3 Strategies to Develop Accountability in Your Team
Accountability is an essential element of your business and company culture, but many business owners find it a challenge to develop the right balance between empowering their employees and effectively managing their business.
Developing the right structure for accountability is vital to your success. This structure will help you build a culture in which everyone feels valuable and finds it easy to work together to drive the company forward.
Building accountability in your team also helps you build a team that thrives. They know what is expected, they are empowered to work within their zone of genius, and they don’t hesitate to collaborate when needed. This is a win for everyone!
The question remains: how do you develop accountability that works for your team? Here are some strategies to get you started!
Build a Culture of Accountability
Each of your employees was hired for a reason. You vetted them, interviewed them, checked with their previous employers, and chose them from among other candidates. You put time, money, and care into building a rockstar team.
Building a culture of accountability starts with the hiring and onboarding process and extends through to your everyday contact with your employees. When you hire people who share your core values, onboard them well, and communicate with them effectively, accountability is easy to establish.
Something I encourage all business owners to be aware of is intentionally communicating in a way that makes sense to each team member. When things get busy or stressful, this is something that is easy to forget. Each of your employees has a different learning style, a different way of communicating; when you take the time to communicate in the way each person best understands, you set them up for success!
Allow Each Employee to Have a Voice
It is likely that each of your employees is great at their jobs, but chances are, they have more to offer than what is on their job description. Put those strengths to use and let your team members shine!
As a business owner, there are a lot of decisions you need to make on a regular basis. It’s your job to set the vision and direction for your company, make hiring and infrastructure choices, and far more. However, you don’t have to do it all. There are a lot of decisions you can bring your team in on, saving yourself time and (quite possibly) money.
Do you have a team member who loves to research? Ask them to research the pros, cons, and pricing of various programs you’re considering and give you a report on the results. Does one of your employees enjoy strategizing things like marketing campaigns or upcoming events? Bring them in as a sounding board and have them put ideas together for a proposal.
In the end, the decisions are still yours, but you can utilize the perspective and experience of your team members to drive your business forward. Your team is far more likely to stay accountable to (and evens surpass) the goals you set when they have a voice in the process. And when you empower your employees to do what they love to do, you’ll often find that the collaboration brings about even better results than you had hoped!
Implement Weekly Reporting
To clearly communicate your expectations and make it easy for your team to report back to you, I strongly advise creating and implementing weekly KPI Scorecards. I use these with nearly every member of my team, and I have found them to be highly effective.
These scorecards serve a few different purposes.
First, they allow my team members to easily understand my expectations – they’re right there on the Scorecard! Now, just a note – I don’t have my team report every single thing they do during the week; that would be impossible for any of us to keep up with. Each person’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are things that will actively drive the business forward.
Second, the Scorecards allow me to see where my employees are excelling and where they may need additional training or resources – or where a system may need to be updated. When I see that a normally consistent, productive employee is falling short in one or two areas, it gives me the opportunity to talk with them and resolve any issues before they become real problems.
Finally, Scorecards allow us to celebrate wins! Many people tend to focus on what they do wrong and overlook what they do right; this can affect both productivity and morale. When your team members (and you) can their wins on a weekly report, they are much harder to ignore!
If you would like further help implementing a structure and culture of accountability on your team, feel free to contact us – our coaching team is here to help!