messages, such as the following:

• What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you wearing a mask? (Subtext: "You selfish buffoon.")
•         You’re letting us down.
•         Are you unable to keep a deadline?
•         Why is staying on schedule so hard for your group?
•         The work you’re doing is not up to this team’s standards.
•         We need to find somebody else, obviously…

Of course, the actual words that are used may be more professionally appropriate, but these are the messages that are too often conveyed when trying to hold others accountable.

The foundation of trust and healthy conflict quickly erode, and the team returns to a place of hostility, resentment, and distrust. The backstabbing and silo behavior will likely escalate.

The good news is that all this can be avoided by asking a simple question.

“How Can I Help You?”

It’s such a simple question, yet it’s one of the most effective ways to hold teammates accountable at work. Most people in business (or in many other life relationships, for that matter) fail to grasp the sense of duty and of willing accountability that you foster by offering to help another person.

By offering support to get a struggling coworker to comply with the social protocols, get back on schedule, help them through a rough patch, or by providing them with information or knowledge they need to get the job done, you reach them on an emotional level. They are challenged. They can re-engage.

Teammates who have received such support from their colleagues often feel a renewed obligation to perform at their best and will strive to “pay it back.” They’ll experience a natural desire to up their game and pull their own weight.

Here’s the truly amazing part — those were exactly the behaviors desired in the first place. Your teammates are back on track.

Being direct while still caring for the people you work with can feel super uncomfortable and messy.  However, as Henry Cloud said so well, “If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance (Such as the risky behavior of the not following the new social protocols) and attitudes.”

Ready to take the next step in developing a culture of 200% accountability? 

We are offering management teams a complimentary 90-minute virtual training titled: "Developing Accountable People."  Click here to download the flyer. 

Participants will receive a SMART Coaching Map: Holding Teammates Accountable with tips to help your team hold each other accountable in a principled and positive way.

CLICK HERE for a related post: 5 Ways to Transform Empty Accountability Into Real Accountability

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
Email: petercmclees@gmail.com   
Mobile:323-854-1713

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