The Gifts of Accountability: Part 2

This is the second article in a three-part series. To read the first part, Click Here.

I spent my first couple years in management rather desperately trying to avoid the kind of confrontation necessary to hold my “problem employees” accountable for their actions. I bent over backwards to help them change, but ultimately *nothing I did* improved their patterns of problematic behavior. Worse, it had an unintended and disastrous side effect: it drove away the people I most needed to build the culture I wanted.

Through trial and error, I eventually learned that by failing to hold others accountable, I was depriving everyone of a safe environment, ensuring they could not succeed, and unintentionally creating a toxic culture. However, when I learned to hold my team accountable confidently and consistently, I gave them 3 gifts which were critical to their growth and success: a Firm Footing, a Clear Path to Success, and a Culture of Accountability.

I’m the first to admit that this transition was hard, as change so often is. Unsurprisingly, the folks who were used to having their failures overlooked were not thrilled to be suddenly experiencing consequences for their actions… Some of them even faced the ultimate consequence of leaving the show. But they took a cloud with them, clearing the way for others to thrive.

In the first article we explored the first gift: a Firm Footing, where you learned to define standards of acceptable and unacceptable behavior and have clear and kind accountability conversations when people step outside those boundaries.

Once we know how to communicate what not to do, it’s critical that we learn to communicate the other half of the equation: a Clear Path to Success. By following the three steps outlined below you can give your team the opportunity to pursue excellence in a meaningful way.

Step 1: Define what success looks like. Simple enough, right? After all, you know great performance when you see it. But knowing it when you see it doesn’t tell your team how they can reach that milestone. Here are two questions to help you articulate your aspirations for your staff:

1. Think of the employees on your team who excel in one or more areas. What are the qualities they exemplify that you wish you could magically transfer to every other member of your team?

2. Think of a problematic employee (current or former) whose bad behavior you tolerated. What superpower did they bring that made them worth putting up with the problems they caused?

Make a list of your answers and boil it down to specific behaviors that contribute to the excellence you seek. You want to make sure that these are easily observable actions that anyone could recognize, not mushy or vague statements like “is a good team player”. What makes them a good team player? Do they complete work ahead of deadlines? Adapt calmly to changing circumstances? Anticipate problems and act to prevent them? Whatever the answer, the clearer you can be in defining excellence, the more successful you will be in inspiring your team to reach for that bar.

Step 2: Design or revise a reward system that reflects your goals. It’s not difficult, but you’d be surprised how often companies forget to update their reward system to reflect the culture change they want (which is a major reason so many culture-change initiatives fail!).

Put simply, you identify the rewards you have at your disposal and tie them to the behaviors you want. But depending on your role and the size of your company, it can sometimes feel like you don’t have a lot of options. Here are some ideas that are accessible even to small companies or middle managers:

· Do you have (or could you request) a budget for incentives? Even $50 a month can make an impact — think gift cards for something your employees use regularly like coffee or a local lunch spot, or candy or goofy toys if that fits your company culture. Heck, in a pinch even stickers on a poster can get the job done.

· If you don’t have funds, can you reward them with time? An extra half-hour for lunch, a late start or early finish to the day are always meaningful.

· Don’t forget to look at how raises, bonuses, and promotions are allocated… Nothing will undermine your efforts to build a collaborative culture like a bonus system that rewards individual contributions.

· Pro tip: You don’t have to give a reward for every instance of good behavior — they can add up to a reward with repetition, but make sure that the rewards aren’t arbitrary.

Step 3: Put it into practice. Use your rewards to recognize people (publicly when appropriate) for achieving excellence. Don’t overdo it — you want your rewards to be meaningful. Keep a keen eye on the folks who need improvement and make sure you catch them doing the right thing as well as doing the wrong thing. And don’t neglect your best folks — you don’t want to shower them with praise on a daily basis, but you also don’t want them to feel that you take them for granted.

One final note: I recommend getting feedback from some thought partners before rolling anything out. There are two major pitfalls you must avoid: promising more than you can deliver and inadvertently telling everyone they’re terrible at their job. One tactic to try is choosing one behavior at a time to focus on, building up to your full list over several months.

Remember, consistency is critical for all aspects of accountability. Just like with enforcing consequences, you can’t reward good behavior sporadically or you’ll be accused of favoritism. By clearly communicating what excellence looks like and making sure your reward system reflects those goals, you’ll create opportunities for your team to distinguish themselves.