Who's Accountable for Accountability?

By Sajib Hossain01
 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
 httpscommons.wikimedia.org
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How many times have you or one of your managers said, “Employees just won’t take responsibility. They don’t want to be accountable.” Well, Mr./Ms. Employer, if your employees don’t take responsibility, it’s probably, to a great degree, your fault.

Some employees are sufficiently self-motivated to do what needs to be done, regardless of the circumstances. A few will perform poorly, regardless of what you do, until you let them go. But the vast majority of your employees want to do a good job but need occasional course corrections. The truth is, the performance of most employees will sink to the level the organization will accept. Organizations tend to drag good performers down. Therefore, it is vital to pay attention to the messages we send by our daily actions.

The responsibility for creating an accountability culture belongs to the leaders in the organization. Here are some accountability basics:

•         Set standards and communicate them—clearly and often. Everyone needs to know what’s expected of them.
•          Don’t encourage the “blame game.” To have an accountability culture, you have to have open communication where people can accept responsibility and admit mistakes. If your response to mistakes is "off with his head," you can bet you won't hear about them or if you do, fingers will be pointing at others. You don’t have to accept repeated errors from someone, but we all fall short sometimes.
•          Correct poor performance. People have to be told when their performance falls short of the standard so they can improve, and there need to be consequences when they do not.
•          Reward superior performance. We tend to focus on telling people where they fall short—recognize instead where they excel. There should be a clear tie between rewards and results.
•          Don’t let excellent performance in one area provide carte blanche for an employee to disregard other standards. Too often we allow the best technician/salesperson/etc. to be a jerk or get away with violating our ethics or values in other areas.

As a leader in your organization, you are responsible for setting and enforcing standards—you should be held accountable for accountability in your organization. Accountability starts at the top.