How To Encourage Employee Accountability?

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Are your staff hostile against ideas like “responsibility” and “being held accountable”? Most likely, it’s as a result of attempts by leaders to impose accountability from above. However, it isn’t how responsibility functions. For a variety of reasons, including neither successfully nor sustainably being mandated, people are innately motivated to keep their word.

A top-down strategy makes workers feel like children again, undermines trust and freedom, and disincentivizes people from figuring out how to stay on top of things on their own. Instead, by fostering an organizational culture that supports and cascades accountability through five areas of concentration, leaders may encourage increased accountability within their workforce.

Let Us go over these methods :-

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Recognise Your Mistakes

One of the most important leadership principles is that you cannot hold your team to a standard that you do not uphold yourself. Therefore, setting an example and being transparent about your own accountability is one of the simplest methods to enhance accountability on your team.

If you make a choice that turns out to be the wrong one, let your colleagues know about it and explain what you’ll do differently the next time. If you don’t achieve a goal, discuss what went wrong and how you personally could have done better.

Speaking up about your successes and setbacks (and what you learned from them!) will increase transparency, foster more trust, and teach your team the value of taking responsibility—and that doing so will be rewarded (rather than penalized)—at a time when 63% of workers reportedly don’t trust their leader.

Be Considerate

Remember that everything happens for a purpose. For instance, if an employee consistently arrives late for work or frequently skips shifts, there may be inescapable reasons for this.

They might be a working parent who must drop off their children at daycare or they might be responsible for caring for an adult with special needs at home. You should speak with them to find out the source of their issues rather than making assumptions or approaching the situation harshly. You can explain to them how their actions have consequences.

Make sure not to undermine staff morale when having the dialogue as well. How?

You must have sympathy for both employee and business commitments.

Be Clear

Knowing how powerfully transforming your expectations may be should inspire you to be very specific about what those expectations are. You can’t just assume that your team shares your perspective. Each employee has a unique processing and reaction style to information.

It can be difficult to feel accountable when you only say, “Let’s be more accountable,” and nothing else. Your direct reports must observe what constitutes employee accountability.

The better your expectations are communicated, the more direct, sharp, and clear it will be.

Maintain Equilibrium

Sometimes an employee’s unfulfilled promises might be attributed to your side’s lack of clarity.

You need to behave responsibly in this situation. You may either offer them the necessary tools or another chance to show themselves. And you should take the required steps if an employee fails to produce owing to their own lack of accountability, such as:

Deciding never to give them that kind of duty once more.
Recommending a training program to help them with their weaknesses
Or, if the situation is dire, decide to let them go.

The final conclusion is that unfulfilled obligations cannot always be attributed to an employee’s lack of accountability. Because of this, you should maintain equilibrium when handling such circumstances.

Be Emotionally Intelligent

Regarding workplace accountability, consider the following safe assumption: Sometimes people are unaware of how their actions are affecting others. As the boss, it is your responsibility to be considerate, identify the reason of the issue, and create a plan of action that benefits everyone.

James, for instance, consistently arrives 30 minutes late. You’ve discovered from him that the reason is that he needs to drop his kid off at school before going to work after speaking with him. His 8:30 start time wasn’t an issue in his former work, but it is now.

You should first discuss the significance of everyone starting at 8 a.m. before attempting to assist him in resolving the issue. James needs to adjust his schedule, or you need to provide him the option of working a flexible schedule.

The Takeaway

If everyone works alone, they can wind up working against the broader team objectives. Encouragement of collaboration almost certainly entails the delegation of part of your duties. Employees will feel more empowered if everyone on the team shares responsibility for the team’s success.

They will accept accountability in the workplace if you are interested in your employees’ wellness in the methods mentioned above, both within and outside of the office.

About The Author

Darren Finkelstein, The Accountability Guy®, is the founder of TICK THOSE BOXES, a specialised accountability coaching practice. Darren is a formidable international accountability coach, business advisor, mentor, and author/speaker, fostering development and measurable results in entrepreneurship, leadership, and accountability. Darren’s tale is one of perseverance, self-reinvention, and resilience.

With compelling execution, Darren has empowered high-achieving individuals and teams from Australia and New Zealand to Latin America, Europe, Asia, the UK, and the US to embrace accountability; after all, it is your superpower.

Darren’s one-on-one and group coaching programs are based on his bestselling business book, “The Accountability Advantage – Play your best game” and the latest, release “NO’ – Building a life of choice without obligation”.

Darren has an impressive background in business, having held the role of “Manager of Commercial Markets” at Apple Australia during the Steve Jobs revolution.

He enthusiastically “walks the talk,” having also successfully sold and exited his lifestyle businesses, which served as the impetus for establishing his coaching and mentoring business.

Join Darren on this transformative quest to accomplish the remarkable.

Read Darren’s full bio here:
https://tickthoseboxes.com.au/about/