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“Leadership is a worthy cause, vulnerability, empathy, and never forget, holding people accountable to high expectations.??Without results, nothing else matter as the organization will not endure.”?– L.K. (Larry) Kihlstadius

Accountability. A word not to be taken lightly.??It’s key for us to achieve strong business results, and yet many leaders fail to hold their teams accountable. Accountability is about delivering on a commitment. It’s responsibility to an outcome, not just a set of tasks. It’s taking initiative with thoughtful, strategic follow-through.??Accountability is a framework and a way of operating leading us to greater performance.??

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of others. Also, a word not to be taken lightly. Empathy is a key ingredient in emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.

Great managers can deliver performance, hold people accountable … and be kind and empathetic.

From Talent IQ (Kaiser), “There’s an open secret in today’s workplace: Managers aren’t holding their employees accountable. Even with millennials hungry for more feedback and star performers trying to make up for colleagues who aren’t carrying their weight, management seems unwilling to call out and address poor performance. And no one’s talking about it—at least not in public.”?

From Inc., “Empathy is all in vogue. Driven largely by the Great Resignation,?the mass exodus of about 40 million American workers since April of last year, the world is talking about the need for more empathic leaders. A growing compendium of research is disproving that these departures have anything to do with spoiled Z's and Millennials, too much Covid money in the economy, a new dot-com boom, or a singular refusal among all age groups to ever return to an office. In fact, most of the resignations could be traced to autocratic, micromanaging, and narcissistic bosses and the toxic environments they tend to create. Now, the same pundits who have, month after month, incorrectly predicted an end to the big quit have reluctantly begun to admit that maybe soft skills, like empathy, matter after all. But as good as it is to see so many finally getting it right, they are still thinking about things the wrong way. See, far too many of these "experts" are talking about empathy and a drive for results as if they are mutually exclusive -- as if there needs to be a choice between them. But there doesn't.”

Empathetic managers and accountable managers can be the same person.

According to The Predictive Index CEO Benchmarking Report, holding people accountable is difficult—even for leaders who head up companies. Eighteen percent of the CEOs surveyed cited “holding people accountable” as their biggest weakness. Additionally, 15 percent struggle with “letting go of underperformers.”??When accountability is lacking, performance, company culture and morale suffer. When employees are not held accountable for missed deadlines, bad behavior, or poor performance, a leader’s credibility is damaged and loyalty from their team wavers. This ultimately impacts the leader’s ability to inspire high-performing, winning teams."

"Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame."?-??Courtney Lynch

We all will, at some point, need to hold someone accountable. This is simply a part of?managing our teams.??The good news is our team wants our feedback. They want to know where they stand. They want to know what they’re doing right and what needs improvement.

When we are giving feedback, we need focus on the behavior, not the employee; we need to be specific; offer corrective action and deadlines; and let them know the consequences of continuing said behavior.

We can be kind, we can be empathetic while also being very clear on WHAT?needs to be done - clearly explaining the work required, so there are no misunderstandings.??Clarify for understanding and put it in writing as a follow up.??

We can be collaborative while we explain WHY?the work is important - sometimes people don’t really know why we need the work done, or why it needs to be done a certain way. Explaining why can help our team to get on board with our thinking.??Context as it relates to the why is often undervalued.

We can be understanding and still explain HOW?the work needs to be done.?In some situations, our people will know exactly how to do the work. Other times – not so much.?When our teams are new or inexperienced, we often will need to be more specific. We might also have special guidelines to follow, such as legal, regulatory, safety or compliance requirements.

Lastly, we need to be clear on WHEN?it needs to be done.?Some leaders are uncomfortable with setting deadlines. But without them, our team won’t know how to fit it into their existing workload.??If we constantly use deadlines and milestones, it will become part of our operating DNA.

“When accountability is present, people keep their eyes on a very clear prize. They know what they are working toward and how they are going to get there.” –?Henry J. Evans

From an article in the Harvard Business Review talking about what can we do to foster accountability with our teams, “We need to aim for clarity in five areas: clear expectations, clear capability, clear measurement, clear feedback, and clear consequences.?If you’ve been clear in all the above ways, you can be reasonably sure that you did what’s necessary to support your teams’ performance. At this point, you have three choices: repeat, reward, or release “.??These are the building blocks for a culture of accountability. The magic is in the way they work together as a system. If you miss any one of these, accountability will fall through that gap.

"Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have."?- Pat Summitt

From an article by Ed Batista, “The goal is a?high-accountability, high-empathy?culture, in which management and employees are fully committed to the organization's needs and to each other. A shared sense of mission, strong feelings of ownership and responsibility, and relationships built on mutual trust and respect contribute to superior organizational results.

When employees feel compelled to stay, it's easy to run a bootcamp--to hold people accountable without expressing empathy. And when management has sufficient resources, it's even easier to run a daycare--to express empathy without holding people accountable. But both models impose substantial costs and, for many organizations, yield sub-optimal results. The task is to hold people accountable?while?also?empathizing with them, and while this is easy to understand, it's hard to put into practice. This is one of the most difficult aspects of leadership--which is one reason why high-accountability, high-empathy cultures are so rare."

While we can't?mandate?our organizational culture as a leader, we can shape its evolution through every interpersonal interaction and every message we deliver. Particularly if we're a leader in a new or rapidly growing organization, our behavior sets a standard that influences how all employees interact with each other.

"Where there is no accountability, there will also be no responsibility." - Sunday Adelaja

So how do you build a high-accountability, high-empathy culture? There are three concepts to remember:

• Ensure your leadership operating models are balanced.
• Accountability is focused on clear expectations, not bullying.
• Empathy is understanding and context, not agreement.

“Accountability conversations become necessary when commitments are unfulfilled, or expectations go unmet, and such exchanges can easily trigger strong feelings on all sides. As the leader, we may well feel angry or frustrated--but note the three points above. Expressions of anger will capture our employees' attention, but if the experience is too distressing, they will seek to distance themselves from us (psychologically or literally) as soon as possible. It's also quite possible that our frustration, even if justifiable, is a self-protective response covering up a more vulnerable set of feelings--anxiety in the face of potential failure, or disappointment at the lack of support from our team, or embarrassment at our own culpability.”

The key, again, is?emotional regulation: sensing our own early physiological signs of impending emotional response so that we can act sooner. Comprehending precisely what we're feeling and expressing those vulnerable emotions in a way that fits the surrounding culture. Thoughtfully choosing our language and non-verbal forms of expression to communicate in ways that will help us achieve our goals more effectively. Words matter.

And these steps will not happen by accident--they rest on our foundation of consistent personal and organizational practices:?

• Build our team culture around accountability conversations?that are normal and frequent, not special occasions.
• Recognize feedback is sometimes cognitively and physiologically stressful for our teams, so we should take steps to make it less threatening.
• Cultivate a closer relationship with our own vulnerability, a process that will likely involve increasing our comfort with discomfort.
• Expand our own emotional vocabulary to choose just the right language for the conversation.
• Take more thoughtful and diverse approaches to our problem solving.
• Finally, note that while emphasizing?our?behavior as leaders is part of the process of holding employees accountable, that's not because high-accountability cultures should be authoritarian hierarchies. Our personal behavior matters because it will be closely scrutinized and highly influential, for better and for worse.?

Our larger goal is to build a culture?in which our teams hold themselves accountable--and that occurs under conditions of mutual empathy.

As demanding yet caring leaders, we know that it is more than possible to behave with empathy while holding others accountable to deliver results. We know that empathy is not solely about being nice to our team all the time. It's about being aware of, understanding, and respecting the feelings of others -- win or lose. The biggest difference between an empathic leader and one of the narcissists can be seen when our desired results are?not?achieved. (Watch for the narcissist to throw a tantrum, to blame everyone but him/herself, and to engage in insults and other attacks.) Meanwhile, as an empathic leader we will let our team know that they let us down and do so in a way that does not detract from the dignity of the person we are addressing.

"If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes."??- Henry Cloud

It is 2022, almost post-pandemic.??We all know that our team results matter. We know that business is a game in which a score is kept. We have team members, shareholders and customers that are serious about achieving objectives. We know that results can be more sufficiently achieved through kindness than through cruelty … and by making it about others rather than by making it about ourselves. We include those we lead in decision-making and place value on what they have to say. We recognize and reward the achievement of others. And we believe that the mental health of those who follow us is not something to be taken lightly, but something to be cared about and cared for. We can deliver strong results by caring for others. And we know better than to destroy trust over something like a missed objective.??Focus on clear expectations, clear capability, clear measurement, clear feedback, and clear consequences.?Be kind and understanding.??AND… hold your team accountable.??Be the leader you want to work for.

What is your height?

"Accountability is the measure of a leaders height."?- Jeffrey Benjamin

Together.??We.??Win.