The Psychology of Mutual Accountability

Mutual accountability is another foundation stone of an effective team. It means that team members accept that they are accountable 'to each other', which guarantees better performance and teamwork. Mutual accountability?is a process by which two or more people agree to be held responsible for the commitments that they have voluntarily made to each other.

The objective is to get the team to think "team performance first" and "individual success second". As a result, individuals become focused on creating a memorable collective performance rather than thinking simply about personal achievements. All team members are expected to volunteer their time to assist others for the sake of the common good. Accordingly, team members need to take a constructive interest and participate in all team activities as and when required and hold themselves and each other accountable for delivering the specific actions, attitudes, and behaviours that team success requires.

Accountability for delivering results is a quality that takes teams to the highest level of performance. Rather than simply being individual accountability for personal roles and goals, this works at its best when all individuals firstly take responsibility for the overall team goal. Secondly, each team member holds themselves and then each other, accountable for delivering the specific actions, attitudes, and behaviours that the team requires of the individuals.

“Members of groups using the team discipline hold themselves individually and mutually accountable. With groups applying the team discipline, it is very difficult (if not impossible) for any one member to fail – only the team can succeed or fail. Team members are not easy on one another in this respect. Yet, they are extremely flexible and adaptable in helping each other to contribute to the fullest extent possible and to develop new skill levels in the process.?Indeed, mutual accountability for shared purpose and goals may be the hallmark of the team discipline.” (Katzenbach and Smith. The Discipline of Teams)

The mutual accountability characteristic reinforces everyone's role in sharing knowledge, ideas, experiences, and perspectives to make the team a better performing unit. Mutual accountability brings about increased effectiveness in working together. Team members recognise that collective performance is dependent on the effective collaboration of themselves with other team members resulting in increased collaborative efforts. Rather than working and thinking individually and trying to protect their own space, a team-high in mutual accountability has team members who are regularly asking themselves and each other, "how can we better work together to get the most out of each other and the whole team?

Mutual accountability means team members equally share in the teams’ outcomes, when the collective responsibility of the team works towards generating collective results, achieving success, or suffering a failure. This is irrespective of whether a single team member was responsible for a success or a failure. Mutual accountability implies an implicit acknowledgement of the joint accountability of all team members towards achieving the Team Vision or some other initiative such as a task or a project, in addition to their individual obligations in their specific roles. An important measure is how accountable team members are to each other, meaning that team members accept that everyone’s successes or failures fall on all their shoulders.

Mutual accountability guarantees better performance and excellence in teamwork. If one team member fails, delivers a poor project outcome, for example, then all team members are equally accountable for that outcome, not just the team member concerned. Successes are similarly shared. Each team members work activities belong to the whole team; everyone owns them. Accordingly, all team members need to take a constructive interest and participate when and where they can in all the team's activities, not just the more obvious shared activities such as a project involving several teams members. When a team member asks for help, all other team members automatically give it, and with a priority, higher than their own work priorities. (All for one and one for all applies.)

This creates a supportive environment within the team and the performance of the team improves in the presence of this type of mutual support and cohesion. Progress should be measured against specific goals and individuals should be clear on individual and joint responsibilities. There should be a sense that 'only the team can succeed or fail’. (All for one, and one for all.)

Rather than simply being individually accountable for personal roles and goals, a team works best when all team members firstly take responsibility for the overall Team Vision. This is followed by each team member holding themselves and each other, accountable for delivering the specific actions, attitudes, and behaviours that the team requires.

It takes some mindset adjusting to begin with, but eventually all individuals on the team think “Team Performance First, Individual Performance Second”. The pride for the individuals becomes refocused primarily towards being involved in creating a memorable collective performance, rather than thinking simply about personal achievements.

Another useful characteristic of a team high in mutual accountability is the effectiveness of working together. The individuals recognise where collective performance is dependent on the effective collaboration of themselves with others on the team and as a result, collaborative efforts are typically just that. Rather than being individuals trying to protect their own space, the team high in mutual accountability can be characterised by individuals regularly asking themselves and each other, “how can we work together to get the most out of each other?”

Team Language

The language of these teams also gives away the importance of mutual accountability. Language is collective, with regular reference to “OUR targets”, or “how We’re performing”, or “the implications of this for US”. This isn’t just wordplay for these teams. The language results directly from the fact that everyone is united towards the same goal, and they recognise that collectively they can achieve some great things. Monitoring the language of your team meetings, do you get a sense that the team is thinking “Personal performance first, team performance second” or vice versa.

Are you seeing people asking questions about how WE can perform better together, or is the focus simply on overcoming difficulties that “I’m” having, or issues that are stopping “me” from doing “my” job? The simple evaluation of the language can give you a clear insight into how mutually accountable your team is and how tolerant team members are of each other.

You’ll know when you have a truly accountable team when they’re happy to be rewarded collectively, because they know that ultimately the individual reward will be greater, because everyone has exploited the collective expertise around them. Teams lower in mutual accountability will always want to take an individual reward option, because the individual team players will always feel that they can control their own personal reward by just keeping their head down and playing the game by their own rules.

Shared Leadership

Shared leadership is when you share your decision-making rights with all team members by promoting the interests of the team members and by practicing social equality. Sharing leadership calls for a great deal of personal initiative from individual team members and is a vital quality of effective leadership. Shared leadership invigorates the team members to deliver exceptional outcomes in the workplace and achieve synergies in their results by working collaboratively with all team members.

As a result of this specific thinking style there are some interesting changes in team leadership. Even though there might be a titular leader, everyone on the team starts to take responsibility for “leading the team”. In this sense, the leadership is concerned with ensuring that everyone wants to provide honest, open, critical and performance focused feedback that is designed on moving the performance of the team forward. However junior or senior, however involved in the performance, the mutual accountability characteristic really does ensure that everyone is sharing knowledge, ideas, experiences, and perspectives with a view to making the team a better performing whole.

It’s important that during a team meeting, you as the titular head (manager) promote active listening and shared leadership. You need to make a point of speaking last, encouraging team members to discuss and resolve issues and make decisions as a team.

Another aspect of shared leadership is when the team leadership role is taken up by various team members, according to need at the time. An example of this is the leadership of a major or strategic activity where one team member is a subject matter expert and will lead the team (including the manager) much as a project manager would. Shared leadership is when shared decision making is the norm.

Summary

1.???? Mutual accountability. - Is when all team members equally share in the teams’ outcomes, the collective responsibility of the team towards generating results, achieving success, or suffering a failure. This irrespective of whether a single team member was responsible. Mutual accountability implies an implicit acknowledgement of the joint accountability of all team members towards the Team Vision or some other initiative such as a project, in addition to their individual obligations in their specific roles. An important measure is how accountable team members are to each other, meaning that team members accept that everyone’s successes or failures fall on all their shoulders.

2.???? Actions. - Rather than simply being individually accountable for personal roles and goals, a team works best when all team members firstly take responsibility for the overall Team Vision. Secondly, each team member holds themselves and then each other, accountable for delivering the specific actions, attitudes, and behaviours that the team requires of each team member.

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