Expectations Are Empty Talk without Accountability
To have a real shot of our core company values creating the legacy we hope for, the expectations we set must be sustainable. Realistically, though, we wouldn’t place unsustainable expectations on anyone we truly care about - and that should cover everyone we’ve earned influence with who’s following us, regardless of our level of authority. That said, even the clearest of expectations are just talk if we’re not willing to maintain a high level of accountability.
Think about it, how often have you seen a parent barking orders at their out-of-control child with no change in behavior whatsoever afterward - from the child or the parent? If you’ve ever spent more than ten minutes in a Walmart, I’m sure you’ve witnessed this plenty of times. (I haven’t had to offer to spank someone’s kid for them since we started using the grocery pickup option!) With that fresh in your mind, what do we naturally assume about that parent’s relationship with their child? I realize there are exceptions, but it typically tells me that the child hasn’t been held accountable for not following directions. Make no mistake, I’m not suggesting that the parent has to jerk the kid out of the cart and beat them right there, but I’ve rarely seen a child who’s held accountable running wild in Walmart.
So how does that tie into setting sustainable expectations for how our team members exemplify our core values in their daily routines? Have you ever seen a coworker who’s habitually late even though the policy is very clear about when they’re supposed to arrive? Have you ever been given a date for when something you’ve requested would be in your hands and the individual who set the date resets their own projection, repeatedly, before coming through with what they committed to? Just like any kid being forced to endure the torture that is a trip through Walmart, all of us have bad days. But when undesirable behavior from a team member or service provider is the norm, it’s because they haven’t been held accountable to even meeting expectations - let alone exceeding those expectations…
As with the out-of-control kid in the store, the case I’m making here isn’t for harsh and immediate discipline - although discipline certainly has its place in the equation and we’ll get to that soon. Accountability begins with calmly addressing the behaviors that’s fallen short of what we expect, detailing the changes needed, and explaining what the future will hold if changes are not made. In the example I shared before, Terry wasn’t my manager so he wasn’t in a position to issue me a formal corrective action. But had I blown off the expectations he had set for me, he could have easily stopped the investment he was making in my career development, and that would have been more detrimental than a write up going in my file!
Whether we’ve truly earned the influence necessary to really lead our teams or we’re still working in that direction and have to actively manage performance, holding our team members accountable to live out our core values through what we expect from their daily behavior is an absolute necessity if we want to reach a level of sustainability. And accountability isn’t something we can think about only when we’ve hit our boiling point because someone has missed the mark one too many times; it has to be in place every single day and with every individual on our team.
Consistent Accountability - Across the Board
As I shared in the next to last chapter of Leading With A Clear Purpose, the compliance side of human resources absolutely drains the life out of me. And putting together employee handbooks, especially ones where values are often listed in the first few pages but have little relevance to anything else afterward, did that the fastest. But through all that, I was still able to pull some valuable lessons. Early on, one of the managers I was working with to create a handbook made a comment about how detrimental it can be to include canned work rules that we knew would never be administered. Having a policy that expressly profanity while supervisors use the blankedy-blankest language you could ever imagine to say good morning not only removes any teeth from that policy, it discredits every other work rule listed throughout the manual. The manager challenged me to consider that with any update we suggested; this wasn’t just a question of would it be a viable change, but was there a realistic chance that the supervisors and managers throughout our facility would actually hold themselves or their teams accountable.
Soon after that conversation, I took over the majority of that facility’s unemployment claim hearings. One of my responsibilities in disputing claims was to show that our management team had followed the written policy and had done so consistently with other team members prior to the situation in question. If I didn’t have the documentation to prove our case, the company was on the losing end of the claim even if the employee had genuinely violated policies repeatedly. Just like the lesson I shared earlier from my time in behavior-based safety, any behavior that’s recognized or rewarded does indeed get repeated.
When it comes to those oh-so-important core company values, establishing and maintaining accountability is paramount! Not only do we need to exemplify those values in everything we do, every manager and supervisor within our organization must do the same. But that’s not where it stops… The folks with those titles are not the only ones in our organization who have earned influence; our most senior and our highly skilled team members have influence with the folks around them - be that positive or negative - and they’re likely the ones who have the most interaction with those team members on a daily basis, too. If they step outside the lines on living out the company’s values and we don’t address it, we’re by default endorsing that subpar behavior; not just with them but with everyone who’s watching.
All too often, I’ve seen supervisors and managers turn a blind eye to a highly skilled team member who has fallen short. Sometimes they justify that since the behavior only occurs occasionally. Many times, though, they avoid the issue out of concern that addressing it will cause the team member to quit. Regardless of why, the message actually sent is that any expectation we’ve previously set for modeling our values is really just empty talk. Although this won’t likely result in our values being completely blown off immediately, each time we fail to maintain accountability perpetuates a downward spiral.
I've emphasized this with dozens, maybe even hundreds, of supervisors, managers, and executives over the last two decades; consistent accountability must be the norm - for everyone in our organization. Unfortunately, many of them initially perceive my push for maintaining accountability as an insistence on going straight to formal disciplinary action and duck that at all cost. That’s most definitely not that case I’m making, at least not at first.
