By Shawn Doyle

“I am not getting the results” my executive coaching client sighed. I paused and said “what do you mean?” The reply “ Well they don’t get the stuff done when I need them to..”  I asked “how do you hold them accountable?” The answer “ I  ask them but they still don’t deliver.”  “But” I asked “You didn’t really answer the question. How do hold them accountable?”  This conversation is h going in circles. In many organizations I see leaders who are not willing to hold people accountable for their work.  This is either because they don’t know how to hold people accountable, are concerned as coming off as being “too demanding” (note: people concerned about being too demanding almost never are), or are afraid of conflict. One of the key elements of effective leadership is we must hold our teams accountable for their work.  When I talk about holding people accountable for their work, I actually mean this in three ways.1) we must make sure that people do the task and projects that they’re responsible for. 2) we must make sure that we hold people accountable for the quality of their work.3) we must hold people accountable for their behaviors and the workplace. So to summarize; accountable for work, quality of work, and behavior.   

So how do we define accountability?  The way that I defined accountability is roles goals and objectives plus responsibility = results.  There’s no question that leaders are responsible for results. That’s what they hired us for, remember?. You know things like bottom-line results, sales, revenue and profit.  So here’s the question why don’t more leaders hold people responsible and accountable for work?  Here are five reasons that I have found in my work around the country as to why it managers do not hold people accountable;

  1.  Fear- I talk to managers who do not hold their people accountable because quite simply there are afraid of the response that they would get from their folks.  They are simply fearful of a conflict that results from an honest evaluation of a project. Sure it’s easy to give people positive feedback, but holding people accountable for their work is not always a positive activity, but it can be a constructive discussion.  Most leaders that I talk to though have already imagined in their mind the high level of conflict that will occur when they have this discussion. This is something  leaders need to get over and fast! In a leadership role it takes courage and honesty, and conversations are not always necessarily fun, but are entirely necessary.  And if a person in the leadership role is too fearful to have these kinds of discussions, then they should either be trained on coaching and handling conflict or should be removed from their position.
  2. Avoidance- Some leaders see problems in the workplace and practice what I call simple avoidance.  This is the world-famous stick your head in the sand ostrich approach.  Some leaders think that if they avoid the problem long enough it may well either go away or take care of its self.  The reality is once problems and situations are ignored too long and performance slips in terms of standards, they do not get better and n fact they get worse.
     
  3. They don’t know how to position it- Many times in training classes I conduct, leaders will say “yes I agree with you I should hold my people accountable more often, but my problem is I don’t know how to begin the conversation.”  There certainly lots of techniques as to how to position a accountability discussion with an employee. I believe actually these techniques are fairly simple. First when having an accountability discussion a leader needs to state clearly and articulately what the problem with performance and/or accountability is.  Additionally they need to make sure that they are criticizing the performance and not to the person.  The goal of holding someone accountable is not just to correct them but to hold them accountable for their work and also at the same time make sure they will be able to perform at a high level the next time it is expected of them. 
  4. They didn’t set clear expectations in the first place-This is fairly common, the leader sits down to review the project and to hold that person accountable for their lack of performance.  However if the expectations on the project for the task were not made clear to begin with, then the employee may have a legitimate concern about being held accountable because expectations were not clear to begin with.  It is certainly unfair to expect an employee to meet expectations when they do not understand what they are.  So it is critically important when we set the expectations that they are clear and easy to understand. We need to also verify that the understanding has occurred.
     
  5. Lack of caring-  As a leader in order to be able to hold people accountable, they also have to know that you care about their long-term success as a member of the team.  If you’ve shown in the past empathy and caring for the employee if you’ve properly positioned the areas of accountability then they’re much likely to take your accountability discussion seriously, because they know you care about them as opposed to just being hard-nosed and difficult. 

 So how do you as a leader hold people accountable?  I believe there are three specific areas of accountability that you can address.  The first area of accountability is projects and tasks. The second area of accountability is quality and the third area of accountability is workplace behavior. Here are 9  suggestions for making sure that you’re effective in holding people accountable for project work. 

  1. Make sure the project goal is clear  When you sit down to review a project or a task with an employee, make sure that the goal of the project is clear, and that the employee is in complete understanding. One way of insuring this is the case is to ask the employee to restate for you the goal of the project to  ensure understanding.  In some cases I have seen projects that at the end of the project were well executed and complete.  The only problem was the project that the leader thought was being done, and project that the employee was doing were obviously two different projects. Whoops! This naturally leads to high level of frustration on both parts.
     
  2. Lay out the expectations Once the goal of the project task has been made clear it is also important to lay out the area of expectations.  What exactly are you expecting them to do as part of the project?  Are you asking them to lead the project, manage it and be responsible for all the results, or are you asking them to be part of the team or the entire team are going to be responsible for the results?  I have generally found that it is highly effective to make sure to ask the employees to put the expectations of the project in writing and send it back to you to confirm understanding. 
     
  3. Define who is responsible  I learned this technique from one of the   best leaders I have ever reported to.  Once he gave you a project, he would then explain that it was your project, which meant that you were responsible for the results and for follow-up, not him.  This clearly put the responsibility in my ball park not his.  He then went on to give several examples as to what this would look like.  He would say, “this means that if we need to schedule a meeting to discuss the project, that would be your responsibility, not mine.  This means in terms of following up on the progress of the project would be your responsibility not mine.”  This well articulated explanation as to who was responsible for the project in essence took the responsibility off of his plate and put it squarely into mine.  
     
