In the last blog we looked at the need to trust those that work with you and hopefully they in turn trust you. We even felt that it was impossible to be able to empower a member of your team if their Trustbank was low. Connected to trust is their level of accountability. If a person does not have accountability, then they will not accept responsibility for their actions and that is very dangerous if you are relying on them to achieve a task or even project for you.
Don’t Blame Me
Unfortunately, leaders can be responsible for creating the “Don’t blame me” culture. Studies have shown that organisations that fail to empower their staff according to the tasks in front of them, remove the feeling of accountability. If you do not feel you own the task, why should you have to pay for any mistakes or problems you encounter?
Victim attitudes abound in all types of organisations evidenced by their efforts to blame others, always having excuses, “it’s not my job”, and hundreds of other behaviours and attitudes which people use as a shield against taking risks and accepting their own personal accountability. So leaders must be even more sensitives to the cues being shown by the person.
The best way is to build a culture of accountability rather than blame and to do so we may need to help people build their level of accountability. Let’s start by defining what accountability is and what it shouldn’t be.
People who are accountable are:
- Willing learn from their mistakes, those who don’t have the feeling of a victim and try to gain sympathy with it.
- Accountable people grow from their experiences, as opposed to trying to avoid blame.
- They tend to focus on solutions versus those attempt to save face (ego).
- Show a “can-do” attitude instead of holding onto a belief of being right.
- They get more results as opposed failing to act as they can avoid the risk of making a mistake.
- They tend to have higher self-esteem instead of an “I can’t change it” attitude.
- Do you recognise the positive features in your team members, or do you see some of the victim mentality?
You probably have heard the phrase “Whatever”, a classic example of avoiding accountability. Not all start with accountability. In fact, the current generation are finding it harder then previous generations. They don’t like to admit they made a mistake or contributed to a shortfall. It puts them off taking risk as they don’t like to look imperfect, and to take on more work to fix what went wrong. But as a leader we must help them through this phase or in the long term they will produce fewer results because they won’t learn from their mistakes, they won’t grow personally from the experience and their potential loss of respect in their eyes will demotivate them totally. Ultimately, they will have a feeling of being powerless.
To determine the position of your team members you can assess them based on this chart:
Levels of Accountability
The first step is to acknowledge where your team members sit. Whatever the position they need to be able to look to you for a role model of accountability. To them you are responsible and therefore you need to ensure you are “walking the talk”, “practicing what you are preaching” and being willing to admit to mistakes you make, even if it makes you look imperfect and you have to be willing to work on a solution.
Step two is to help them be more accountable. Lack of accountability usually takes the form of someone’s reasons why they did not make something happen. If you buy into their reasons, you help perpetuate a culture of victims. Equally they may try to avoid being given the task, which is shirking accountability. Neither is acceptable.
Solution: Listen and acknowledge obstacles, but do not take back the responsibility for the task. Help them to find the information needed or how to come to the right conclusions themselves. If they try to avoid the task just be insistent that they can do it and will grow as a result. Once they have started a task, they must finish it, with your support, but they must finish it to grow and become more accountable with time.
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