Coaching, Not Condemnation
Creating a legacy through our core values requires us to set clear (and high) expectations for our team members. Maintaining accountability, consistently and across the board, around the behaviors that model those values is an absolute necessity for ever sustaining those expectations. But accountability isn’t directly synonymous with formal disciplinary action; at least it shouldn’t be…
Several years ago, while talking with the owner of a company, one of his supervisors came by his office in a lather about a relatively new employee. The supervisor’s first words were: “I can’t believe you haven’t fired that clown yet!” The owner was caught off guard. He had spoken with the supervisor about that employee’s progress at least weekly over the month and a half since they were hired; I know that for a fact because I was involved in most of those conversations. Each time, the supervisor was at least mildly pleased, if not glowing in his feedback. As we worked to determine what moved the needle so far so quickly, we learned that there had indeed been a number of small issues all along - but the supervisor didn’t feel like any one of those issues were worth the time it would take to address. Unfortunately, not addressing those relatively minor missteps led to the new employee’s adherence to expectations falling off rapidly. It was quintessential case of “give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile,” and that supervisor (like so many others I’ve seen over the years) went from mildly annoyed to full-on pissed off overnight - or at least that’s how it came across to me and the owner of the company.
Had I been the HR Manager for that company, I could have worked with the supervisor and owner to begin documenting the specific issues and addressing each according to the organization’s detailed progressive disciplinary process. Even then though, we wouldn’t have moved straight to “firing that clown” like the supervisor wanted. Whether we’re addressing behavior that clearly violates company policy or dealing with a situation where a team member has just fallen short of one of our core values, a one-on-one conversation is nearly always where we should start. Yes, there are exceptions; some policy violations lead directly to termination - do not pass go, do not collect $200… The same holds true when it comes to our values. But for the most part, our role as leaders should be to guide behavior toward those high (yet sustainable) expectations we’ve set, not to actively look for ways to condemn someone for failing to measure up. Quite honestly, many times when that new(er) team member isn’t meeting expectations it’s because we haven’t provided them with the support necessary to do so.
Regardless of the issue, a direct (yet kind) conversation about what missed the mark and how we expect them to change their behavior to meet and exceed our expectations can turn into a great training opportunity. All too often, those are missed completely because “we just don’t have time” to deal with the issue in the moment and frustration builds; gradually until we finally hit a boiling point. In What’s KILLING Your Profitability?, I dedicated two full chapters to the costs businesses deal with daily from high turnover and poor recruiting - which are often lumped together but are truly separate issues that feed each other. For our purposes here, just know it costs far too much to get and keep good people to shirk our leadership responsibility by failing to hold them accountable early on, which in fact tells them we’re actually OK with the poor behavior, then pushing them out the door when we’ve had all we can stand. That’s not leadership! By simply addressing any misstep by detailing how it doesn’t align with our values and detailing what they can do instead to exemplify those values, we create a culture of accountability rather than one of condemnation. As we do this routinely, we have a shot of helping our team members build habits around our company values so let’s look at some simple steps for that.
Accountability Builds Habits
From nearly the beginning of this look at how values serve as a foundation for any organization, I’ve stressed the critical role habits play in everything we do. I introduced the idea of helping our team members connect their behavior to core company values by sharing that it would require a slight change in our approach, and how that would help them repeat the actions necessary long enough to establish habits. I hit on it heavily again when we looked at how building strong habits gives us the bandwidth to make changes on the fly as we deal with unexpected issues, even when the initial process isn’t all that exciting on any given day. Before we wrap up this look at how sustaining high expectations around our values truly does allow our organizations to create a lasting legacy, let’s make sure we have simple steps in place to ensure we’ve developed the kind of accountability that can indeed establish the right habits.
I’ll stress once more, holding our teams accountable is far more about coaching them toward the desired behavior than condemning them for stepping out of line ever so slightly. When we take advantage of every opportunity to shine a positive light on the behaviors we observe that model exactly what we’re hoping for from our team members, any time we need to address a behavior that doesn’t align with a core value is much more natural. In either case, though, we’ve got to be incredibly specific about how their behavior does or does not connect with the value in question. If we’re only talking with them about our values when something goes wrong, they’re unlikely to have a clear picture of what the desired behavior looks like and we’ll be doing more to reinforce the undesired action as what actually happens moving forward; remember, recognized behavior gets repeated… When we’re intentional about recognizing the routine ways our team members’ behavior models our core values, even when that’s through a quick and simple pat on their back in a one-on-one interaction, we’re providing them with feedback that establishes accountability and helps build that ever-so-important habits that make our highest expectations sustainable.
Just to prove that I do still live in reality, let’s address the remaining elephant in the room: What about the times where someone just won’t align with our values? Make no mistake, I’ve seen a positive coaching approach produce far better results than a strictly punitive approach. But there will still be times where we’ll need to insert formal disciplinary action into the equation to have any hope of holding our teams accountable. A harsh reality of dealing with people is that there are occasions where someone will feel compelled to test any boundary we’ve worked to establish. When their actions go against our core values, we have no choice but to act on the decisions they’ve made. In most cases, we’ll still address whatever they’ve done through an initial conversation. But if they choose to use the same unacceptable behaviors afterward, they’re effectively demanding that we walk them through our formal progressive disciplinary process - up to and including termination. Please understand me, this is never something I’ve enjoyed doing. Truth be told, the only way I was able to get comfortable with having these conversations was by realizing that it was truly their choice, not mine.
While it’s not a step any leader ever looks forward to, it’s a crucial part of building and maintaining accountability; with the individual who has stepped out of line and for every team member who has worked to meet or exceed what we expect in modeling our values. In cases where a team member refuses to align with our core values, they’re effectively telling us that they no longer want to be part of our organization. While it’s certainly difficult for us to address at that moment, we need to be accountable to everyone else on our teams as we uphold those core values. When we’ve established the simple practices for exemplifying our core values and we’ve consistently explained and recognized behaviors that align with them, we’re well on our way to helping establish habits throughout our teams that sustain our high expectations. Over time, that’s exactly what will produce the results we’re working toward - so we’ll pick up there soon.