3 Steps to Creating Accountability

When you are ready to accelerate employee engagement and genuine accountability, there are three steps that you can integrate into your management style.

3 Steps to Creating Accountability

1. Cultivate trust by building your own trustworthiness as a contributor and as a leader. This means:

• Be consistent in the words and behaviors others can expect from you

• Be curious by demonstrating to others that you are genuinely interested in learning rather than appearing to be “the expert”.

• Stay in fact, keeping conversations rooted in provable fact rather than assumptions and  stories.

2. Cultivate emotional safety, so that everyone in the organization knows that they can speak their truth without fear of retribution. Ask yourself:

• Are the people you work with comfortable asking questions and expressing their views and opinions on even the most difficult subjects? 

• Are the people you work with comfortable expressing an unpopular opinion or showing vulnerability (without fear of retribution)? 

3. Incorporate regular, actionable feedback into your manager toolbox. Feedback is about promptly closing gaps in skillfulness. 

• Are you delivering prompt feedback that the person can reasonably take actionable on (rather than holding off until a performance review).

• Is your feedback rooted in only the true facts relevant to the specific situation?  

• Are you comfortable with the discomfort that comes with giving feedback?

Once you integrate and master these steps, you will be cultivating genuine accountability.

My Question To You

How will you integrate these three steps into your work to improve how you lead, communicate, and give feedback?