The 4 steps to building a hyper accountable team
The signs you have a lack of accountability and how to fix it
In this morning’s blog I’ll cover:
Recognising accountability’s worst enemy (Blame)
The signs you have a lack of accountability
The 4 steps to building a hyper accountable team
Recognising accountability’s worst enemy (Blame)
To deeply understand accountability you first need to understand accountability’s worst enemy… Blame.
I was watching Bullet Train [film] recently. There’s a group of people stuck on a bullet train in Japan, and they’re all trying to figure out who the assassin (who they call Diesel) is that needs to be stopped and killed.
There’s this one scene, Brad Pitt is laid on the floor, and is Brian Tyree Henry is accusing him of being the guy they’re looking for.
Brian Tyree Henry points at him and says ‘YOU’RE THE DIESEL’ . To which Brad Pitt says
‘When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you’
A phrase that has strong philosophical roots going back thousands of years.
It even shows up in the Bible ‘Don't focus on the speck in your brother's eye while ignoring the log in your own eye’
The fancy psychoanalytic term for this is ‘projective identification’. We get rid of unwanted feelings (projection) and identify them as belonging to someone else (identification).
Clinical Psychologist, Jennifer Kunst, Ph.D, calls it a shame relocation plan.
In Leadership, we need to regularly look in the mirror. Practice dropping our ego, and when we’re moving into any sort of blame mentality, analyse ourselves first before we move to others. And likewise, training and encouraging our team to do the same. Recognising when someone moves into a blame mindset and helping to pull them out.
When you’re starting to point a finger, what blind spot or insecurity could you be projecting?
The signs you have a lack of accountability
Once you’ve identified and become self aware of blame, you need to work on being hyper accountable.
Just because something isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean it isn’t your problem.
Accountability needs to be a core part of your team’s culture. Accountability in the workplace means that each member of the team is responsible for their actions, behaviours, performance and decisions.
This is hugely important in Leadership, where we not only need to hold ourselves accountable for our team and their decisions, we also need to hold our teams accountable for their KPIs & decision making.
Some signs you have a lack of accountability in your culture are:
Team are regularly late to meetings
Deadlines don’t get met
When you handover tasks, you’re not certain it’ll actually get done (either to a high standard, or at all)
Your team aren’t experimenting or trying new things to hit their targets
Low employee engagement (When asking questions in groups etc)
To turn that around, here’s what you need to start doing today…
The 4 steps to building a hyper accountable team
Step 1 - Start with yourself
A few years back I had a member of my team, a Leader herself, who was worried about the accountability in her own team.
She felt as though she was the only one in the team who cared about really driving to hit the KPIs each month. She explained to me how her team wasn't hitting deadlines and weren’t taking responsibility for the numbers.
We had a chat, built a plan, and I let her go on her way to start implementing that plan with her team.
But as the weeks went on, I noticed she wasn’t hitting her own deadlines with me. She was turning up late to meetings, and not following up on actions that had been set.
Then the conversation I had went a little like this..
“How on earth can you expect your team to be accountable, when you’re consistently lacking in responsibility for your own actions and deadlines. You’re teaching your team that this is accepted”
It was a beautiful moment of realisation for us both. Accountability has to start with yourself.
Get hyper organised with your tasks, deadlines and commitments. Communicate really clearly where they have been recorded, how you’re progressing, and when they’re complete.
When you schedule meetings, set an example, be really respectful of your team’s time by showing up prepared and on time. Have a clear agenda.
Take ownership of the problems you bring to the table, by helping to find solutions too.
Do what you say you’re going to do. Stop over promising and start over delivering for your team instead. Be a stellar example of what accountability looks like.
I’d commit to a 30 day timeline of working on yourself with those things above before you move onto the rest. Start to be a beacon of accountability within your team. This will set the standard and coach your team in the culture you expect.
Step 2 - Clarity on accountability
Now you need to ensure you’re setting your team up for success, each employee needs to know exactly what they’re accountable for.
Each member of the team should have the following…
A clear Roles & Responsibilities document. These should be constantly reviewed and updated to ensure they’re accuracy.
Once each team member has clarity on their role, you need to set up consistent reporting rhythms and structures across the team.
Lastly, you need a project and goal setting framework. This is for the entire team to contribute toward company goals in a project sense. It gets people working to drive the company forward and create change (as opposed to just ticking off tasks every day)
OKRs is one great way of doing this.
Step 3 - Holding them to account
You next need to consistently hold your team accountable.
The place I see blame vs accountability mindset the most is in reporting meetings. When numbers don’t go quite to plan, people always find the factor, the thing outside of their control to blame for them not reaching their KPIs.
An example for you. You need a member of your team to bring in 30 leads this month. They spend the month trying all the same mechanisms they always have, but none of them work.
The end of the month comes around, along with the reporting meeting, and they explain to you they couldn't bring in the leads because
Nobody was answering the phone
Their Linkedin shut down
People just aren’t replying
All excuses. And you now need to change that employee into an accountable member of the team, alongside coaching them into finding a solution (without hand holding and figuring it all out for them).
First of all, here’s what NOT to respond with (but often people would)
You’ve struggled with people answering the phone, can you try emailing them or posting something to their office next month?
I need you to start working on projects to figure out how we’re going to get to that number
I don’t want you to come to me next month with the same results
Not only are these responses unhelpful, they also allow the blame reasonings to be validated. They will perpetuate the cycle of blame culture.
In order to build accountability in this member of the team, my line of questioning and response would instead go something like this…
Since you were struggling to get a response, what other methods did you try to contact people? Did you try sending them a video? Posting something to their office?
Since we’ve struggled this month, what other projects have you been working on to build better systems for bringing in leads next month/quarter?
How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?
These questions help to keep the accountability in solving the problem with the team member, meaning you don’t jump in and rescue them, and they can feel accountable, grow, and be better next month.
The questions also aim to challenge in the right way, they point your team member in the right direction as to where they should be looking for answers. But they don’t solve the problem for them.
Yes in month one you might catch them out a little with those questions. It might feel tricky as you know they most likely haven’t tried other methods. But keep consistent in pointing them in the right direction (as opposed to solving the problem) and watch what happens next month, then the month after that.
You have cut out all opportunity for blame, and built an accountable meeting. The first step in building a culture of accountability.
Step 4 - Keeping track (Meeting Rhythms)
We need our team to be analysing data, understanding our customer and our market, then to come with their ‘why’ as to why things have (or haven’t performed as they should).
But this can’t be the end of the story. We need a what, a why, and a how.
A great structure for your reporting meetings to follow would be something like this…
Headlines (the numbers)
Why? (the reasons)
What we’re doing about it (The accountability)
All team layouts will look completely different, but as a general rule of thumb, you need the all of the following meeting rhythms:
Weekly quick fire trading catch up with the entire team
Bi-weekly 1-2-1 with each team member talking about their experiements, what projects they’re working on and hold a space for them to bring wins/concerns to you
Monthly deep dive with each function/team to undertstand their numbers, experiments and resoning, including an update on what is happening in the following month
Monthly full leadership meeting to talk everything culture, goals, strategy and ensure there’s a clear communication loop across all the teams
Summary
Recognise first blame in yourself, where does it creep in?
Once you’ve begun to master your own accountability, you can begin nurturing others to do the same, and ultimately build a highly accountable team
Let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments vv
Peace,
Heather