Accountability means an obligation that an individual or team accepts to take ownership of. It is about taking personal responsibility for a job to be done. We can easily achieve this by simply showing up and doing the things that one has committed to. While doing so, we must trust our teammates and know that we can count on each other to get things done.
Why is accountability important?
For an organization to achieve its full potential, it is vital to build a healthy accountability culture across the board.
As a leader, do you face difficulty in getting your teams to showcase accountability?
If you answered yes to the above question, you have come to the right place.
You’ll notice that your employee’s job satisfaction levels increase when you let them own a piece. What does owning a piece mean? It does not mean that you are giving them ownership of your business. You are giving them the freedom to make decisions and making them responsible for their actions at work. Companies that adopt a culture of accountability have proven to improve their productivity by setting expectations and eliminating surprises for their employees.
How to build an accountability culture in your organization?
The transformation of your leadership style to accommodate an accountability culture might seem overwhelming at the beginning, but as you embark on this journey, you’ll notice that your teams have aligned with your company’s values and they have become more competent than before.
Let’s look at some of the key elements in shaping your company’s accountability culture.
Define Accountability
The first step in setting up an accountability culture in an organization is for leaders to have a clear definition of what, who, and how chalked out. There should be clarity on the expectations, what are the immediate goals and future goals, their timelines, how to measure growth, and ensuring that the resources to deliver are made available. If you don’t know how to define your company’s accountability culture, we can help you with it. Ask us how at mike@p2linc.com
Discuss Choices
The next step in the path of nurturing an accountability culture in your organization is to have conversations with your immediate team members and employees at the designing stage. We can collate this by conducting surveys, and weekly or monthly meetings. Engaging your teams to know what will motivate them will help you establish an accountability relationship. Giving employees the needed autonomy to accomplish their tasks with a focus on company goals will lead to an increase in productivity.
Identify Obstacles
Then comes the most exciting part of the accountability culture-building process, which is tracking your company’s progress. Collect data to track employees’ understanding of the company’s objectives and their personal goals. Aligning individual growth with that of the organizations eliminates ambiguity and builds healthy employer-employee relationships. That brings us to the next step of communication through mentorship.
Offer Mentorship
It’s time to use the metrics and identify employees who need mentorship. Not having clarity on what’s next builds stress and reduces the ability to perform. Knowing where we stand in the game helps us to figure out our next move. Offer coaching to your executives from time to time so they clearly understand their responsibilities, thus making them accountable for their actions.
Recognize Results
The ultimate step of inculcating an accountability culture within your teams is to recognize every small and big milestone of everyone in the organization. Peer elevation plays an immense role in keeping employee motivation in a healthy place, resulting in them taking ownership of their actions and consequences.
Send in your enquiries to know how you can build an accountability culture that’s best suited for your organization. Our team will be happy to equip you with the five-step model to create accountability within your teams.