‘Accountability’ isn’t a 4-letter word, but ‘fail’ is
In an even marginally successful organization, accountability results in far more opportunities to celebrate than it does in criticism.
When you hear the word “accountability,” chances are you cringe a bit and start thinking about having difficult conversations and critiquing your team members. And that can be part of accountability. The ironic thing is that a culture of accountability prevents most of those types of conversations from being necessary.
Every role on your team is critically important; there are results you must get from each. If those results don’t happen, the team and the business suffer. If you don’t hold the individuals filling those roles accountable for making necessary contributions, the message is that they, and their role, aren’t that important.
Related: 3 ways to foster accountability through engagement
Imagine if the leader sat five people down, asked four of them to discuss their progress towards their goals, but didn’t ask the fifth. I promise you that the fifth person would walk away feeling as if they weren’t important and that their contributions didn’t matter.
A healthier cadence
Perhaps people have such negative connotations associated with accountability because it often only happens once something has gone horribly wrong. Accountability should be part of regular and frequent conversations that take place among the team.
It isn’t about looking for reasons to criticize; it’s about monitoring progress towards goals and ensuring each team member carries their weight. By doing so, the opportunities to celebrate that progress become more apparent for individuals and the collective team.
In an even marginally successful organization, accountability results in far more opportunities to celebrate than it does in criticism.
Believe it or not, your team wants to be held accountable—especially the highest performers. They want to know that their efforts are important, recognized and celebrated.
Building a foundation of healthy accountability
The steps to successfully introducing and maintaining a healthy culture of accountability aren’t difficult to follow. Because agencies tend to hold their salespeople the least accountable of any team member, I will use that role in my examples, where appropriate.
1. Define the key results you need from each role on your team. Stay focused on the two or three that are most important.
Producer example – The key results would be to 1. write new business, and 2. retain current clients.
2. For each of the results above, identify the primary behaviors necessary to produce results. Again, stay focused on two or three important behaviors.
Producer example – (using the new business example) For a producer to write new business, they must regularly add new opportunities to their pipeline and then efficiently and effectively close those opportunities.
3. Determine how to validate and quantify that the behaviors identified in step two are happening. These become the KPIs for each role.
Producer example – The KPIs for the producer goal of writing new business should the number of opportunities recently added and the conversion and close rates of the opportunities already in the pipeline.
4. Nobody should be more vested or invested in the success of a position than the individual filling it. Provide your team with the tools and responsibility to track their KPIs. The things we measure tend to improve.
5. At a minimum, leaders should have monthly one-on-one meetings with each team member to review their KPIs. There are frequent opportunities to celebrate progress or a chance to correct the behaviors in a timely manner.
In an organization that has avoided accountability, getting started may be a bit uncomfortable. But, for the benefit of the business and especially for each individual depending on the business, it’s the right thing to do.
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