Many of the leaders I work with struggle with holding their people accountable, regardless of what level they are in the organization. According to a CEO Benchmarking Report, holding people accountable is difficult—even for leaders who head up companies. 18% of the CEOs surveyed cited “holding people accountable” as their biggest weakness. Additionally, 15% struggle with “letting go of underperformers.”
Is this challenging for you, too?
You probably know that lack of accountability has numerous consequences: low morale, lack of engagement, loss of credibility and, of course, poor performance.
So, what’s to be done? Some of the obvious actions include setting clear expectations, having regular touch points, providing encouragement for the behavior you want to reinforce, and addressing performance issues early on rather than waiting for them to become habitual. But there might be something else going on that’s undermining your efforts. And that is the belief that it’s your responsibility as a leader to hold people accountable.
Recently, I ran across a blog post entitled, “Holding People Accountable is Ineffective Leadership.” That sure caught my attention! Why is it ineffective leadership and how else do you get people to do their jobs?
The author argues that framing the dynamic as “holding people accountable” sets up the situation where someone is doing something to someone else. No wonder it’s a fraught situation for both parties!
He proposes “taking responsibility” as an alternative: taking responsibility is something one does for oneself. Making clear agreements, keeping or renegotiating those agreements and cleaning up broken agreements.
How might this way of framing the relationship between a leader and her people shift the dynamic in the direction of a freely-chosen, collaborative relationship?
1. It shifts the responsibility for delivering results to the person whose job it is.
2. It frees leaders up to do their job instead of being an overseer.
3. It clears up tension that’s inherent in a relationship of monitoring.
That all sounds great, you think, but you don’t know my team. They need me to keep track of their performance or nothing would get done.
Is that what’s coming up for you? If so, I share your concerns. How am I going to coach Matt, who comes to every session with a story about the people on his team who don’t respond to emails, constantly miss deadlines, and never volunteer to do anything but the bare minimum?
What if we started by looking at the ways Matt’s belief about accountability could be inadvertently reinforcing the very behavior that frustrates him? I might ask him, “what might you be doing or failing to do that’s contributing to your people’s performance issues?” Taking responsibility for one’s own behavior is an important starting point for addressing undesirable dynamics. Yet so often we see the other person’s behavior as the sole cause of the problem.
If Matt is open to exploring that question, I’d suggest that we create a Belief-Action-Result Loop of the dynamics, focusing on Matt’s beliefs, actions, and results. This loop makes it easy to see how each of these feed into one another, creating a vicious circle.
It might look like this:
Then we could go on to identify the results Matt wants, the actions he would need to take to get those results and (this is the tricky part) the mindset that could motivate him to take those actions.
Here’s an example of a positive Belief Action Result Loop:
Even if Matt were able to get really clear on his positive loop and was highly successful at taking the actions he identified, it could take some time to see the results he is aiming for. It’s even possible that behavior could get worse before getting better. But maintaining that belief and acting consistently over time is likely to shift the dynamics toward a freely-chosen collaborative relationship.
Hint: don’t start with your worst performer and expect magic. Instead start with newer team members and people who might accept a bit more responsibility if they were asked to step up. You could be surprised at how readily people respond!
I’d love to hear your reactions to this way of reframing accountability. Does it sound like a way forward or is it too “pie in the sky” for your situation? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments below.