In this article, we will see how to hold people accountable on their job and some of the easy steps to create positive culture of accountability. When you hold people accountable, it makes them to being responsible, holding ownership, and achieving the goals.
Let’s go through a small story about accountability:
This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.
Funny? but, serious. As a manager, the accountability starts with you, if you want to create a positive accountability culture, make the expectations clear to everyone. Accountability is built on clear expectations; expectation is the foundation for accountability.
Some managers are not comfortable with accountability of their own team, they give under performers’ work to the good performers. They afraid that people may complain or quite the job if they hold them strongly for accountability. This may lead, under performers taking advantages and believing that you are not caring about goals and deadlines.
Encourage your team to hold them accountable
When you encourage people to take responsibility and hold them accountable, they feel that they are valued and engaged. It leads to high level of morality, job satisfaction and producing better performance, and they show clear accountability. When you hold your team accountable, it benefits them, and your organization.
Tip: Avoid controlling people, unless situation demands, kindly avoid micromanagement.
How to hold people accountable – Simple steps
- It starts with you, always.
- Define job description and be clear with expectations
- Freeze goals to measure the performance
- Tie with commitment
- Assessments at regular interval
- Reward people for their good efforts
Always it starts with you – Hold yourself accountable
If you expect your team to perform well and to meet the expectations, you must show them positive attitude and higher professionalism. Admire them by setting an example and being a role model.
Define job description and be clear with expectations
Job description is a dynamic document, which connects with your organization’s vision. A good job description provides a clear and precise idea about what is expected from the team member.
Your job description will answer what are the key responsibilities and priorities, your key results area or critical success factors.
Freeze goals to measure the performance
Be clear and transparent about how you want to measure the performance. This is a base to assess any performance gap. Knowing the Gap between what is your target to achieve and what you achieved, will help to frame work your action plans.
Freeze goals using SMART approach, they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based
Tie with commitment
Schedule a meeting with your team, and convey them how important it is to achieve those goals, and how it is connected with organization’s success.
The mutual discussion and the agreement on the goals defined are important to tie your team with commitment.
Assessments at regular interval
Just because of poor follow-up, people end up with shortfalls. Blaming at the end is useless and will not benefit in any dimension. Set regular meetings to review the rate of progress and construct intermediate action plans to catchup the gaps. Feedback works best during the regular assessments.
Assess, find gap, train people, support, and achieve goals together.
Reward people for their good efforts
Think about what you can do to reward your team. Leaders need to say thank you, small gestures are often remembered longer than financial rewards. Leaders need to be absolutely clear about what they value and communicate to the team. Reward the team in relevance to the efforts, maybe it is newer, but consider gifting your team a wonderful fragrance (Browse premium gifting collections here) which creates a personalized impact and motivates them. Motivation is what pushes us to achieve our goals.
Wrap-up summary – How to hold people accountable
Be consistent when you set performance standards, when you evaluate them and when you reward people. As a manger, accountability starts with you, holding accountability does not mean controlling people or hover over them. Instead, you make sure that they achieve the goals, change people’s negative thinking to a positive thinking. Holding individuals accountable, improve their results, and teams’ as well.