Finger-pointing and the “blame game” are not attributes of an individual who is accountable. They fail to remember that as their finger is pointing outward there are three fingers pointing back at them. The waving finger is often loaded with excuses or reasons why something didn’t work. It is time to disarm the excuses and reasons and to help individuals step into their accountability.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, accountability is “the quality or state of being accountable. especially an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.” You may find people use the words accountability and responsibility interchangeably. There is a difference: responsibility is task-oriented whereas accountability has more to do with answerability for one’s behavior or actions. For example, when individuals on a team are each given a task toward a project, each person is responsible for their task of contribution. Now at the deadline of a project, everyone is accountable for the task they were assigned to. They must answer whether they have completed their task.
There are also times when individuals misunderstand that they’re being held accountable versus being micromanaged. Accountability revolves around meeting expectations whereas micromanagement tends to be a hovering over or meddling in one’s role by taking over tasks. It is important to ensure that your team understands what accountability is and what taking ownership of their own behaviors and actions means. The best way to do this is to involve individuals or your team in creating a plan of accountability.
The late Stephen Covey said, “Accountability breeds response-ability.” You can respond to a situation instead of reacting to it. It starts with acknowledging what is and then owning or taking responsibility for the same. When someone takes responsibility for a situation, they have the ability course correct or come up with a solution.
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.”
Bob Proctor
Get the Perspective of Others To make accountability right, you need to let go of the need to be right. The need to be right can prevent you from getting clarity about the situation. Each person looks at a situation from their own vantage point. This is why several individuals witnessing a car accident will all have a different narrative of what happened. Some people will zoom into a situation and see all the details whereas others will zoom out to see the bigger picture. All perspectives have value. By being curious and taking the time to listen to the perspective of others, you can establish a better understanding of the situation at hand. The other perspectives create a visual – setting the stage and helping you understand what is happening in the situation. When you take time to gather this information from others, you also demonstrate that you value and appreciate their insight.
Ask for Feedback from Others It can take courage for you to ask for the feedback that you need. Many people believe feedback is something that they receive when they need to correct a behavior or action because something went wrong. Asking for feedback from others can be a game changer in bringing a different perspective to how you do your work or how you are showing up. Is it aligned with who you want to be and how you want to show up? You receive feedback from the world around us all the time through our results, experiences, and how we feel about how situations went. It is important the test our reality and perceptions and to challenge our assumptions. Receiving feedback that is constructive is valuable in building your character and demonstrating that you are open to continuous growth.
Collaboration over Competition Success is not a one-man or woman show. When you collaborate with others you can often come up with more creative and innovative solutions. Sometimes people are afraid to collaborate because they’re focused on competing with one another versus leveraging the opportunity to pull the right skill sets and minds into the right space at the right time. Brainstorming and creative solution finding comes from tapping into the rich resource of the knowledgeable people around you.
When you engage others and create accountability, individuals get invested in seeing the results. People like to contribute by offering ideas and solutions and knowing that they’re contributing that makes a difference. Let’s get accountable and get it right! Fingers down!
How you respond to leadership challenges depends on what you know and the experience you have as you have grown in the organizational culture. These experiences have helped you develop your emotional intelligence or what some people refer to as the “soft skills” or “common sense”. Common sense does not appear to be that common. There is nothing soft about soft skills. Soft skills are hard to master and can be difficult to learn. Learning requires that a people be self-reflective and self-aware of their own behaviours and how they communicate with others. Developing soft skills can bring about the BEST in you and your people. With self-awareness, there is accountability and an increase in responsibility for one’s actions.