Do Your Behaviors Help or Hinder Team Accountability?

In our recent posts, we’ve been discussing accountability. Now it’s time to talk about how leaders can foster accountability for the team. One of the most important things that a leader can do is keep the team focused on the real competition; those who exist outside the walls of the organization, trying to win their customers over every day.

Team members can unleash their creative juices on solving the real problems of the team and the broader business. Making this the focus keeps people from clashing within the group. When this focus is lost, infighting and bickering among the team members thrives. It’s no longer us against them; it is us against us. We have met the enemy, and they are sitting in the same room as we are.

Once, the leader at the mortgage division of a large regional bank wanted to break down the functional silos that had cropped up on the team. As the external marketplace was becoming tougher, the internal finger-pointing and blame was steadily increasing. The leader wanted to put a stop to it. When individual, confidential interviews were conducted to gather information about the current team dynamics, in order to effectively design and facilitate the upcoming team development session, something interesting was discovered.

Each member of the team knew that the leader wanted to create a one team mind-set. The new business realities required them to work together and support each other in a way they never had before. The leader was under tremendous pressure from corporate officials to hit the numbers. The employees got it. Rather than causing them to band together to achieve these goals, the manager was actually driving a wedge between them. He was so used to driving their individual accountability that he didn't realize that his actions were now out of sync with the team mind-set he really wanted.

During staff meetings, he would single out individuals who had not achieved their targets, and become very accusatory as to why this happened. How did the others react? While they felt for their teammates, they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. If they came to the victim’s aid, then they too might be singled out for blame for the challenges in their own areas. They could see very clearly the inter-dependencies that existed, and how they needed to work together to fix the problems; but the support from the team leader was not there to make this cross collaboration happen.

When I shared this feedback with the team leader, he was not surprised. He knew it was going to be tough to change his behavior. He was committed to making it happen, however, because he had no other choice; not if he and his team were going to continue to be successful in an increasingly unfavorable marketplace. It was time to create some conflict norms, for which everyone on the team promised to hold themselves and each other accountable.

The leader clearly undertakes a critical role by establishing a firm foundation for personal and team accountability to take hold. In our next post , we’ll turn our attention to those times when the team is together, and the potential that meetings have for being a place where the team’s commitment to accountability can truly shine. As you’ll learn, the leader can play an incredibly valuable part in keeping the team focused on crucial business issues.