Creating a Culture of Accountability

Chapter 1 click here: Why Accountability Matters

Chapter 2 click here: Setting an Example of Accountability

Chapter 3: Creating a Culture of Accountability

Achieving accountability in your organisation takes more than formal accountability structures. These are crucial, but they need to be part of a culture in which accountability is normal, expected, and valued. (36) Accountability can’t be something that happens only when things go wrong—this creates a culture of hiding mistakes, shifting blame, and resenting leadership. But when positive accountability is part of the culture, employees own their work, collaborate to reach goals, and learn from their mistakes. Trust, transparency, and communication define relationships between peers and with leaders. (37)

Culture precedes performance, so building accountability into your organisational culture is necessary to make formal accountability structures work. (38) Focus on the four areas covered in this chapter to start creating an accountable culture in your team today.

Make accountability a priority

When you communicate to your team that accountability is a priority, they are far more likely to buy in to the processes for accountability that you implement. A large part of communicating this priority is by modelling it yourself, as was discussed in chapter two. By casting a vision and setting clear expectations for accountability, and by taking responsibility for yourself and your team, you make clear that accountability is expected and valued. You can also make accountability a priority in your team by investing in accountability relationships and hiring for accountability.

Your relationships with your team are where the majority of accountability will take place. For this to be successful, you need to create positive relationships of trust and communicate that accountability will be an important factor of those relationships. You can do this by taking a genuine interest in people and their needs, supporting your team in words and actions, and addressing accountability frequently (see chapters seven and eight).

You also communicate that accountability is a priority by letting your team hold you accountable. Just as you model accountability to your team in the way that you work, you can demonstrate your commitment to it by creating space in your relationships for your employees to hold you accountable. There are, naturally, boundaries to this—your primary accountability should come from above and your main focus with your team should be their accountability. But your employees should feel comfortable coming to you with any ways in which you might not have met the expectations you set for yourself as a leader. Invite them to do this by asking questions about whether they have felt supported by you, whether they have the resources they need, and whether there are any ways that you could support them better.

If you are responsible for hiring, you can also facilitate a culture of accountability by making it a top priority quality in candidates. Accountability can be taught, but someone who has a proven track record of accountable behaviour and who fits the culture you want to create will be a great asset. Furthermore, some people simply aren’t willing to take responsibility at all, so looking for this willingness in hires will negate the need for discipline down the track. During interviews, ask questions about specific situations where they have demonstrated accountability and learned from their mistakes in the past. (39)

Create a safe space for failure

The best accountability structures in the world won’t work if your employees don’t feel comfortable admitting failure. If they fear being punished or shamed, they will ignore problems or shift blame rather than owning up to their mistakes.

The first step in helping your team feel comfortable coming forward with issues is to own your own mistakes. Demonstrate through your actions that failure is part of progress and, rather than stigmatising it, use it as an opportunity for growth. (40) This gives your employees the freedom to innovate and take risks without fear that failure will be catastrophic and the confidence to be honest when things are going wrong rather than hiding issues and letting them compound. You can also model what you expect from your team when performance falls short by accepting the consequences of your own failures and receiving feedback, both from your superiors and rom those you lead.

Treating mistakes as learning opportunities will help to minimise the fear of failure in your team’s culture. You do need to address failures and what caused them, but don’t stop there. Discuss what lessons were learned from the experience and how these can be applied in the future. Use the failure to identify areas of weakness and focus on how these can be improved. By focusing most of your accountability conversation here, you move from a focus on past mistakes, which encourages shame and defeatism, towards a focus on future potential, which motivates your employees and demonstrates how they can maximise their performance going forward. (41)

When you do discuss the issue at hand and its causes, refrain from assigning blame. Give your team the chance to explain any extenuating circumstances and describe what they think led to their poor outcomes. This is not about letting everyone off the hook—consequences are an important part of accountability. Rather, it is about showing compassion and understanding that failure is sometimes out of our control. You might even find that you have failed to provide your team with the support and resources they needed to reach their goals. It is also important to distinguish between fault and responsibility. Like yourself as a leader, there might be times when your employees are responsible for things that aren’t their fault. In this case, accountability still applies, but blame doesn’t. A helpful structure for an accountability conversation will be discussed in detail in chapter eight.

