3 Keys To Build An Accountable Team
By Laurie Sorensen, HTG Peer Groups
Do you want to have a high performance team? The secret is building a culture of accountability. One of our core values at HTG is accountability through execution, so it’s a topic we are constantly thinking about and discussing.
Here are three keys I commend to you if you want to build an accountable team:
- Be Personally Accountable. It seems counterintuitive to talk about personal accountability in a post about team accountability, but high performance teams are made up of accountable individuals. When something goes wrong on the team, these people look to their own performance first. They ask questions like, “How can I support my teammates?” or “How can I elevate my performance and help solve this issue?”
- Keep Short Accounts. A lot of people tend to allow small grievances to build up over time until they eventually reach a boiling point and spew all over their teammates. You know the type of conversation I am talking about, the one where the issue isn’t really the issue. All of a sudden things from months ago are being brought up, and everyone is defensive. High performance teams don’t let a long list of grievances accumulate – they immediately (and courteously) confront one another when there is a problem.
- Cultivate Safety. High performance teams don’t talk about their teammates behind their backs. They go directly to the person with whom they have a concern. This builds a culture of trust on a team because unless you are mentioning something to me in the moment, I know we are okay. I don’t have to be afraid that you are frustrated and talking about something that concerns me with our teammates.
Personal Accountability stretches across the other two keys to building an accountable team—each team member is accountable to handle conflict well. Research shows that the amount of time that passes between identifying a problem and discussing that problem is one way to measure a team’s effectiveness.
Similarly, each team member is accountable to cultivate safety by not starting or participating in office gossip about colleagues.
Building a culture of accountability is hard work. It takes modeling and communicating expectations like the keys I list above, but the payoff of a high performance team is well worth the effort.