  4. Specificity I’m sure you’ve often read about smart goals with the S. M. A. R. T. acronym.  I am not necessarily a proponent of all the elements of SMART goals (you may know smart goals are specific measurable achievable realistic and timely.)  I’m not necessarily a fan of the A and the R in the SMART goals formula.  Here is why-as a leader should not give someone a project which is not achievable, nor should you give them a project which is not realistic.  That in essence is a recipe for disaster.  I am however a proponent of the S, the M and T part of the SMART goals formula.  So let’s start with specificity.  It is incredibly important that when someone is given a task or a project that the goals expectations and  details are as specific and clear as possible.  There is no room for ambiguity, because the ambiguity does not allow for accountability. We can’t hold someone accountable for something that’s ambiguous.  So the more specific and clear you could make instructions regarding guidelines the better off you are.  Additionally, I have always believed that in assigning a task, you’re much better off meeting in person face-to-face, as opposed to sending an e-mail or talking on the phone.  There are multiple advantages of face-to-face meetings in terms of more effective communication and feedback which you would miss if the project was delivered in another way.
     
  5. Measurement   If you’re going to hold someone accountable for project outcomes then you cannot hold them accountable if cannot measure the results.  This means that there must be specific measurements and or metrics assigned for that particular task to hold them accountable.  For example a leader might say to an employee “ I need you to organize the files” obviously the employee could organize the files any old way. However if there is no measurements or methodology, it cannot be a project for which they could be held accountable. If however the leader said, “I want to walk through this file project. Then proceeded to talk about how many files there were, how many files needed to be organized, how they were to be organized and which files they were, then there might be a reasonable case for measurement.  By the way this doesn’t mean that the measurement has always come from the leader’s mind or mouth.  The great question the Leader can ask an employee is “well were getting ready to work on this project how would you suggest the results of these product or this project be measured?”  This also will get better buy in because when employees are asked for ideas about measurement they’re much more likely to buy into the final expectation.
     
  6. Time line- The last part of assigning a task or project is to make sure there’s clarity on the timeline, meaning exactly when is this project due to be finished, and what does finished actually mean?  I see conflicting conversations between a leader and an employee over due date. The leader said it was by the fifth meaning it was due by the end of the day on the fourth. The employee however thought the deadline was by the end of the business day on the fifth.  You can see this approach would certainly lead to conflict.  I have found that one of the most effective ways of holding an employee accountable for the time line for projects is asking them to create a project plan with a time line.  Yes employees often resist this approach and they don’t necessarily like doing it.  But there is a compelling reason when they take the time to plan the project in a calendar form, they are  much more likely to be successful. 
     
  7.  Scheduled follow-up- As part of the plan the employee should also have specific scheduled follow-ups that are on the project calendar.  As a leader you should hold them accountable for this follow up. You need to make sure that they understand that is their responsibility to schedule a follow-up in your calendar and it is not your responsibility but theirs.
     
  8. Project review- Another critically important element of holding people accountable is to have a periodic scheduled project review.  This project  review can either be a one-on-one with you and the specific employee, or perhaps even a meeting with the team to have them review the project with the project leader, and to discuss what is going well what could be improved and what can be changed.  An additional form of project review is what is laughingly called the “post mortem”.  The post-mortem is simply the project review that is done after the project is entirely complete.  Sometimes a post-mortem can be very valuable because the review of the project is happening with the advantage of a time perspective.  The format for a post-mortem project review is simple.  Have each person or persons write down in advance a list of what they think went well and what could be improved.  This can lead to some valuable discussion which will not only create an environment of accountability but will also allow people to learn new skills and thought processes which can be applied to future projects.  The best leaders and I’ve ever reported to in my career have always used the post-mortem is a great learning and developmental tool, and always able to apply the new techniques and approaches to the next project. 
     
  9. Monthly report- Ask your team to create a 1 to 2 page monthly report.  The purpose of this report is for them to give you a report on the current projects and tasks they working on, the status of each project in terms of percentage complete and what they plan on working on the following month.  This is a great incredibly inventive tool for keeping people accountable.  If people know that the end of each month on a specific date that they’re going to have to report their progress to their manager in writing they are much more likely to have discipline around completing specific task and projects. Why do I know this?  I once reported to a leader who insisted on a monthly report and believe me it made me more accountable and productive. One additional side benefit to the monthly report – you can immediately spot projects and task that show up each month and are incomplete month after month.  This can allow you to  question why that particular project is stuck in neutral and get that project moving in the right direction.  Incidentally we should also hold employees accountable for submitting their monthly reports in a timely fashion.  If the reports are due on the 30th of the month that means that the report is due by the end of business day on the 30th of the month.  It does not mean it’s still can be submitted on the 31 or 1 or the 2.  Mark my words if you set up a monthly report structure and allow reports to be received late it completely removes the importance and the effectiveness of the report.  When you allow violations of policy those violations now become the new policy and your efforts will be wasted.  Additionally after the one month of the monthly reports being filed we should not have to remind people to submit their reports.  We have( in theory) adults to working for us and it is not our job to baby sit or hand- hold them through their respective tasks.  This enhances your credibility as a leader and teaches them the importance of responsibility and responsiveness.

  So those are 9 tips for holding people accountable for their work In next months article, I will discuss the other two areas of accountability. Until then hold yourself accountable for holding them accountable.

Shawn Doyle is the President  and Founder of New Light Learning and Development Inc. (www.newlightlearning.com) a company specializing in Leadership Development. He has also authored six books on leadership sales and motivation. His latest books The 10 Foundations of Leadership and 2 Months to Motivation will be published this summer  
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