Accountability Training

 When I was working in the corporate world, I heard a lot about leadership accountability. I thought this was a good concept and I liked the way people were talking about it. However, I didn't understand what leadership accountability actually meant.

After getting involved in organizational development and training, I finally understood leadership accountability. What I found was that leadership is about aligning the leader's behaviors with his beliefs. There are four elements to successful building team accountability. They are vision, purpose, behavior and consequence. I'll talk about each of these in more detail below.

Vision is the end result you want to achieve. Purpose is setting the vision and then developing ways to get to that vision. Behavior is doing it and consequence is holding oneself to that behavior. Consequences are controlling the behavior so it doesn't continue. This is what I mean by becoming accountable in the workplace.

People are generally responsive to consequences that are in alignment with their vision. A good leader will take personal accountability by asking team members to do things for themselves and to hold themselves accountable. A good leader realizes that he/she cannot be everywhere at once so accountability should be frequent and tailored to each individual employee. For example, an individual who is a great team player may be required to do some leadership accountability on a weekly basis. Leaders need to remember that employees are human and they may not always see things the same way as the leader does.

It is important to be sure that the consequences are linked to the personal accountability created in the workplace. As an example, if an employee is poor at managing time, the leader may expect them to learn how to manage time so that they can better meet the needs of the business. However, if the leader continues to say that they cannot have enough time or they don't want to be accountable for their own actions, the employee may begin to think that they are in the wrong and will stop trying. As a leader you need to be consistent with your expectations so that people understand what they are signing up for.

Accountability training for leaders should include a section on how the company should be managed. This section should explain that employees are responsible for making the company successful. If the leaders view team members as separate from the company as they are, it will become easier to blame them when something goes wrong. When there is an understanding in the office that all are equal and that the leaders are accountable to the team, there will be a high degree of morale and productivity. A good leadership accountability program will address all aspects of team leadership including performance management, setting goals, creating policies, coaching and presenting plans.

Accountability training for employees will teach them how to be proactive and learn what kind of changes need to be made. Employees must learn what kinds of information they need to be able to come up with solutions and how to share that information with other employees. Accountability programs will also include the skills necessary to handle conflict resolution. Sometimes a simple approach is not necessarily the best solution.

All employees should be trained on how to develop and implement change. The team will learn what they can do together and how much they can effect outside of their own group. The training should cover decision-making, how to communicate effectively, team building and problem solving. When the team has learned everything that they need to know, they can start to develop new skills and practicing old ones. Accountability training for team members will allow them to do this quickly and effectively.