Recognizing the Need for More Accountability

If we really want to avoid the costs that pile up when no one is held accountable and capture the profitability that’s so often killed as a result, the first step is realizing there’s even a problem… Before you tune me out here, I’m not inviting you to an AA meeting! When there’s a leadership issue, it’s anything but anonymous. That said, recognizing the need for more accountability can be tough.

In an article from ParetoLabs called How to Identify a Lack of Accountability in Your Team (and What to Do), the author shares that “In a team that lacks accountability, work is subpar and often late. No one takes responsibility for their actions, leading to poor outcomes across the board.” and goes on to list these five areas that suffer from that lack of accountability:

• Low quality work
• Decreased productivity
• High turnover
• DIsengaged employees
• Low morale

That’s quite the list… In fact, it looks a lot like the profitability killers we’ve been working to address through this process!

Here’s where you’re likely thinking, “Wait a minute, Wes, I thought you said a lack of accountability can be tough to recognize? Any one of those things should jump right at a leader who’s paying the slightest bit of attention!”

If all of those things showed up the moment accountability started to drop, or any one of them made a significant impact right off the bat, it should most certainly grab the leader’s attention. The challenge is that each of these issues start off small but compound quickly as they build upon one another. What begins as a minor issue, which could very well be due to legitimate reasons, snowballs. We let the issue slide that one time, but that level of performance now becomes the new standard; not necessarily on paper but definitely in the minds of everyone watching.

A while back in our Leading At The Next Level program, I shared a lesson called How Leaders Show Value by Being Responsive. In that lesson, I provided examples from two separate conversations I had on the same morning with top performers in their respective organizations who were extremely frustrated with the executives they reported to. In both cases, an expectation for responsiveness - to both internal and external communication - was clearly defined and tied to each organization’s values. The rub both individuals had was that their immediate managers barely responded to them at all, and the responses they did receive were nowhere close to within the time frame that had been defined as the company guideline…

Just like a lack of accountability, I highly doubt this kind of poor response became standard practice overnight. However, the behavior became ingrained when there was no consequence - with the managers in question as well as throughout the teams reporting to them!

There have been so many times where I’ve been frustrated by something and Cindy has talked me down by emphasizing how someone does one thing is how they do everything; telling me that whoever got under my skin probably had no intention of putting me off, they likely do the same thing with everyone… And time has proven her right over and over and over again!

Whether it’s as simple as being slow to respond to an email or it’s in how we deliver on a big project, the contributing behavior will continue when there’s a lack of accountability - and the frequency will only increase. And sooner or later, it will show up in each of those five areas listed above - but not before habits have formed… As this begins to become part of the culture, and kill even more profitability, there will be some very visible signs in how supervisors and managers interact with their teams - and how those teams respond!

I was so direct about both with hopes that the shock & awe would grab attention. Believe it or not, my goal wasn’t to piss off everyone who ever works through that lesson! Quite honestly, I struggle to imagine why any leader would ever intentionally allow quiet quitting to permeate their team and I refuse to refer to anyone who practices anything even vaguely resembling quiet firing as a leader.

With that out in the open, I’ll make one more statement: neither should be common in an organization when there’s a strong culture of accountability!

Here’s where you’re likely thinking, “Fair enough Wes, if that’s true, why do either of those terms even exist?” Simply put, both are symptoms of not recognizing the need for more accountability…

The folks who have recently been dubbed as the quiet quitters are in fact that group we looked at before who are neither actively engaged or actively disengaged; the 60% or so that Gallup’s 2022 State of the Global Workforce report referred to as “just along for the ride, creating drag for those who are rowing forward.” While I have seen the number vary between 50 & 60 percent over the years, this group in the middle that’s now called the quiet quitters has consistently made up the majority of the overall workforce - and it doesn’t have to be that way!

If we just take the steps to set clear expectations and maintain even a reasonable level of accountability, nearly everyone around us will perform to meet those expectations. It’s only when accountability falters that people slip into a subpar routine. And as that cycle perpetuates itself, we shouldn’t be surprised by half of our employees creating drag…

To compound what’s often an innocent miss by the management team due to fighting other fires, there are times where someone in a leadership role chooses to entirely avoid holding their folks accountable - for whatever reason - and slips into the behaviors that make up quiet firing. I know I wouldn’t rally around someone doing that and I’m guessing you wouldn’t either, so even more profit is killed in that area of the business…

I’ll stress again that this rarely happens quickly and the issues nearly always build gradually. That’s what makes this very slippery slope so dangerous! Regaining control and building accountability back into a culture isn’t all that difficult, and we’ll look at some simple steps we can take to do that soon, but first we need to make sure we’re prepared to address any issue appropriately. We can’t take the wrong approach by using too much candor or by using too much care.

Baby Bear’s Bed Was Just Right!

Do you remember the story about Goldilocks and the Three Bears? I can’t exactly recall how she got into their house, or even why she was in the area to begin with, but I do remember that she was tired and needed a nap. In trying each bed in the place, she found that Papa Bear’s was too hard, Mama Bear’s was too soft, but Baby Bear’s bed was just right!

If you really think about it, how we handle some of the tougher conversations we need to have around accountability should truly be more like Baby Bear’s bed. But all too often those end up being way too hard or way too soft - and either can make that slope we’re sliding down exponentially more slippery!

Before you’re completely convinced that I’m off my rocker, understand that for our conversations around accountability to be most effective, we need to be very intentional about balancing the candor necessary to accurately define the issue with the kind of care that assures our team member of their value to us as well as to the organization. Let’s be very honest with one another here, this can be one of the toughest skills for any leader to develop. And quite frankly, it’s one of the most common things Cindy and I help entire groups of leaders with.

As part of our Leading At The Next Level program I’ve mentioned a few other times here, we built two lessons specifically for this. The one I wrote was called The Power of a Candid Conversation and Cindy followed that shortly after with one called How Leaders Improve Results by Balancing Candor With Care. Mine detailed the importance of having those conversations and hers provided a step-by-step guide a leader can use to prepare for the conversation. The two were received so well (and were applied by so many participants in that program) that we’ve since tailored them into workshops for the leadership teams in several organizations. 

The overarching message we deliver is that many people lean too hard one way or the other. While not necessarily on purpose, attempting to maintain a high level of accountability by using too much care can easily be misunderstood as accepting behavior that’s actually just not meeting expectations. I’ve seen this frequently be the case when the supervisor or manager was previously a peer of the team member they need to have the tough conversation with and they are concerned about hurting a longstanding relationship. On the other end of the spectrum, a manager who hasn’t built much of a relationship with their team members - for whatever reason - can easily be perceived as being far too candid, like they’re swatting a fly on someone's forehead… with a hammer… 

The best accountability comes when there’s a healthy balance of the two. John Maxwell once shared it this way:

“Care without candor creates dysfunctional relationships. Candor without care creates distant relationships. But care balanced with candor creates developing relationships.”

In a conversation Cindy had about this with the CEO of Maxwell Leadership, Mark Cole, he told her that “Caring values the person while candor values the person’s potential.” Learning to blend the two as we take the steps to maintain a high level of accountability plays a critical role in addressing this profitability killer so that’s exactly what we’ll cover moving forward!