Can I be gut-level honest with you?
I see far too many leaders shy away from something that really hurts their team.
What is it?
Confronting poor performance or poor behavior.
Possibly flowing from a fear of being seen as unkind by members of your team or a personal unwillingness to tackle issues….leaders lose credibility and organizations lose momentum.
To put it bluntly…
Your responsibility as the leader deserves better than your fear or personal preferences.
As a spiritual person myself, I reference back to the Bible where it spotlights this in Ephesians 4:1 to, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”
It’s time to step up the level of accountability on your team.
- You have to raise the standard of excellence on your team.
- You have to set the tone of acceptable behavior on your team.
- You have to create a culture of accountability on your team.
Your organization and your team deserve it!
When I tell leaders this in my one-on-one coaching conversations, I’m always surprised how often it is confirmed that they realize what I’m saying is true and have known it for a long time…yet still fail to hold their teams accountable.
So the real question is…Why?
Why do we know holding our team accountable would elevate the impact of our organization, yet we still fail to do it?
Most often, the reason why is because of a deep fear of how someone or some group may react to a higher level of accountability.
Leader, listen to me…
Their response is not your responsibility.
There’s also a deeper truth (and this could be severely harming your team):
Accountability for results, behaviors and goals is actually something highly effective people desire. Without it, they can’t possibly know how you feel about their work or how they are helping you move the organization forward.
If you lead without accountability, you will continually struggle to retain talented people.
So, how do you implement accountability in a simple, non-intimidating fashion?
