Managers shape the culture of their teams and workplaces in countless ways by playing both administrative and leadership roles. And they require a diverse set of skills to be successful.
One of the most important skills is the ability to hold your team accountable for their actions. In other words, their ability to spread accountability around the workplace.
Although this is the skill you should be looking for in your managers and supervisors, in reality, nearly half of all managers are bad at accountability. This might happen due to a number of reasons, but the most common are managers who dislike confrontation and let employees avoid accountability at work.
This is something that directly affects your all-around employee performance. As an example:
Let’s say a salesperson is not currently performing well and isn’t able to meet his sales goals. Without the encouragement and push to improve, he may feel ignored, discouraged, and devalued, which won’t help at all in improving his performance and may even lead him to quit.
Another example is when you notice that an employee is making the same mistakes over and over again, or he/she is slacking off while working. As a supervisor, your role is to intervene and correct this behavior. Otherwise, the lack of accountability not only will remain the same working but might even spread to the rest of the team.
Not holding one person in your team accountable is equal to giving the OK to the other employees that lowering your working standards is allowed. This causes the rest of the team to resent the low-performing employee and his or her manager because they have to shoulder more work to make up for their teammate’s deficiencies.
Fortunately, there’s always time to turn this trend around and start managing your team the right way. Here’s how you can make sure everyone on your team is pulling their weight equally.
Set SMART Goals
Clarity is the heart of accountability, and SMART goals are the tool you’ll use in order to achieve it.
It’s a fact that a lot of accountability issues begin when you fail to clearly define what success looks like for your team members. In other words, to achieve the set goals, your employees should be aware from the very beginning what the desired outcomes are, how those outcomes will be measured, and how your team member plans to achieve those outcomes.
Remember that your employees’ goals and/or expectations can’t be defined only by you. Make sure that they are a product of your conversation with your higher-ups and your employee so that there isn’t any confusion defining exactly “when do I reach my goals”.
The tool we recommend you use in order to improve your team’s performance, communication, and motivation is to create written SMART goals.
SMART stands for:
S – Specific
M –Measurable
A –Attainable
R –Relevant
T –Timely
Developing SMART goals is a whole topic in itself, so there’s much more to learn than what is mentioned here. Just know that this tactic leaves little to the imagination and provides clear communication between employees and supervisors.
Don’t Avoid Difficult Conversations
In a strategic war, assuming the worst outcome is the best way to be prepared, and have your enemies on the check. For the regular manager or supervisor, this might seem like a very stressful task.
And that’s totally common because you’re not at war, and your team is not the enemy but your allies. Holding your team accountable doesn’t have to be confrontational. There are ways to talk to your team and find out what happened while looking for a solution without being rash or hard on them.
Let’s quickly remember that accountability is not fear, reprimands, or something that only occurs once a project has been completed.
We highly recommend you put yourself in your employees’ shoes when having difficult conversations, and start with a specific example like: “Mike, I noticed that XX happened. What’s your perspective of what went wrong here?”
Seek to understand why certain actions were taken throughout the conversation and try to give as much follow-up or constructive criticism as possible.
Address the Poor Performance
Lack of accountability spreads quickly, so make sure to cut it completely as soon as you spot it. After all, nothing is likely to change unless you confront the problem.
Use Step 2 and figure out the why behind the poor performance. This is where you need to find a way to make your leadership style match the situation.
You have plenty of options at your disposal. Think about retraining, coaching, better delegation of responsibilities, verbal and written messages or banns, etc. Be sure to use the right option depending on the situation. As an example:
A new employee who’s not performing well might need additional training. This may cause an experienced employee to have too much on their plate, causing more issues. So here you’ll use retraining and also make sure to delegate responsibilities more accurately.
Regardless of the situation, the most important thing is to focus on step 1 and give clarity to your employees. You need to be clear about the action or behavior you expect from the employee going forward and have suggestions for how to make that happen.
If, after this, they’re still underperforming, harsher conditions might be applied. Such as important warnings and even firing.
Consider your Employees’ Feelings
Your job as a supervisor is to be kind, find the cause of the problem, and establish a mutual solution. Remember that not everyone has bad intentions and that employees sometimes don’t understand the impact of their behavior.
Let’s say that one of your employees shows up late to work every day. Obviously, you have to remember him/her the importance of punctuality, but this doesn’t mean you should avoid steps 2 and 3.
Start with a conversation in order to find the root of the problem. When you find it, ask your employee about their point of view and try to understand it, and follow up by addressing the root of the problem while finding a mutual solution, taking your employee’s feelings into account.
As an example, maybe the reason that this employee shows up late to work, it’s because he/she has to take his/her children to school, and up till recently has been working in a position that starts at 9:00. However, in this new position that starts at 8:00, the problems begin to appear.
As a supervisor, you need to start making changes to either change that employee’s schedule or approve a flexible schedule. Based on the position and your company’s policies, you should be able to find a solution.
Let’s not forget that throughout your conversation, concentrate on maintaining the employee’s self-esteem by showing concern for the individual as well as for the company’s needs.
Follow Up
These are the steps that all our supervisors apply at Freelance Latin America, and the last one is to always remember to follow up. If you only mention a problem and never follow it up, by next week your employee surely will go back to their previous behavior.
So, remember to follow up with your employees. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be time-consuming. You can stop by the following morning to ask if the employee has any other questions or ideas. Then, follow up again in a week or so and ask how things are going.
Maybe you’ll need to make some adjustments in order to help them reach their goals. Still, remember that once they do, praise them so that they keep their motivation up and keep doing a great job.
These were our 5 steps to improve accountability in the workplace if you feel like you still need some more tips on how to further improve your team we recommend you to check out this article:
> How to Improve Critical Thinking at Work
Developing critical thinking is important not only to employees but also to supervisors!
Thank you for reading, and remember we are always at your service!
See more articles by Ender Cárdenas.
