What is Accountability?

Accountability is essentially taking ownership of results. It means accepting the consequences and rewards of your actions. Accountability means taking charge of your team’s work even if you haven’t done the work.

It is accepting the errors of others in your team. Often, accountability is something assigned to you, and it makes you responsible. Plus, accountability is avoiding playing the blame game.

Here are some benefits of accountability in the workplace:

• Accountability fosters trustworthiness, collaboration, and cohesiveness
• It helps team members accept more responsibilities
• It helps you build your team better
• Accountability helps develop effective communication
• It makes you more productive and efficient
• Accountability helps improve customer satisfaction
• It helps in increasing returns for the company

What construes positive accountability?

Now you know what accountability is and its benefits. What construes positive accountability? Did you know accountability often has a negative connotation?

Accountability is taking ownership of results. It’s often associated with accepting the consequences and owning up to mistakes. Essentially, accountability has been known to mean that you’re liable for something. However, accountability can be positive.

Positive accountability is uniting employees, employers, managers, and more to achieve a common goal. It ensures collective accountability and fostering partnership. Positive accountability revolves around sharing rewards and success rather than blame-bearing.

You’ll be surprised to know that positive accountability has far more benefits than mere accountability. Positive accountability boosts productivity, it increases motivation, there are positive reinforcements for good results, and it helps redefine your company’s culture.

Positive accountability helps you emphasize what’s working and strengthening that rather than fault-finding. It will help boost employee morale and create a healthy work environment. Plus, it will increase your employer, employee, manager, and other people’s satisfaction in the company.

Positive accountability in the workplace guarantees a successful business.

How to demonstrate positive accountability

Positive accountability offers so many benefits. It helps you build a trustworthy team and ensures boosted employee morale. However, you might wonder how to demonstrate positive accountability in the workplace, isn’t it?

Here are some tips on fostering positive accountability in the workplace:

Align your Goals and Expectations

You can foster positive accountability only if you align your goals and expectations. If you’re a manager managing a team, you need to communicate your goals, expectations, and what you need to your team effectively.

You also need to ensure your team’s personal goals align with the company’s goals. You must eliminate any inconsistency and ambiguity to ensure positive accountability in the workplace.

Create Motivation For Positive Performance

The key to positive accountability is driving positive performance. It is ensuring emphasis on achievements and what is working rather than on the negatives. Inspiring your employees and managers to give positive performance and build on what works well in the company helps develop positive accountability.

You must take action to address what doesn’t work. However, work to find solutions and don’t delve into the negatives. It’s essential to focus on small wins and big victories rather than on the negatives.

Dole Out Rewards

One of the best ways to foster positive accountability in the workplace is to dole out rewards and recognize victories. It’s important to show appreciation and make your team feel valued. Moreover, it helps you identify who is going above and beyond, delivering the best work always, ensuring timely work, and more.

When you dole out rewards, it helps you focus on the good work happening in your company. Plus, it helps your people to continue achieving more because they know they’ll be rewarded. Further, it enables you to create a staff-centric company culture that boosts productivity.

Create Personal Accountability

You need to create an environment of personal accountability in the workplace. Personal accountability is when each team member holds them responsible and accountable for their tasks and goals. It is honouring your commitments to others and yourself.

Suppose you are responsible for a task; you need to have personal accountability for it. Ensure you meet your deadline and give the best quality work.

Personal accountability helps foster positive accountability in the workplace because each individual holds themselves responsible. There won’t be any blame game, and there’ll be more unity in the workplace.

Endnotes

Positive accountability in the workplace ensures that accountability is not punitive. Moreover, it ensures productivity and creates smooth functioning companies. Further, positive accountability helps you achieve profitable, predictable, and measurable results. Focusing on positive accountability rather than mistakes helps boost employees’ morale.

Suppose you struggle to achieve or understand Positive Accountability; you can try my online Accountability Made Easy course or book a One-on-One Accountability coaching session.

So, foster positive accountability to ensure the success of your business or company!