Do you have CAR?

Background

Over the years, while scaling up teams I was often asked by recruiters and headhunters about what I look for in the people that I am hiring. What are the competencies and soft skills that I look for? But more recently, I was posed with a different question in a discussion with a friend,? “Sourabh, what does it take for someone to succeed in your team?”

I gave it a thought for a few seconds and then replied, “Commitment, Accountability & Responsibility.” These for me are the three personal and behavioral values that I find very important for an individual to succeed, be it in a team or an organization, or in life. Little did I know that this would become an acronym when my friend replied by saying, “So you want people to have CAR” :)?

This discussion did make me reflect that as leaders we generally talk about soft and hard skills that our team should demonstrate and these tend to be more tangible, more measurable. Like if someone is good with communication it is easy to gauge that through situations, behaviors, and share feedback accordingly. But CAR values tend to be more intangible, something that can be better felt and experienced, which makes it open for bias and hence requires very high standards of judgment.?

This brings me here to pen some of my thoughts about the most important values that you need to have in your team.

CAR Values

Commitment

This is by far the most most important value that anyone working in an organization should have or bring in with them. Commitment means binding yourself to a mission that you believe in. Commitment has many sides; loyalty, dedication, and devotion to name a few. People with commitment think about their mission before themselves and thus have a mission(company) first attitude and don't think if something is within their set of responsibilities or not.?

I consider this to be at times even more valuable than a specific hard skillset, for a simple reason - if someone is committed to the cause they will find a way.?Committed people know what they want to achieve in life and they take action to ensure they succeed in the plan to achieve their goal.

While the majority of people want to do something good, the willingness to commit and to do whatever it takes to succeed makes committed people a treasure for your team.

As a leader the biggest advantage of working with committed people is that they are intrinsically motivated, you don't need to give them a pep talk every now and then to get them excited. You will generally find committed people to be full of energy as they are trying to make a difference in their own way for a cause they believe in. This positive energy also has an impact on people in their vicinity thus boosting the overall morale of the team.

Accountability?

Accountability is dependability and when combined with commitment leads to success. When a committed person shows accountability and follows through, it leads to organizational success. In today’s world, we all work in teams with multiple stakeholders, and here the ability of an individual to take ownership and deliver results in an efficient and effective manner is the key. When committed team members demonstrate a high level of accountability it yields in a team achieving the results they want and this also makes them feel empowered.?

Individuals avoiding accountability should be a red flag for leaders as that highlights someone is not willing to take ownership of their actions and decisions.

For someone to be accountable they need to accept full ownership of the results of their work. It is hard to sustain high performance for any organization if it lacks accountability amongst its employees. Unlike commitment, accountability can be cultivated over time through focus and training, meaning you can learn to be more accountable. While we often hear that we should have a culture of holding people accountable, what I believe is more important is to cultivate a culture where accountability is valued and people consider it as a contribution to organizational success.

Accountability needs to be demonstrated top-down first, if you as a leader are not holding yourself accountable then it's hard to expect the same from the team. You will observe that that overtime building a culture where people take accountability for their actions, the working relationships between team members will improve, and there will be mutual respect and openness all around.

Responsibility

Responsibility when combined with accountability leads to trust. For an individual, this highlights the duty that the person has to perform a task or achieve an outcome. People who are responsible are an asset to any team as you can rely on them. You will know if faced with a situation or a particular problem an individual will take charge and solve it.

You can gauge someone's sense of responsibility in discussions or interviews by checking how much in detail they can articulate a problem as without getting into the details it's hard to solve problems and if you haven't gone into details then you probably haven't demonstrated high sense of responsibility.

Responsibility is a personal, mature, and conscious choice and I have generally found that the sense of responsibility is very intrinsic and is managed by an individual’s motivations. In an ideal world, people choose to take responsibility but in the real world, responsibilities are generally assigned by leaders without buy-in from the individual, which often leads to failures and should be addressed.

Responsibility is different from accountability as the latter is more focused on consequences. You can be responsible for something and yet not be held accountable for it. Responsibility is also shared a lot of times, hence the effectiveness of someone to work together in a team to achieve a common goal is imperative.?

You want to have people who are eager and want to take responsibility in the team but at the same time, you need to have a culture where taking responsibility and then failing does not lead to sanctioning.

In organizations where there is a habit of petty blame games, people become escapists and avoid taking responsibility. So it's important for the founding team to set the right culture.

I will summarise by saying that while hiring talent don't just look at the skills they bring in but also the values.

P.S:

At Flip, we are looking for people with CAR values to work with us and help build the future of financial services in Indonesia. So if you or someone you know would love to sign up for this challenge then please reach out.