Accountability is critical to high performance and yet so many leaders find it difficult to instill it in their culture, their teams and the way they delegate work to others.
So why do we find it so hard? Because it means having some tough conversations and it means holding people to account for their performance to the extent that they wear the consequences for NOT performing. For too many leaders it is easier to just fix it up myself and hope the person performs better next time! Sound familiar? 
Many conversations in our Leadership Development Program finish up with people admitting they don’t like to have these ‘tough’ conversations – they avoid them and so get frustrated by the lack of accountability demonstrated by their team members. And this is particularly true when it comes to delegating work – if the work comes back with mistakes, leaders frequently fix it up, send it out and then don’t bother to talk to the team member about the issue any further and the team member definitely does not feel the consequence for not performing to the expectations of their leader.
We need far more leaders prepared to hold their team members accountable for their performance to a certain standard.
Take some time to reflect on the level of accountability you bring in your team – and that can be your work team and your ‘home’ team – and then think about what might hold you back from exerting and expecting greater accountability?
Many people have said to me it is because they would prefer to be ‘nice’ than to exert and expect accountability. A colleague once told me that NICE stands for:
N nothing
I in me
C cares
E enough…..to tell you the truth.
So take a good look and learn to embrace accountability!
