Employees waste an average of $1,500 and an eight-hour workday for every crucial conversation they avoid.
This according to research conducted by VitalSmarts1. Their research also showed that common resource-sapping avoidance tactics include ruminating excessively about crucial issues, complaining, getting angry, doing unnecessary work, and avoiding the other person altogether.
A Harvard Business Review article2 states:
- In the weakest teams, there is no accountability
- In mediocre teams, bosses are the source of accountability
- In high performance teams, peers manage the vast majority of performance problems with one another
Accountability starts with an agreement between colleagues with clear goals and roles. Adopt these 7 steps to boost your team’s performance:
- Clarify each person’s role and contribution, starting with your own.
- Make a public statement showing your commitment to the success of the project. Invite others to do the same.
- Who needs encouragement? What successful milestones can you celebrate now?
- Confront what is not working whether that is an individual behavior, a set of systems, lack of setting time aside to go through the facts of the situation. One fact may be that a member of the team simply does not have the skill necessary to contribute. Or that the team leader has not championed the appropriate resources the team needs.
- Own your contribution to where things went off the rails.
- Partner with your peers and other resources to identify solutions.
- Respond to the situation without delay. Revisit the clarity of the project/program to be sure that next steps, roles, responsibility, and commitments are clear.
It’s your job as leader to model accountability, as well as create a space of psychological safety where each person is encouraged to hold anyone else accountable in the best interest of the team.
What can you do to champion better peer-to-peer accountability with your team? What gets in the way? What is one step you can take today?
Download Clearwater’s free ebook, Tough Talk, for more on peer-to-peer accountability (see Chapter 9, starting at Page 71).
Contact Clearwater Consulting here or call (404)634-4332 to schedule a conversation on additional ways we help organizations like yours accelerate transformative change for higher performance.
1. https://www.vitalsmarts.com/press/2010/04/cost-of-conflict-why-silence-is-killing-your-bottom-line/
2. https://hbr.org/2014/05/the-best-teams-hold-themselves-accountable