Promote autonomy

Autonomy is an essential counterweight to accountability. If your team members feel like they have no autonomy, accountability will feel stifling. Rather than trying to control how your employees work, make them accountable for the outcomes and give them the freedom to explore creative methods to achieve them (within any necessary boundaries). (42) Empower your employees by giving them the authority to make decisions that will impact the achievement of goals. (43) When autonomy is part of your culture, your team will take ownership and responsibility for their decisions, which leads to more accountability.

The frequent progress updates, evaluation, and feedback involved in accountability will often be carried out between you and your employees. However, accountability can also be achieved through peer-to-peer relationships. By creating a culture that encourages mutual accountability, you will make your team as a whole more autonomous. The more your team is able to identify potential issues, problem-solve, and hold each other accountable among themselves, the less time you have to spend on these things and the less likely they are to feel micro-managed. Research also demonstrates that group problem-solving has a positive impact on quality improvement because it enables problems to be more quickly identified, accurately defined, and thoroughly analysed, and it produces more alternatives for problem resolution and greater support for their implementation. (44)

You can facilitate this kind of mutual accountability in several ways: (45)

• Foster relationships within the team by encouraging them to spend more time together. You might do this by making the lunchroom more fun and comfortable, organising (or asking a well-liked member of the team to organise) a team social, or playing some icebreaker games in your team meetings.
• Involve everyone in the process of setting team goals. As will be discussed in chapter four, this creates a sense of ownership and enables emlpoyees to hold both themselves and each other accountable.
• Encourage collaboration within your team. When people are working closely together, they are more likely to hold each other accountable and take responsibility for their work themselves.
• Use “we” language when talking to your team. This emphasises the collective nature of the work. When team members talk or work individualistically, remind them that your team is working together to reach common goals.
• Reward your team collectively when they reach significant milestones or exceed targets. Chapter seven will discuss the benefits of both individual and group rewards.

How accountable is your team's culture?

Every team can benefit from a positive, high-accountability culture, but are you facilitating this in your team? Ask yourself these diagnostic questions and choose one step that you can take to make your culture more accountable:

• Do you communicate that accountability is a priority through your words and your example?
• What is your team’s attitude towards failure? Is it feared and hidden, or is it openly discussed and used as an opportunity for learning?
• How much autonomy do your employees have? Do they demonstrate a sense of ownership over their work?

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The above comes from my eBook 'Accountability for Team Leaders'. You can receive a copy of the eBook by sending me a LinkedIn message requesting the eBook.

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References

36 Y Han & M E Demircioglu, ‘Accountability, Politics, and Power,’ in A Farazmand (ed), Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance, Springer, Cham, p. 4.

37 J Peevy, ‘Holding Staff Accountable,’ Motor Age, 2017, pp. 18-19.

38 D Pontefract, ‘If Culture Comes First, Performance Will Follow,’ 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2017/05/25/if-culture-comes-first-performance-will-follow/#3daae7066e62.

39 D White & P White, ‘Build a Culture of Accountability in 5 Steps,’ 2017, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298342.

40 D I Worrall, Accountability Leadership: How Great Leaders Build a High Performance Culture of Accountability and Responsibility, Worrall & Associates, 2013, p. 88.

41 B Wigert & J Harter, ‘Re-Engineering Performance Management,’ Gallup Inc, 2017, p. 24.

42 J Tillman & K Vitasek, ‘Creating Personal Accountability I Mentoring Relationships,’ 2013, https://www.sdcexec.com/warehousing/article/11226569/mentoring.

43 White & White, ‘Build a Culture of Accountability.’

44 C O Longenecker & J A Scazzero, ‘Quality Improvement through Team Goal Setting, Feedback, and Problem Solving,’ International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, vol. 11, no. 4, 1994, pp. 46-47.

45 C Shambrook, ‘Mutual Accountability in Teams,’ https://www.theperformanceroom.co.uk/mutual-accountability-in-teams/.