The Role of Leadership in Promoting Accountability
Now that we’ve begun talking about accountability, it’s time to discuss it within the framework of leadership roles. While accountability must start at the individual level, those who become leaders must demonstrate and reinforce it. So what can managers do to be true role models for excellence in accountability? First, we will focus on how a leader should behave during one-on-one situations, and then move to discussing his or her role in driving accountability across the whole team or department.
One of the most effective ways to hold someone accountable is to improve your delegation effectiveness. This simply means clarifying what success looks like at the end of the task or project, outlining any assumptions and non-negotiables, and defining any known key milestone dates and targets that must be hit. You should also define quite clearly your team members’ scope of decision-making authority.
Leaders are likely to have greater luck getting their employees to commit to completing a job with excellence if they provide reasons for the particular delegation. By taking the time to explain why they are assigning this responsibility or project to this specific person, they are far more likely to enhance the impact that its success will have on the team and other ongoing projects, and thus achieve some broader departmental or organizational goals. People like to feel that they are in the know. They don’t like receiving a task without understanding how it fits into the larger scheme of things. Ask yourself, if your boss told you today to go gather certain information without telling you what this information was for or how it was to be used, would you want to--and could you even--give it your best effort? Probably not. Don’t expect those who report to you to feel any differently. Such an explanation will likely only take a few minutes more, but can cause a completely different attitude and result for those to whom you are delegating.
Other important points for the leader to consider when allocating responsibility are the resources and support that can be provided to help ensure this task’s successful accomplishment. Do you need to send a heads-up to someone that this work is under way? Is there an influential player who could really help to smooth the way for this individual to obtain the information or cooperation needed? How can you, as the leader, get them on board with this? Think about others who need to know what is going on, and inform them as soon as possible.
Agree on deadlines, and how progress will be tracked. Identify the key points along the way when those to whom you have delegated tasks should check in with you. The less certain you are of their ability to perform the task and/or the higher the criticality-level of the task, the more frequent the follow-up needs to be. If you clarify at the outset when these touch points need to occur, and which of you will initiate them, the less apt this is to be a point of contention later on. Finally, leaders should ask the individual to summarize their understanding of the task or project. Focus especially on what success looks like at the end, key delivery dates and metrics that must be achieved, and the progress-tracking procedures.
In our next post, we’ll dig deeper into what might happen during these tracking sessions. We’ll talk about trust, and how to handle errors when they occur. Stick with us, as we continue our discussion of accountability in order to help you strengthen your business relationships.
